Song of Troy second chat

19:34 Torrey Philemon enters...
19:35 Torrey Philemon: Song of Troy starting about 8 - 8:10 pm!
20:04 Zoe Xanthippos enters...
20:06 Zoe Xanthippos: I'm here!
20:07 Torrey Philemon: Hi Zoe. I just returned.
20:08 Torrey Philemon: Morgana's logging in now. I wonder if anyone else will show up.
20:09 Zoe Xanthippos: The weather channel had a film of people freezing in Boston
20:10 Torrey Philemon: Yes it is freezing here! I went out swimming at a warm health club though and then made the mistake afterwards of having a cold milkshake for dinner. I think it's about 10 degrees here.
20:10 Torrey Philemon: Is it cold in Virginia too? (Morgana's trying to get into the chat room now)
20:11 Morgana Flavius enters...
20:11 Zoe Xanthippos: healthy diet you have
20:11 Zoe Xanthippos: terribly cold for here. Highs only in the 20s and lows in the teens.
20:11 Morgana Flavius: Ah, finally found the missing link! :-)
20:12 Zoe Xanthippos: We Southern Ladies don't like to be cold
20:12 Torrey Philemon: Hey Morgana.
20:13 Torrey Philemon: I'm really a southern lady too. So is Morgana. She's so Southern she's underneath the equator.
20:13 Morgana Flavius: Cold there, ladies? It is extremely hot here!
20:14 Zoe Xanthippos: Glad you found us, Morgana; LOL Torrey!
20:14 Torrey Philemon: Ooh, send us some heat!
20:15 Zoe Xanthippos: Yes, please send heat!
20:15 Torrey Philemon: We're counting on Brazil to provide the fire tonight!
20:16 Morgana Flavius: I will if you send me some cool weather!
20:16 Morgana Flavius: LOL!!! I guess my brain is cooked. LOL!
20:19 Morgana Flavius: Hello?
20:20 Zoe Xanthippos: Are we all waiting for the others to speak first?
20:20 Zoe Xanthippos: Torrey has disappeared from the people panel
20:20 Torrey Philemon: I'm here.....I was looking for a cool weather image to show Morgana. Oh well.......Time to talk to about Troy.
20:21 Torrey Philemon: What I'd like to know is -- whether you both thought that McCullough really lost it when she made the Achilles/Agamemnon argument into a phony quarrel?
20:23 Torrey Philemon: Are you both there? Can you "see" me?
20:23 Morgana Flavius: Ah, now I see you again.
20:23 Zoe Xanthippos: Her doing that made both men seem more like men, or kings, or whatever to me. Having them fight over a captured woman to the point of coming close to losing the war made them both look like spoiled children
20:24 Zoe Xanthippos: I run the chats frameless so there is no listing of who's here on mine ever
20:24 Morgana Flavius: I didn't like McCullough's approach to the A/A quarrel.
20:25 Torrey Philemon: Perhaps they were somewhat spoiled children...... I find it hard to believe however that Achilles and Agamemnon, who both cared so much about their reputations, would consciously choose to act in a way which would make them appear foolish in the eyes of their men.
20:25 Torrey Philemon: What didn't you like about it, Morgana?
20:26 Zoe Xanthippos: Of course, her doing that essentially changes what seems to be Homer's whole premise - to Sing of the rage of Achilles"
20:26 Morgana Flavius: I mean, what was her point anyhow?
20:26 Morgana Flavius: I agree with you, Zoe.
20:28 Torrey Philemon: I think she was trying to show why the Trojans left their walls where they were safe and why Hector did - when he believed in the oracle that said he'd be killed if he came out from the walls and fought Achilles.
20:28 Torrey Philemon: But she could have come up with convincing reasons easily enough without having to fabricate so much of the story.
20:29 Morgana Flavius: It did not please me to see McCullough changing that part of the Iliad. There was a discussion somewhere in the FabBib board, I guess, where the whole "psychological" motives behind the Agamemnon/Achilles quarrel was explained.
