Classical Mythology

The Trojan War and Walcott’s Omeros

Athens 804 Reconstructions of a Geometric sherd (Biers, 112)

General Kreipe center, Stanley Moss to left and Patrick Leigh Fermor to right, surrounded by the andartes in the mountains of Crete, April 1944.

Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890). Portrait from his autobiography, 1892.

Cú Chulainn riding his chariot into battle. Illustration from T W Rolleston, Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race (1911).

The House of Dardanus and the House of Atreus.

Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Judgment of Paris, 1530. Saint Louis Art Museum.

The Epic Cycle: Cypria

Philoctetes on Lemnos. Attic red-figure squat lekythos, ca 420. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Epic Cycle: Cypria

Body of Sarpedon lifted by Sleep and Death. Calyx-krater signed by Euxitheos as potter, Euphronios as painter, ca 515. New York: Metropolitan Museum.

The Epic Cycle: Iliad

Giorgio de Chirico, Hector and Andromache, 1917. Private Collection.

The Epic Cycle: Iliad

The Funeral of Patroclus. Apulian red-figure krater by the Darius Painter, ca. 330 B.C. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale.

The Epic Cycle: Iliad

The ransom of Hector. Attic black-figure neck amphora attributed to the Rycroft Painter, 510s. Toledo Museum of Art.

The Epic Cycle: Iliad

Achilles Slaying Penthesileia. Attic red-figure cup by the Penthesileia Painter, 460s. Munich, Alte Pinakothek.Death of Achilles. Attic black-figure amphora by Exekias, ca 530. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

The Epic Cycle: Aethiopis

Clip from Troy, directed by Wolfgang Peterson, 2004.

The Epic Cycle: Little Iliad

Sack of Troy. Neopotolemos kills Priam, holding the body of Astyanax. Aeneas flees with his father Anchises on his back and his son Askanios leading the way. Ajax drags Casandra from the statue of Athena.Red-figure hydria by the Kleophrades Painter, early V. Naples, Museo Nazionale Archeologico

The Epic Cycle: Ilioupersis

Clytemnestra and Aegisthus killing Agamemnon. Attic red figure kalyx krater by the Dokimasia Painter, mid V. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts.

The Epic Cycle: Nostoi

Odysseus and his crew blinding Polyphemus. Proto-Attic amphora, ca 650. Eleusis, Archaeological Museum.

The Epic Cycle: Odyssey

Odysseus and the Sirens. Attic red-figure stamnos by the Siren Painter, 470s. London, British Museum.

The Epic Cycle: Odyssey

Odysseus slays the suitors of Penelope. Attic red-figure skyphos by the Penelope Painter, ca 440. Berlin, Staatliche Museum.

The Epic Cycle: Odyssey

The Epic Cycle: Telegony

Circe Offering the Cup to Odysseus. John William Waterhouse, 1891. Manchester, Gallery Oldham.

Derek Walcott. Photograph by Graeme Robertson for the Guardian, 9 May 2014.Documentary by Tony Knox for London Weekend Television, 1989.

37:20-39:10 Cutting trees40:00-42:20 The sea and the fishermen47:50-48:17 Hector vs Achille

Derek Walcott, Street in Gros Îlet, Preparing the Net (1999), Seascape with Figures, Self Portrait (1998).

Lord Rodney’s Flagship “Formidable” Breaking through the French Line at the Battle of the Saintes, 12th April 1782. William Elliott, 1784-1787. Private collection.

The Ghost Dance by the Oglala Lakota at Pine Ridge. Illustration by Frederic Remington, Harper's Weekly, 6 December 1890, 960-61.

Catherine Weldon, 1878.

Birds-eye view of canyon at Wounded Knee, 1891.

Winslow Homer, The Gulf Stream, 1899. New York, Metropolitan Museum.

Then I saw him. Achille! Biggerthan I remembered on the white sun-splintered deckof the hot hull.

(Omeros, 183)

Port of Castries, St Lucia.

Derek Walcott, Almond Tree.