The Gods Left

The Gods Left

Missing pieces of history cast shadows of mystery over the Trojan War. For thousands of years, writers and artists have never stopped their obsession with this legendary past of myths and history. One of the greatest woks is Homer’s epic, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Following Homer, poets created a series of epic, with the background of the Trojan War, and these different epic works constitute a systematic epic group, the Epic Cycle. Inspired by Homer’s the Iliad, Director Wolfgang Petersen created his colossal battle epic film, Troy. Though keeping esteem towards the original plot, Troy tells the story from a new perspective. As a modern film in this century, Petersen’s Troy tries to illustrate this piece of history from the angle of human nature.

The Iliad and Troy

If the Trojan War is a true historical fact, oral and written materials with "innovations" unavoidable from generation to generation have made it an informative and colorful story, full of myths and legends. The Iliad by Homer, dating back to 760–710 BC, describes the activities in the last several weeks in the tenth (final) year of the Trojan War. It begins with the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon and ends with Hector's funeral. The background and the final outcome of the story are not directly described in the Iliad. As the latest adaptation film, Troy, though in the spirit of Homer, is not a direct translation of the Iliad. Troy, focusing on the heroes and their emotions, depicts the whole story from the human nature under the modern lens.

The reason for the war. Looking back to Troy, we can figure out that the glory of the gods has gone whereas the greed of human comes. Wolfgang Petersen, the director of Troy, states this point through Agamemnon’s words: Helen is just an excuse. Apart from Agamemnon’s words, the well-known gold apple disappeared in the film. The traces of gods only