20:29 Zoe Xanthippos: Maybe the point was to make them seem more like she thinks men in a battle would act today so that her readers would like the book better
20:29 Zoe Xanthippos: I have been thinking about Achilles and Agamemnon. Agamemnon was the King. But Achilles seemed to have the respect and admiration of the troups. Maybe Agamemnon was jealous of Achilles' influence over the men and his charisma, or whatever a war hero has. Achilles informed Agamemnon that he was "the best of the Greeks." and called him a chicken, more or less in the Iliad
20:29 Morgana Flavius: Like why was it so important to keep the war "trophies" (in that case the trophies were female prisioners) in the heroic homeric times.
20:30 Torrey Philemon: Yes I'm trying to remember what I've read about that quarrel, Morgana. You referred to it being about Briseis, Zoe, and on the surface it was. But there were motives that went deeper than Briseis - issues of power and pride, and Achilles being insulted/violated by Agamemnon.
20:31 Morgana Flavius: You have a point, Zoe, about McCullough wanting to show how a war would like today.
20:32 Morgana Flavius: But then why did she choose the Troy theme? To show how a war would look today? What about all the rest? Does it look like a "modern war"?
20:32 Torrey Philemon: It's interesting that McCullough actually set the stage for antagonism between them -- in regard to Iphigenia, in regard to food supply ships etc. So the tension between them was getting stronger all the while. Then suddenly instead of having it explode for real she has them "fake it". Not very convincing.
20:32 Zoe Xanthippos: I think that Achilles having a goddess for a mother made him confused at times as to whether he was a mortal or an immortal. In his 'immortal' periods, he would have felt like he was better than everybody else I guess and entitled to more respect
20:34 Torrey Philemon: Would you both say that she CHANGED the story in the Iliad or that she filled in additional details to make it appear different? As if the Iliad was only the surface of what was going on, what we were meant to see if we were one of the men, and now we see the real workings behind it all.
20:34 Morgana Flavius: Yes, Torrey, I think I read some posts about this power and pride issue behind Briseis. But I don't think that Achilles and Agamemnon were faking the quarrel. They both were very insulted by having to return their trophies. Ah, of course there was nothing about real feelings for the women involved.
20:35 Torrey Philemon: Speaking of him having a goddess as a mother -- wasn't this epilepsy / visions of his mother a McCullough invention?....... Good point though Zoe. The immortal part of him probably felt very entitled, like she should be treated like a god.
20:36 Zoe Xanthippos: I'm not sure there were no real feelings, Morgana. I've been picking around in the Iliad today and both of them claimed in there to care for their respective girls.
20:37 Morgana Flavius: I don't think that McCullough story "changed" the overall plot of the Iliad so much, but it is an important detail and it makes a big difference in the way we see the characters.
20:37 Torrey Philemon: I agree with you Morgana that Agamemnon and Achilles were having a real quarrel with very strong feelings on both sides! And my guess is that Achilles WAS personally attached to Briseis, that she was a symbol of his worth AND a personal attachment. Remember these men have been away from home about nine years and without real partners. You can't expect them to be tough warriors all the time.
20:38 Torrey Philemon: The Daughter of Troy novel is by the way Briseis' story. But it's really more a story of what Achilles was like in bed than it is a story of the Trojan war!
20:38 Morgana Flavius: Yes, they claim they care for them. That's the official reason, like the official reason for the whole war was Helen's "abduction". But I think that what they really cared about was their pride.
20:39 Zoe Xanthippos: Her 'epileptic' invention was, again, her way of avoiding the supernatural aspects of this story. Rather than having the gods come right out and do their deeds. I'd rather she would have left in all the myth stuff. Whether or not we believe in it all, The Greeks did and this was their story and the audience of the poem believed. It is such an integral part to mess around with
20:40 Morgana Flavius: And I don't think they needed to fake a quarrel to make their men fight.
