The Flaws In Gorgias Encomium Of Helen

In the first section of Odyssey, mortal women are presented to us as controlled by the stereotypes and expectations of the culture of the day, and it is only within that context that we can consider the examples Homer provides of women to be admired or despised. He provides us with clear contrasts, between Penelope and Eurycleia on the one hand, and Helen and Clytemnaestra on the other.

Misogyny pervades the picture Aeschylus, Aristophanes, and Sophocles paint of Athenian society. In their literature, however, female characters catalyze plot by challenging this picture. Such characters--from Sophocles’ Antigone to Aristophanes’ Lysistrata--face grim consequences for acting independently. Clytemnestra and Cassandra from Aeschylus’s Agamemnon exemplify this archetype of autonomy and destruction. When they confront injustice, male characters perceive them as vindictive and hysterical. This paper will compare the standards of justice Aeschylus’s society imposes on men and women. I will argue that Clytemnestra and Cassandra are protectors of divine justice who reject subservience and thereby transcend the sexism of their society.

The Greek forces won the Trojan War. The story of the war is a cornerstone of Greek legend, and pervaded Greek literature and culture. Though the evidence for the Trojan War as historical fact is scarce, it was a formative event in Greek cultural memory, producing some of the classical world’s most famous heroes and narratives. The War was won, Helen was retrieved from Paris, whose violation of ξενία was redressed, the heroes attained the κλέος that many of them fought for – and yet the positive outcomes of the Trojan War are difficult to grasp. For the victims of the Trojan War, the tragedy is obvious; the War ended in genocide and total cultural destruction. But such a war, burnt into legend, should have left the victors far better off; and yet, the Greek heroes only suffer because of it. They die tragic, dishonourable deaths; their households are left in ruin; their families are torn apart. From both modern and classical perspectives, the Trojan War is a tragedy, a “harrowing destruction of life” (Euripides, Andromache, 291). The victory is pyrrhic, the loss of life is horrific, the reparations non-existent.

However, as he attempts to demonstrate the third cause where a speech might have seduced Helen to attempt to do wrong, it might seem that Gorgias falls into inconsistency. For example, at section 11 Gorgias claims that, “All who have and do persuade people of things do so by molding a false argument.” One might question this statement and conclude that Gorgias is being inconsistent about his art of rhetoric because at the beginning of the speech he claimed that speech is used to deliver the truth but now it is about false argumentation. However, I will argue that Gorgias is not being inconsistent. In the section where he is arguing that Helen might have been persuaded through speech, Gorgias is being very careful to draw a line between different categorizations of speech. For Gorgias, all persuasion is speech but not all speech is persuasion.

     In the Encomium of Helen, Gorgias attempts to prove Helen’s innocence since she is blamed to be the cause of the Trojan War. Gorgias uses rhetoric to persuade listeners to believe why there are only four reasons to explain why Helen was driven to Troy. All of which he will argue were not her fault. Fate was the first cause, followed by force. Gorgias then seems to focus the most on the power of Logos, or words. Finally he explains how she could have been compelled by love (82B116).

INTRO: Despite difference of around 400 years between them Greek poet Homer and tragedian playwright Euripides explore many of the same themes in their works the Odyssey and Trojan Women (written by each respectively). Both works are inspired by the events of 12th Century BCE Trojan War that Homer previously explored in the Iliad. The two examine the worth of cunning over brute strength, the dangers of temptation and the role of women in their respective time periods. Despite having extremely similar central ideas, the techniques employed by each are markedly different. These differences arise as the result of changes in socio-historical contexts and format of each work’s presentation, for example the critical shift of the 5th century which saw the rise of sophistry and a certain scepticism in regard to Athenian leadership and the very existence of the gods.

