WEBVTT
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Episode 12 – Odysseus takes charge
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[Opening music]
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Next day, no sign of mother or son in the Greek camp.
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King Odysseus called a meeting in the gathering place.
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He said,
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“He is dead.
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If he, Achilles,
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could not breach these walls,
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if the greatest warrior in the greatest army in the history of the world could not break down these walls,
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then force of arms never will!
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“I have a plan.
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Years ago, when we Greek kings first heard of Helen’s beauty,
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we gathered in the palace of her foster father in the hope that we could win her hand.
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He slaughtered a stallion before us,
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laid out the severed pieces across the floor and made each of us stand upon a piece of that stallion and swear that,
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when Helen made her choice, we would accept it.
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And, if ever she was stolen from her husband,
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we would come to his aid.
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And so this business will end just the way it began.”
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The next morning,
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Odysseus’ men set to work.
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They cut down trees
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and, with the wood of those trees,
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they carved.
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They carved great legs, great flanks,
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a long neck, a mane, a long head, a tail.
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They set it on a huge platform.
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Then Odysseus and six of the bravest of his men climbed into the belly of it and a secret trap door was closed behind them.
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The whole thing was painted black.
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Golden words painted along the side.
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Then the men outside burned the whole camp,
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the palisade, the huts.
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Then they dragged their ships down to the sea and sailed out of sight of the city of Troy.
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The next morning, as the dawn took her golden throne,
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the people of Troy,
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from the walls, from the turrets, from the towers,
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they saw that the Greeks were gone.
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The Greek ships had disappeared.
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Where the camp had been there was smoke rising up into the blue sky.
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They looked at one another.
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They said “Achilles is dead and now the Greeks have gone!
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The Greeks have gone home!
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The war is over!”
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They rubbed their eyes.
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They looked again.
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And, in the smoke,
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there was something else dark against the blue waves of the sea.
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It was a horse, an enormous horse.
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The great bronze Scaean gates were thrown open.
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The people of Troy poured across the plain to the seashore.
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They made their way between the burning fires and there was the great horse,
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stretching high above them.
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They walked around it, staring at it, amazed.
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There were letters written in gold,
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‘a gift for the goddess Athene’.
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And the priests and the wise men,
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they looked at one another and they said,
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“We must take the horse into the city.
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We must set it in front of the temple to Athene,
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the goddess of war and wisdom,
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and then we will have a celebration.
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The war is over at last!”
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And the people of Troy lifted the great platform up onto their shoulders.
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They carried the horse across the plain,
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through the gates, into the city.
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They set it outside the great temple of Athene.
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And then trestle tables were loaded with food and the people of Troy sat down and they ate and they drank and they drank and they ate,
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until their bellies were hanging over their belts,
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until their heads were swimming with wine.
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And then they went to their beds and they lay down and they fell into the sweet, oblivious balm of sleep.
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When even the dogs were asleep,
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the belly of the wooden horse swung open and down tumbled a rope ladder.
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And down that ladder climbed Odysseus and his six men.
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And they crept from shadow to shadow to the bronze Scaean gates.
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They slit the throats of the guards who slept there and then they opened up the gates of Troy from the inside.
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Meanwhile the rest of the Greek fleet had sailed back from where they’d been hiding.
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They sailed back under cover of darkness.
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And the ships, they reached the beach,
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and the armies poured forth over the battlefield and into Troy.
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And, every time they found a house,
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they put it to the torch.
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And, running through the burning street Menelaus,
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red-haired Menelaus, king of Sparta,
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running this way and that way,
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until he found the palace of Paris.
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He threw open the doors;
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he cut the throats of the servants who tried to block his way;
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he ran up the stairs,
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pushed open the door of the bedchamber.
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And there was Paris,
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lying asleep in Helen’s arms.
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Menelaus lifted his spear above his shoulder
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and, with all the strength of both arms,
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he brought the point of it down.
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And the blood spread out across the sheet.
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And high overhead,
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Aphrodite, the goddess of love, was watching.
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And, as she saw Paris die,
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she remembered that beautiful youth,
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that beautiful young man on the slopes of Mount Ida,
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all those years before.
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She remembered beautiful Paris choosing her.
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And high overhead,
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Hera, queen of heaven,
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Athene, the goddess of war and wisdom,
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looked down at the blood welling out over the sheets.