20:41 Zoe Xanthippos: Wasn't the purpose of the fake quarrel to lure the Trojans away from their walls ?
20:41 Morgana Flavius: I agree with you again, Zoe, about leaving the myth there.
20:42 Torrey Philemon: I agree with both of you.....that the focus was pride and that McCullough went too far in messing around with the myth.
20:43 Torrey Philemon: She could have easily come up with a simpler method of luring them away from behind their walls. Like some Trojans go out and fight and get killed, and Hector seeks revenge. Or Hector feels like a ninny hiding away for 9 years and is itching to prove his manhood in battle.
20:43 Morgana Flavius: And there's another thing I found unnecessary in McCullough's Troy: why Tethis is shown like such an embittered woman.
20:44 Zoe Xanthippos: I think that the mark of a good writer of historical fiction is to portray the story as the participants would have seen it. And the Greeks without their gods messing about with everything on a regular basis is not how they experienced their lives
20:44 Torrey Philemon: Do you mean Thetis (Achilles' mother)? I think Tethys was an original goddess, the wife of Oceanus.
20:45 Torrey Philemon: If historical fiction departs too far from the history/myth which is it's basis, it becomes fantasy or science fiction, which is enjoyable but less substantial.
20:46 Zoe Xanthippos: or by simply leaving the quarrel as real. Her buildup was excellent - it certainly made Achilles look better than just having a fit over a woman.
20:46 Morgana Flavius: As far as I remember, the myth goes like Tethis makes Achilles "impenetrable", except for his heel, and when he finally goes to war, she helps him instead of reproaching him and chasing him on his dreams or epileptical surges...
20:46 Torrey Philemon: I think a good historical fiction writer is as true to the original story as possible, but excels in making the characters REAL and BELIEVABLE to us. (George succeeded with Cleopatra, very well)
20:46 Zoe Xanthippos: I've seen Thetis referred to as also being Tethys too
20:47 Zoe Xanthippos: I sort of liked her rationale for killing the babies - to make them immortal. It's so logical - in a demented sort of way
20:47 Torrey Philemon: Zoe, do I detect an anti-feminist tone in your post? <-: Heaven forbid anyone get worked up over "just a woman"?
20:48 Morgana Flavius: Well, according to McCullough, only Achilles, Odysseus and Agamemnon knew that it was not about having a fit over a woman. Officially, it still was about a fit.
20:48 Torrey Philemon: The killing the babies story is actual myth, with several sources. Not invented by McCullough. Though perhaps not expressed quite as literally in the actual sources.
20:50 Torrey Philemon: Yes, Morgana, in a sense McCullough does indeed indicate that the fight over Briseis was more than it appeared to be, just as we gather as we study the Iliad. But in the Iliad it appears to be an issue of pride/honor - which is in keeping with Greek attitudes of the time.
20:50 Morgana Flavius: (Sorry, I think I am mispelling Thetis name. But I am referring to Achilles' mother)
20:51 Morgana Flavius: And I didn't know about the other babies being made imortal until Torrey wrote about it in one of her posts.
20:52 Zoe Xanthippos: no, no. you misunderstand the just a woman bit. In the Iliad I always thought Achilles and Agamemnon were both being childish, "I have to give mine back to appease Apollo, so I'll just have yours, and then Achilles cries to his mommy to fix it all." In this version, Achilles was already angry, at the provisioning and the Iphigenia mess which made it look like a culmination of events rather than just an outburst
20:53 Torrey Philemon: Understood, Zoe. I was in part teasing you!
20:54 Morgana Flavius: I think that the "fake quarrel" diminishes the quality of McCullough's novel for the reasons Torrey already mentioned above: if you're telling a myth, you don't take the myth out.
20:54 Zoe Xanthippos: McCullough puts in the immortality for the babies, starting on p. 36
20:54 Torrey Philemon: Speaking of Achilles, I think McCullough indicated he was killed via the armpit rather than the heel. ??Huh??
