The Tale of Troy Book

Another good volume of Roger Lancelyn Green's retellings of ancient myth and legend. This follows on directly from his Tales of the Greek Heroes and refers back to it several times.

The siege itself takes up surprisingly little of the narrative. Approximately the first third of the book covers the background of the war--the judgment of Paris, Helen's marriage to Menelaus with the attending oaths from all the other Greek kings, etc.--the second third focuses on the Trojan War proper, with a good two or three chapters summarizing The Iliad and episodes from other sources like Ovid and Sophocles interwoven (e.g Ajax), and the final third relates the postwar adventures of several heroes, with chapters or sections of chapters based on The Aeneid, Aeschylus's Agamemnon, and of course The Odyssey.

Green's greatest strength in this volume is his ability to evoke the pathos of the original stories; I was almost moved to tears when reading these to my wife, especially the moment when Hector's infant son Astyanax cries out of fear of his father's helmet, which Hector removes to kiss him goodbye, and the little moment in which Odysseus's faithful old dog Argos recognizes him and then dies. Stylistically and interpretationally, Green stands out of the way of the stories themselves and lets them do their work. Well done and very readable.

Highly recommended.