At 3:27 PM -0400 4/6/99, RANDI C ELDEVIK wrote:
>James,
> Granted, I may be overinterpreting, but let's remember that Athena
>was also a war-goddess. I think what I've said about the importance of
>horses for military victory and conquest fits in nicely with the horse
>being a gift to Athena, which is something I had in the back of my mind
>all along, though I didn't make a point of it before. As for the
>_hippodamos_ epithet being applied to others besides the Trojans, sure,
>the Greeks didn't rely on their ships for everything, and in fact needed
>horses for the chariot-warfare on the battlefield outside the walls of
>Troy, as well as for their ordinary lives back home in Greece. It's just
>that the Trojans are almost entirely a land-based power in this particular
>situation, whereas the Greeks have ships as well as horses. So I think it
>is reasonable to interpret the wooden horse as a symbolic gesture in which
>the Greeks seem to be "throwing in the towel" to the ostensibly victorious
>Trojans. That's how it would have seemed to the Trojans; it's a symbolic
>image that would push all the right buttons for the Trojans beholding it.
>Since the subtle, manipulative cleverness of Odysseus is involved here (it
>was his idea to build the horse) and we see similar tactics of
>misdirection in Sinon's emotional appeal to the Trojans--playing on their
>wishful thinking--I think it not improbable that the horse image could
>have the kind of resonance I suggested.
>Randi Eldevik
>Oklahoma State U.
Hi--
I wouldn't rule it out, either. Especially as (in Homeric terms) the
Trojans as a class are called "horse-taming" whereas the Achaeans, as a
class, are not (though individual heroes may get the title). There are some
peculiar horsey stories attached to them (Trojans-- one about Anchises in
particular). And, in Vergilian terms, the horse is an offering to Athena
for their return home, but they are going home (the story is, according to
Sinon I think-- I don't have the text with me) because they've offended
Minerva by the theft of the Palladium. It makes internal sense that they
would craft a horse to appeal to Minerva in her Trojan aspect.
As with many symbols in a folklore tradition, I suspect lots of
different writers/storytellers had different notions about what the image
meant. (Doesn't Gido-- or his late medieval sources --argue the horse was a
sort of heraldic symbol?)
In haste,
JMP
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