The Iliad, by Homer, is an epic poem set in the era of the Trojan War, accounting the battle logs during the time of conflict between Agamemnon and Achilles, the text’s tragic protagonist. The heroic outlook on life, in Iliadic terms, is exemplified through the construction of one’s honor through hard work. Being an aspect of the heroic outlook of life, this value is demonstrated through his contribution and dedication to the Trojan War, his experience with neglect from the deities, Achilles’ overall disdain towards Agamemnon, and, lastly, his longingness towards Briseis, his dear lover.

As the last scene of movie Troy fades, we see the words “inspired by Homer’s “The Iliad””. There is no doubt that the Iliad is one of the greatest poems of all time and, therefore, it has inspired multiple works of art over almost three thousand years of its existence. One of these works is the film Troy, which attempts to make an adaptation that reflects the Greek culture and appeals to the modern audience at the same time. In this essay Troy will be compared with the Iliad through examination of time spans, intended audiences, portrayals of Helen, Achilles and Hector, main themes of both sources and conveyed messages.

In “The Trojan Women,” there are four enduring women who dominate the play and only two men who say anything at all. Moving us with their rants and dramatic reactions, these women engulf the audience in overwhelming grief and irresistible pride. Euripides emphasizes these four women to help us understand one of his main themes. Hecuba with her pride, Cassandra with her virginity and uncanny wisdom, Andromache with her misery and heartache, and Helen with her powerful, seductive reasoning all represent superior illustrations of feminism throughout the play.

Troy lies in ruins after Greek armies win the Trojan War and ransack the city. The Trojan Women is not to a great extent a tragic account; however a depiction of a tragic situation of the horrors of war and its aftermath, whereby Euripides dramatizes the hardships of war and to some extent is an ironical illustration of hope. Euripides often uses unconventional views of Greek society, particularly the life of women and slaves; in the “The Trojan Women” we establish that the slave women encompass a nobility state of mind that stands in unusual contrast to the inhumanity of the victorious Greek warriors. The terrors of war have hardly changed within thousands of years. We can say the same about war now, Euripides was trying to say with his play

“The Odyssey” by the Greek poet Homer tells the epic tale of a man trying to return home to his wife and kingdom to rescue them from the men seeking to gain control. Many of the Grecian works by Homer are told from a man’s perspective and many argue that this narrow retelling of the Trojan War leaves very few places for prominent female characters. This leads to women being portrayed as only servants or deities; the few mortal women are reduced to simple archetypal characters such as the devoted mother, seductive siren, or a combination of the two. Penelope manages to play the role of mother and seductress simultaneously, acting as an echo of her cousin Clymenestra’s story as well as proof of the patriarchal ideals of Grecian society and narrow roles of women as shown through Homer’s “The Odyssey”.

Throughout her paper, Helen Foley endeavors to examine Penelope, a noteworthy character in Homer’s The Odyssey, regarding Classical Athenian depictions of ladies and, as her title proposes, as far as what she calls an “ethical specialist.” Foley chooses that Penelope meets benchmarks that includes her social, familial, and individual obligations assuming to be indispensable parts in settling on that choice. Foley’s cases and her inside and out investigation of The Odyssey all help out her proposal.

Homer’s Iliad is undoubtedly focused on its male characters: Achilles, primarily, but also Hector and Agamemnon. Nevertheless, it seems that the most crucial characters in the epic are female. Homer uses the characters of Thetis, Andromache, and Helen as a basis for comparison to the male characters. Homer wants his audience to see and understand the folly of his male characters in choosing war over peace, aggression over kindness, and honor over family. While the behavior of these characters clearly speaks for itself, the contrasting attitudes and behaviors of the female characters proffer an alternative; in comparison, the reader can hardly fail to concur with Homer’s message that war, aggression,

The crux of this argument will focus on three of Plato’s works: Gorgias, Apology, and The Republic.

Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex” and Marian Engel’s Bear both comment on the theme of sexual transgression. On the surface, it may seem that the protagonists from both these works are similar based on the transgression they commit. However, they differ greatly in their emphasis on societal values, which also exhibit differences in the protagonist’s inclination towards committing the crime, their perception of themselves after learning of their crime and ultimately their destination.