20:55 Torrey Philemon: Well said, Morgana! Very succinctly!
20:55 Morgana Flavius: Yeah, Torrey, why the armpit instead of the famous heel?
20:57 Torrey Philemon: Maybe the invulnerability of the heel is too magical/mystical for McCullough. Gee!
20:58 Zoe Xanthippos: I hadn't remembered that, Torrey. You're right, he does get stabbed in the armpit - after he stumbles on his right ankle. So the ankle really did cause it, but there's another change in the basic story isn't it?
20:58 Torrey Philemon: Interesting.....McCullough's first really famous book was the Thorn Birds, about a priest struggling with his commitment to religion in the face of love. Most of her other novels are straight history. I get the impression that this lady is really struggling with the viability of religion.
20:59 Morgana Flavius: Another thing that frustrated me: Diomedes has an important role in myths; he is considered the only mortal to have ever wounded an immortal. And Homer tells it in the Iliad, when Venus comes to aid her son Aeneas, rescuing him from the battlefield, she is wounded (mildly) by one of Diomedes arrows. She then goes crying to Zeus.
21:00 Morgana Flavius: A pitty McCullough was not able to fit that story in her novel. But I'm afraid that if she had chosen to include it, she would come up with another of Odysseus' pirotechnical tricks...
21:01 Torrey Philemon: Didn't she have some reference to Diomedes' wounding Aeneas?
21:01 Morgana Flavius: On the other hand, Torrey, McCullough is very brilliant in her Masters of Rome series.
21:02 Torrey Philemon: (I'm just imagining her trying to retell the stories of Genesis and the Old Testament without reference to God and miracles! <-: )
21:03 Zoe Xanthippos: LOL Torrey! That would be an impossible job I would think
21:03 Torrey Philemon: I have no doubt, Morgana! My guess is that she stuck to the facts as much as possible too when she was telling straight history. But that telling myth brought her into some confusion in regard to her religious beliefs.
21:03 Morgana Flavius: Another unnecessary thing McCullough included in the Trojan saga, was the homosexual relationship between Odysseus and Diomedes. If she needed to include that to allure the audience (it is always good to include some "shocking" action in your fiction) why did she not elaborate in Achilles and Patrokles, which was almost explicit in the Iliad?
21:04 Torrey Philemon: Yes it's curious she placed so much emphasis on this homosexual relationship....also she didn't go into detail about Achilles and Briseis. And what in the world is this lipless Achilles business? Where did this come from?
21:05 Morgana Flavius: Yes, Torrey, I think that she would make the biblical stories a real misery, full of hallucinatory visions and modern emotional disorders... (LOL)
21:06 Torrey Philemon: (She certainly doesn't make Achilles seem very kissable.....another thing which makes him more of a man's man than a woman's man)
21:07 Morgana Flavius: Well, lipless Achilles was her personal touch to Achilles. And it didn't change anything in the story. I mean, he could have had thin lips, couldn't he? ;-)
21:07 Zoe Xanthippos: I agree there, Morgana. Odysseus doesn't seem to fit that role. He would have been out with the ladies of the countryside I think. Achilles and Patrokles had grown up together and their love was based on a shared life
21:08 Zoe Xanthippos: I wonder why she made such a point of his lips?
21:08 Torrey Philemon: You know I watch figure skating shows all the time and sometimes get annoyed because a skater skates a great program but has a few mistakes, and in the playbacks all they focus on is the mistakes. But it's easy to do that now with McCullough. Right now, what stands out in my mind with this novel is the big MISTAKE McCullough made. But she also did a very good job in telling much of the story. I REALLY liked the multiple viewpoints.
21:08 Morgana Flavius: And finally, I really hated the way McCullough portrays Aeneas. If Achilles, Ajax and even Diomedes were the war heroes of the Greeks, Hector AND Aeneas were the Trojan ones. Making Aeneas look like an ambitious coward unbalanced the story very much.
