Eneida

2 cards

1. 01

   The fall of Troy is told by the defeated: the men killed, Priam butchered at the altar, the women divided as booty, a child thrown from the wall — and one survivor who leaves to found something else.

   Eneida · -19

   A destroyed city does not vanish: it moves into those who leave.

   The night of the fall is in Virgil (Aeneid, Book II) and in Euripides ("The Trojan Women", 415 BC). Neoptolemus, Achilles's son, kills Priam at the palace altar; Astyanax, Hector's son, is thrown from the wall so he can never avenge the city; Polyxena is sacrificed on Achilles's tomb; Hecuba, Andromache and Cassandra are divided as slaves among the commanders. Euripides wrote the play in the year Athens had slaughtered the island of Melos, and the audience understood whom it was about. "The Trojan Women" is the first European work to look at war exclusively from the losers' camp, through women's eyes. Virgil adds the survivor: Aeneas flees the burning city with his father on his shoulders and his son by the hand, losing his wife in the dark, and sets out for Italy. Rome will claim descent from Troy — the loser becomes, centuries later, the victor over the victors. It is also a way of saying a destroyed city does not vanish: it moves into those who leave. Today's parallel: the massacre, enslavement and exodus of Troy's last night are exactly the categories modern law calls war crimes, deportation and refugees. "Fuimus Troes" is the sentence spoken by everyone who loses their city; Aeneas is the name of those who carry it on. Whoever wants to understand a modern conflict must read "The Trojan Women" too, not only the Iliad.

   “Fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium — We Trojans are no more; Ilium is no more.”

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2. 02

   What ten years of force could not do, one night of deception does: the Horse works because it targets what the Trojans want to believe — that the war is over.

   Eneida · -19

   Be suspicious of the gift that arrives exactly when you want it to be over.

   The story of the Horse is told briefly in the Odyssey and at length in Virgil's Aeneid. The Achaeans burn their camp, withdraw the fleet behind the island of Tenedos and leave a huge wooden horse on the beach as an offering to Athena. Inside, a group of warriors led by Odysseus. Sinon stays behind too, a "deserter" who lets himself be captured and tells the prepared story: the Greeks have gone, the horse is sacred, destroying it would anger the goddess. Laocoon warns and hurls his spear at the horse; two serpents sent by the gods kill him, and the Trojans read the sign as punishment for impiety. They drag the horse inside, breaking part of the wall. At night the fighters come out, open the gates, and the fleet returns. The operation has every component of modern deception: the cover story (the visible withdrawal), the agent of influence (Sinon, with a credible personal history and a "betrayal" that lends him authority), the object that enters under a venerable label, and above all the exploitation of the victim's wish. The Trojans are not fools; they are exhausted after ten years and want the war to be over. Cassandra and Laocoon tell the truth and are not believed because their truth is tiring. Today's parallel: "trojan" remains the name of programs that enter a system under a harmless label, and Sinon is the profile of every influence operation — the apparently defecting source, the story confirming what the public wants to hear. The defence is the same as Laocoon's: be suspicious of the gift that arrives exactly when you want it to be over.

   “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes — I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts.”

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