Troy: Achaemenid Stories and Perspectives
Abstract
The city of Troy and the poetic traditions that attached to it were of crucial importance to Achaemenid thinking about Asia Minor. This paper asks what we know about Achaemenid appropriations of Greek epic, how these were inserted into a wider context of imperial literary production, and what responses they elicited among different audiences. I am particularly interested in how things changed over time, from attempts to leverage Trojan War epic in connection with Xerxes’ invasion of mainland Greece to story traditions from the late fifth and fourth centuries BCE, which seem calculated to consolidate the geographical and temporal horizons of the empire on its northwestern frontier.
Citation
Haubold, Johannes. "Troy: Achaemenid Stories and Perspectives," Achaemenid Workshop 3 (February 22, 2025).
About the Speaker
Johannes Haubold
Princeton University
Johannes Haubold studied Classics in Würzburg and Tübingen before moving to Cambridge, where he received his PhD. After spending two years as Eugenie-Strong Research Fellow at Girton College Cambridge, he taught Greek and Akkadian language and literature at Durham University, before joining the Princeton Classics Department in Fall 2018. He is interested in the literatures of ancient Greece, Rome and Babylon, and in the interactions between them. His aim, in both teaching and research, is to integrate the study of ‘classical’ languages and literatures with that of ancient ‘Near Eastern’ ones. He teaches a wide range of courses on ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern languages and literature.