21:09 Torrey Philemon: We ought to email her with our questions! <-:
21:09 Torrey Philemon: Is there a source for Aeneas' affair with Helen or did she invent this too?
21:09 Zoe Xanthippos: I liked the multiple viewpoints also, but hated the leaving out of the gods and the changes to some of the traditional story. There is plenty of room within that framework to write a fine novel
21:10 Zoe Xanthippos: I also liked very much all the early stories of the participants in the war.
21:10 Torrey Philemon: She was really on track the first half of the book......she was going strong - she didn't have to start inventing so much.
21:12 Morgana Flavius: Well, Torrey, I think that McCullough "skated" a poor program and her telling the story under the character multiple viewpoints was one of her not very few highlights...
21:12 Torrey Philemon: Speaking of the early stories.....we don't have many sources on the first nine years of the war. Just the start of the war and the last year, right? She managed to fill in some of the missing gaps in a believable way too - like the battles with other nations, for resources and land and allies etc.
21:13 Torrey Philemon: I give McCullough a high B but I think Morgana is giving her a C-.
21:13 Torrey Philemon: (do you have this kind of grading system, Morgana A, B, C, D, F? )
21:13 Morgana Flavius: I think that the Helen and Aeneas relationship was McCullough's invention. But I guess that was ok. It didn't change any important detail.
21:14 Torrey Philemon: Somewhere I read that in some source Helen did indeed flirt with/come onto Aeneas. But I didn't read anything about an explicit affair.
21:14 Morgana Flavius: (No, we don't use the American grading system here in Brazil, but I am familiar with it, as I have studied in the USA)
21:14 Zoe Xanthippos: Pierre Grimal in his Dictionary of Classical Mythology never mentions Helen with Aeneas in the entry on Helen. He does, however, say that Thetis and Artemis arranged a meeting between Achilles and Helen, at his request and he bedded her. He gives this as one of many other connected legends to the main one in the Iliad
21:15 Torrey Philemon: Achilles and Helen? Haven't heard that one! When was this supposed to occur?
21:15 Morgana Flavius: I'd give McCullough a plain C for her Song of Troy. (With C you still pass, don't you?) ;-)
21:16 Zoe Xanthippos: according to Grimal, some say prior to the war but mostly likely it was just before Achilles died
21:16 Torrey Philemon: (Yes, C is passing, so so, not good but not terribly bad. D is bad and F is failing.
21:16 Morgana Flavius: Never heard of Achilles and Helen either.
21:16 Torrey Philemon: Uh, how did Helen and Achilles supposedly get together DURING the war? ....And then again there are stories that Helen was never there anyway, but in Egypt, and that everyone was fighting over a phantom.
21:18 Morgana Flavius: Marion Bradley, in her "Firebrand" makes Aeneas have an interesting (and positive) love affair with Cassandra. And she explains in a very reasonable way why and how Aeneas escaped after the fall of Troy and Cassandra was made a prisioner and later Agamemnon's concubine.
21:18 Zoe Xanthippos: He also mentions a mystical legend about Helen that has her married to Achilles and "enjoying an eternal life of banquets on Leuce" and island in the Black Sea They were said to have had a son together, a winged being called Euphorion
21:19 Zoe Xanthippos: the goddess magically arranged it somehow. He doesn't give specifics
21:20 Torrey Philemon: Oh I'm vaguely recalling some story somewhere that Achilles and Helen were together in the AFTERLIFE. Maybe there was something about this in Dante....??
21:20 Torrey Philemon: I found a fascinating series of books listed on Amazon.com that focus on all the different sources for various myths, in the way that Perseus web site does.....
21:20 Morgana Flavius: Sometimes I wonder why brilliant authors conduct their novels in a very good way and all of a sudden they make a big mess. It just occurred to me one big mistake made by Christian Jaq (the author of the Ramesses series) made in his Egyptian novel.
