Cast Away The poem is

Cast Away

The poem is nevertheless a powerful, indeed brilliant performance, in which tragic intensity, grim irony, and recondite learning combine to create a memorable tour de force. The framework of the poem ll. 1 30 and 1461 74 is provided by a report to Priam by a guard set to watch over Cassandra. The rest is Cassandras prophecy, which falls into the following main divisions: ll. 31 364, the fall of Troy and consequent disasters; 365 1089, the sufferings of the Greeks who do not succeed in returning home; 1090 1225, the sufferings of the Greeks who do return home; 1226 80, the wanderings of Aeneas and the Trojans; 1283 1450, the struggles between Europe and Asia, culminating in the victory of Rome; 1451 60, Cassandras lamentation on the uselessness of her prophecy. Three major questions relate to 1 the sources, 2 the purpose, and 3 the occasion of the poem. Sources: a stylistic, thematic, and linguistic sources. The use of the iambic trimeter is natural to its tragic theme, and the tragic type of monodrama recitatif whether iambic or lyric was current in the Hellenistic age; these features therefore Cast Away for no comment here, though they could be illustrated in many ways. b For the role of Cassandra as prophetess of post-Homeric catastrophes the author could call on numerous Archaic and Classical sources, and it is inevitable that precise debts, probably incurred by direct loan and not through an intermediary compendium of post-Homeric legends, should be largely unassignable. We may also be certain that, the prophecy apart, many other sources also contributed to the substance of the poem, both in general, and in specific passages. For instance, Herodotus opening passage on the conflict of east and west probably provided the poet with that theme, essential to his version of Cassandras prophecy, and Timaeus may have been the channel through which many of the abstruse Western legends, based on Nostoi Returns from Troy, which form so significant a part of the poem, reached him. The possibilities extend far beyond the range of our limited knowledge. c The poets language, monstrously obscure and metaphorical, was no doubt his own: a deliberate and successful attempt to wrap the prophetic, Sibylline theme in language that readers might deem appropriate to the occasion, in which echoes of Homeric, lyric, and especially tragic language are evident. The ancients reckoned the poet as dark skoteinos, ater, and he would no doubt have agreed. Intent. The poets purpose in choosing the theme is not explicitly stated, but the emphasis on Italian legends, especially those connected with Odysseus, and other Greek heroes irrespective of whether such legends came to him, for example, from a direct reading of an early poet or poets, from a careful study of Timaeus, in some ways a kindred spirit, from an intermediate handbook, or even perhaps by local traditions regarding the heroic past and the prominence given to the decisive role played by Macedonia in subduing Persia, and of Rome in subduing Macedonia, seem to indicate that the ultimate purpose of the prophecy is to commemorate the recent and apparently decisive change in the world order which he associates with the victory of Roman arms. The date of composition has to be determined in the light of this presumed purpose. It has caused much debate and there is no reason, unless more evidence is forthcoming, why the controversy should cease. The problem is well known. Lycophron, as identified under a, lived in the early 3rd cent. BC, yet the poet clearly refers to a widely recognized Roman supremacy. The two propositions are hardly reconcilable, and the 12th-cent. Byzantine commentator Tzetzes suggested that the relevant lines had been written by another Lycophron. Since the debate opened in modern times it has been continually discussed whether the lines referring to Rome are acceptable in the context of a date c. 275 BC, whether the whole passage relating to Rome should be regarded as an interpolation added after Roman conquest of Greece had become a reality, or whether the whole poem should be dated to a Cast Away when that had happened. The suggestion made here as to authorship is based on the hard-won belief that the reference in Cast Away Rome passage to a unique Wrestler refers to Titus Quinctius Flamininus, and was made in the immediate aftermath of his victory at Cynoscephalae in 197/6 BC, when his praises were being sung, statues being erected to him, and religious festivals in his honour, Titeia, being inaugurated all over Greece. The impact made by the politic and philhellene Titus, representative of a new ruling power linked by ties of mythological kinship to the Greek and Trojan past, provides the appropriate background for this speedily produced pro-Roman eulogy from the mouth of the Trojan Cassandra. Independent evidence derived from the use made of 3rd-cent. authors, seems to confirm this date. Please include a link to this page if you have found this material useful for research or writing a related article. Content on this website is from high-quality, licensed material originally published in print form. You can always be sure youre reading unbiased, factual, and accurate information. Highlight the text below, right-click, and select copy. Paste the link into your website, email, or any other HTML document. Your email address will be altered so spam harvesting bots cant read it easily. Hide my email completely instead? This life is all we really know for sure. But what happens afterdeath?. One phase in a great many of the soul journeys involves passage over or through a body of water. The water crossing is perhaps the most universal theme in all afterdeath accounts. The details of the souls crossing vary, but certain common threads emerge in these accounts.