“The fall of Troy”

Oil on canvas

120 x 72 inches

2019

The Fall Of Troy

“Clytaemestra: The Greeks are the rulers of Troy now. I can hear now the dissonant cries cluttering the city’s air. Pour vinegar and oil in the same jar and you will see their enmity keeping them apart. That’s how the violent cries of the victors and the vanquished are heard –the one apart from the other, each violent for a different reason, each subject of a different fate. 

The first lot is flung over the dead bodies of their brothers and sisters, their children and their elderly parents, wailing, lamenting their death with tongues and hearts no longer free. 

The other lot, starving from the full night’s murderous work are rushing like disorderly savages, to the city’s pantries and laying in the homes of their prisoners, free, finally from the cold and the damp of the war camps. See how happy they look now that they don’t have to serve on all-night guard squads! 

Only one task is left for them now if their fate must not be turned and they become the vanquished: to honour solemnly the gods and temples of the defeated city and not to be overtaken by the soldier’s greed to pillage what they should not. 

They’ve still got to make the return trip home safely and so they should remember that it is a double course they must run. 

Still, even if all goes well and they show due respect to the gods of Troy, there’s still the anger of those suffering for their slaughtered sons.”

-Aeschylus, Agamemnon