21:22 Torrey Philemon: This is a two volume series that looks very worthwhile.... http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0801853605/windweavwebandwi/
21:23 Torrey Philemon: I haven't written a novel but I spent 2 years working on a screenplay that had one fatal flaw. I did six drafts, and could never find my way around the problem. But I don't think McCullough had a problem to begin with. She created one. You know the old saying, "If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it."
21:24 Torrey Philemon: (Did you read the Rameses series, Morgana?)
21:24 Morgana Flavius: Jacq says in his novel that Homer visited Ramesses II in Egypt and wrote the Iliad there. Ramesses lived around the 12th century BC while the Iliad was written not earlier than the 8th BC.
21:25 Morgana Flavius: I read only the first volume of Jacq's Ramesses series (total of 5). I liked it, except for this "Homerical" flaw.
21:26 Morgana Flavius: (Opening your link on another window, Torrey)
21:26 Zoe Xanthippos: That looks like a good book, Torrey, thanks! (Just what I need, more books!)
21:27 Torrey Philemon: I figured Zoe would buy it! <-:
21:28 Torrey Philemon: Do you all have other facets of McCullough's Trojan story that you want to discuss?
21:28 Morgana Flavius: Well, actually the Trojan War could have occurred while Rameses was still alive, but it was not written till few centuries later. So why bring Homer to Egypt to visit Rameses? Like you said, Torrey, there was not a problem so I don't see why Jacq (and McCullough) went about "fixing" it...
21:29 Zoe Xanthippos: Gee thanks. I CAN see a book and not push the shopping cart button (Ithink I can...)
21:30 Torrey Philemon: Here's another issue. According to myth, Helen married Deiphobus after Paris died. But McCullough has Deiphobos forcing himself on her so that she sneaks off to the Greeks. Was this McCullough's attempt to set the ground for some of the myths of Helen's betrayal of the Trojans to the Greeks?
21:31 Morgana Flavius: Well, I must say that I liked the first part of The Song of Troy and could not stop reading it when I started. But the second part wasn't good (in my opinion). That's why I give her "C". Half was good, half was poor.
21:32 Torrey Philemon: Zoe, here's a helpful suggestion. Whenever you want a book, copy it's url onto a list you make. I have three pages online of books I want to buy with links to them all. I think there are about 250 books on the list at present! I don't allow myself to buy a book impulsively. It has to sit on my list for awhile, and I only get to type ten books in capital letters and big type to indicate PRIORITY. A book has to be in the priority mode for a few weeks (usually, not always) before I can rationalize buying it as my next purchase. (Don't believe a word I say. I can be very impulsive too!)
21:33 Morgana Flavius: I think so, Torrey. I know about Deiphobos and Helen story and also about Helen betraying the Trojans. But that's not as famous as the story told in the Iliad.
21:33 Zoe Xanthippos: That's a possibility, Torrey, though I don't see why she'd need to justify Helen choosing her own people over the Trojans. She'd had plenty of time to regret her rashness. McCullough has Paris virtually ignoring her after a time and the other members of the family disliking her, for the most part.
21:34 Morgana Flavius: (LOL, Torrey!)
21:34 Torrey Philemon: Where did the Helen betraying the Trojans story come from? Was that from Aeneas?
21:35 Zoe Xanthippos: I would think that with Helen's great beauty it was better to have her married to someone rather than running around single to stir up the males. Whether or not she liked Deiphobus, an arranged marriage was in keeping with the customs of the time and she probably would not have been allowed to choose
21:36 Torrey Philemon: I'm not sure she'd betray the Trojans. She'd been with them nine years. People get "acclimatized" to people they're with, dependent upon them. And she had in a sense already betrayed the Greeks....There's been a lot of psychological research done for example on how those who are kidnapped get attached to and dependent upon their kidnappers.
