The E-Sylum:  Volume 7, Number 21, May 23, 2004, Article 15

TROY TRASHED

  The quote from eBay ("We're seeing today that kids are
 more educated about collecting,") inspired William Bishoff
 to write:

  "Too bad one can't say the same about the consortia that
  create blockbuster movies like TROY,  which I endured
  this weekend.  To stick only to the numismatic solecisms,
  dead heroes of ca. 1200 BC are repeatedly shown being
  prepared for cremation by the placement of high-relief
  silver coins on their eyelids--about 800 years too early.
   A.O. Scott said in his recent "New  York Times" review
  that the film "labors to respect the strangeness and
  grandeur of its classical sources."  The man doing this
  review doesn't know the classical sources or he wouldn't
  write such garbage.  To stray for a moment from the
  numismatic realm, the foolish inventions include the killing
  of Ajax by Hector; a fatuously uxorous Achilles (Patroclus
  is just a "cousin" he enjoys teaching swordplay to: no hint
  of homoerotic passion that might explain Achilles's later
  rage); a captive female Breisis who loves Achilles
  [first female besides his mother ever rumored  to love that
  particular killer] for giving her a chance to wash up and eat
  something (Achilles is even portrayed as entering Troy
  inside the Trojan Horse in order to rescue Breisis); and the
  killing of Agamenmon by the louche bowman Paris--leaving
  Clytemestra back home in Argos to enjoy the questionable
  charms of Aegisthus--and cheating her of the sanguine
  revengue described in Aescylus's "Agamemnon."

  But don't miss those coins on the eyelids.  They're even better
  than Classical coins (nice that the dead get tetradrachms, one
  for each eye, instead of a mere obol on the tongue, to pay
  Charon for the trip over the River Styx).  This is truly a "Styx"
  movie, its enormous cost included. Its popularity attests to the
  fact that education--as opposed to career training--hardly
  exists in this country."

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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