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And they remembered the moment that Paris had chosen Aphrodite over them.
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And Aphrodite looked down and she saw Helen.
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She saw Helen waking up and she took pity on her.
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And, with one gesture of her hand,
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she drew the arrow, the invisible arrow,
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from Helen’s heart,
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as though she was pulling the thorn out of a foot.
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Helen awoke then,
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as though from some dream.
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She slid her hand across the bed.
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Blood!
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The blood of Paris!
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Paris was dead!
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She felt nothing.
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She looked up.
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There was her husband,
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red-haired Menelaus,
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his face a mask of hate.
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She stood up.
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She stretched out her hands towards him and,
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as he looked into her face for the first time in ten years,
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all his hatred, all his resentment melted into love and longing for her.
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And they fell into each other’s arms and the beauty returned to Menelaus’ skin.
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And Agamemnon, the high king of all the Greeks,
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ran through the blazing city,
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until he came to the palace of Priam.
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He ran up the stairs,
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he pushed open the door of the bedchamber.
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And there was the old king,
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the white-bearded father of Troy,
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lying asleep on his bed.
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Agamemnon seized the head in his arm,
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as though he was holding a sheaf of wheat.
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And he drew his sword across the throat,
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as though he was cutting through dry stalks of corn.
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And he threw the blooddripping head down onto the floor.
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And, from high high overhead,
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golden Apollo looked down at the dead king and he remembered the founding of the city of Troy,
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the city that he loved the best of all.
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And he remembered the gifts and the offerings that old Priam had made to him.
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Outside Odysseus was running back and forth through the streets,
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shouting at his men.
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They had gone mad.
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They had gone wild with the desire for revenge.
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Odysseus shouted at them as they dragged Hector’s wife, Andromache,
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up onto the walls of Troy,
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as they wrenched from her grasp her baby boy,
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and threw the baby from the walls of the city into the darkness and down onto the rocks below.
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And from high overhead,
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great Zeus, the cloud-compeller, looked down,
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he looked down at the shattered baby on the rocks.
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And he remembered Astyanax in Hector’s arms;
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he remembered the baby weeping and laughing.
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And, if I could sing,
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I would sing of the mighty gods and goddesses standing, staring,
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looking down at the city as it burned.
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And those gods and goddesses,
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who had enjoyed every twist and turn of the battlefield,
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stared now, appalled.
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And they began to tremble with fury!
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Zeus, father of the gods,
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loosed a sheaf of thunderbolts.
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Each one struck a turret or a tower,
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and the turrets and the towers came toppling down onto the Greeks.
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The god of the sea, Poseidon,
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clapped his hands.
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There was an earthquake then.
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Great cracks appeared in the city streets.
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The city began to collapse in on itself.
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And through the blazing, crumbling city,
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Greek soldiers were dragging women as slaves.
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They were dragging them by their hair through the streets,
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slippery with blood.
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They were dragging Andromache, Polyxena.
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And old queen Hecuba was dragged through the great bronze Scaean gates.
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And, as the old queen was dragged through the gates,
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she turned and she saw the city blazing,
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like a burning torch with red flames and yellow flames like flickering snakes,
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rising up into the sky.
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And, in that moment,
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she remembered her dream and she knew that her dream had come true.
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If I could sing,
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I would sing of how the Greeks ran across the battlefield,
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cowering from the gods’ fury.
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They clambered aboard their ships and they set off out across the boiling sea.
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[Opening music]
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And the weeks passed and the months passed and the years passed.
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And, if I could sing,
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I would sing of the mighty gods looking down from the high slopes of Mount Olympus.
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And all they could see where the city had once stood was a pile of rubble,
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shattered marble, shattered granite, scorched timbers jutting out of stone.
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And down there, on the soft grass,
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they saw a horse’s skull,
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bleached white by the sun,
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crawling with black ants.
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And at the edge of one of the rivers there was a reed,
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and around the stem of the reed was a golden ring in the shape of an arrow,
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whose sharp point touched its feathered tail.
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And down here, by this mossy stone,
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there was a golden helmet.
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And inside the golden helmet,
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a field mouse had made a soft nest of human hair.
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And then Eris,
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the goddess of strife and arguing said,
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“Just think!
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All of this because of one golden apple!”
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And Aphrodite took the apple from her pocket,
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stared at it and said nothing.
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[Closing music]