21:36 Morgana Flavius: There's a story I read somewhere that Odysseus did get into Troy in disguise, but Helen recognized him and helped him. That was immediately before the Trojan horse came into the scene.
21:37 Zoe Xanthippos: a fine system Torrey. I'll think about it!
21:38 Zoe Xanthippos: Doesn't the Aeneid have Helen letting the Greeks out of the horse? And she was the one who led Odysseus to the Palladium so he could steal it to insure Troy's downfall
21:38 Torrey Philemon: (It's a way to handle the itchy fingers syndrome that starts whenever you see a book you want, Zoe! You've got to do something with your fingers besides click on the shopping basket so you copy links and click on them <-: )
21:39 Torrey Philemon: I think it's the Aeneid too (about Helen helping the Greeks)
21:39 Morgana Flavius: BTW, I think McCullough did a good job when she told about how it must be like being inside that horse. On the other hand, Bradley in her book deliberately chooses not to use the Trojan horse (which is indeed the most famous story). She chooses to tell that Troy fell due to an earthquake that damaged the walls. The earthquake was duly sent by Poseidon. (LOL)
21:39 Zoe Xanthippos: Helen seems to me to be one of those people who always think things would be better somewhere else. Remember how bored and unhappy she was earlier in this book? And she wasn't a queen any more, just another wife
21:40 Torrey Philemon: Yes, let's talk about being in that horse. I always wondered about how they handled the uhh vital functions of having a body!
21:41 Torrey Philemon: McCullough's Helen is really unbelievably callous......
21:41 Zoe Xanthippos: (actually it's not the shopping basket button that is the problem, it's the SUBMIT ORDER button!)
21:41 Morgana Flavius: (I like your system too, Torrey. And I think that your "antidote" for the itchy fingers syndrome is a very good one!) ;-)
21:42 Torrey Philemon: (ohh goodness we have to make some fake submit order buttons for you on your I WANT TO BUY page. That will transfer them to the next I WANT TO BUY page, and you have to go through five transfers on five different days before you get to the real submit order button!)
21:42 Zoe Xanthippos: Oh yes! I really liked the skin covered bucket bit. Someone did need to explain that part of being in the horse. It's hard to believe that no one coughed or sneezed or anything though. Of course, the gods could have helped on that one, deafening the Trojans to any sounds
21:44 Zoe Xanthippos: (and how long is the button chain going to slow things down - 20 seconds?!)
21:44 Morgana Flavius: I see Helen like such a person, too, Zoe. Always thinks that the neighbor's flowers look better than the ones in your own garden...
21:44 Torrey Philemon: (There's a term, parallel process, that has to do with taking on the character of people or the plot of stories you're discussing. At the moment I think I'm into being Odysseus, creating a Trojan horse system for outwitting the Amazon.com shopping cart.)
21:45 Zoe Xanthippos: before you outwit Amazon, Torrey, please let me hit that button once more - or twice...!)
21:45 Morgana Flavius: (Hum... how fast is your modem, Zoe?) (LOL!)
21:46 Torrey Philemon: Yes it's very hard to believe that these rambunctious Greek were so disciplined and so still for so very long. Not to mention TRUSTING! I mean they had no guarantee that the horse would end up within the city walls. Maybe the Trojans could have burned it. I would think that that time in the Trojan horse would be a nightmare (Someone ought to do a stream of conscioussness story of one of the Greeks inside the horse, sharing his thoughts from moment to moment. Yikes!)
21:47 Zoe Xanthippos: It also seems to me that loose bodies would have caused the weight to noticably shift around during the moving process. But then the Trojans were all excited about the Greeks leaving and the gift of the god. What on earth made them think that after 10 years, the Greeks would just give up and go home? Wouldn't they be seeking total revenge after having lost Achilles? and the other heroes?
21:48 Morgana Flavius: Didn't any of those folks have claustrophobia? Such a common thing... not to mention that claustrophobia is such a Greek word...!

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