Caroline Alexander > Quotes

“I have seen Fuji, the most dainty and graceful of all mountains; and also Kinchinjunga: only Michael Angelo among men could have conceived such grandeur. But give me Erebus for my friend. Whoever made Erebus knew all the charm of horizontal lines, and the lines of Erebus are for the most part nearer the horizontal then the vertical. And so he is the most restful mountain in the world, and I was glad when I knew that our hut would lie at his feet. And always there floated from his crater the lazy banner of his cloud of steam.”
― Caroline Alexander, The Worst Journey in the World

“We honor the Greeks because in their art, literature, philosophy and civic history we discern the early stirrings of our own ideals—rationalism, humanism, democracy—which first took firm root in Athenian soil.”
― Caroline Alexander, Lost Gold of the Dark Ages: War, Treasure, and the Mystery of the Saxons

“In the modern era, teachers and scholarship have traditionally laid strenuous emphasis on the fact that Briseis, the woman taken from Achilles in Book One, was his géras, his war prize, the implication being that her loss for Achilles meant only loss of honor, an emphasis that may be a legacy of the homoerotic culture in which the classics and the Iliad were so strenuously taught—namely, the British public-school system: handsome and glamorous Achilles didn’t really like women, he was only upset because he’d lost his prize! Homer’s Achilles, however, above all else, is spectacularly adept at articulating his own feelings, and in the Embassy he says, “‘Are the sons of Atreus alone among mortal men the ones / who love their wives? Since any who is a good man, and careful, / loves her who is his own and cares for her, even as I now / loved this one from my heart, though it was my spear that won her’ ” (9.340ff.). The Iliad ’s depiction of both Achilles and Patroklos is nonchalantly heterosexual. At the conclusion of the Embassy, when Agamemnon’s ambassadors have departed, “Achilles slept in the inward corner of the strong-built shelter, / and a woman lay beside him, one he had taken from Lesbos, / Phorbas’ daughter, Diomede of the fair colouring. / In the other corner Patroklos went to bed; with him also / was a girl, Iphis the fair-girdled, whom brilliant Achilles / gave him, when he took sheer Skyros” (9.663ff.). The nature of the relationship between Achilles and Patroklos played an unlikely role in a lawsuit of the mid-fourth century B.C., brought by the orator Aeschines against one Timarchus, a prominent politician in Athens who had charged him with treason. Hoping to discredit Timarchus prior to the treason trial, Aeschines attacked Timarchus’ morality, charging him with pederasty. Since the same charge could have been brought against Aeschines, the orator takes pains to differentiate between his impulses and those of the plaintiff: “The distinction which I draw is this—to be in love with those who are beautiful and chaste is the experience of a kind-hearted and generous soul”; Aeschines, Contra Timarchus 137, in C. D. Adams, trans., The Speeches of Aeschines (Cambridge, MA, 1958), 111. For proof of such love, Aeschines cited the relationship between Achilles and Patroklos; his citation is of great interest for representing the longest extant quotation of Homer by an ancient author. 32”
― Caroline Alexander, The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War

“Priam and Achilles meet in the very twilight of their lives. Their extinction is certain and there will be no reward for behaving well, and yet, in the face of implacable fate and an indifferent universe, they mutually assert the highest ideals of their humanity.”
― Caroline Alexander, The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War

“Thus he prayed, and Phoebus Apollo heard him, and set out from the heights of Olympus, rage in his heart, with his bow on his shoulders and his hooded quiver; the arrows clattered on his shoulders as he raged, as the god himself moved; and he came like the night. Then far from the ships he crouched, and let loose an arrow – and terrible was the ring of his silver bow.”
― Caroline Alexander, The Iliad

“Surely, by all convention, the Iliad will end here, with the triumphant return of its vindicated hero. But the Iliad is not a conventional epic, and at the very moment of its hero's greatest military triumph, Homer diverts his focus from Achilles to the epic's two most important casualties, Patroklos and Hektor: it is to the consequences of their deaths, especially to the victor, that all action of the Iliad has been inexorably leading.”
― Caroline Alexander, The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War

“This, the only occasion in the Iliad when furious Achilles smiles serves as a bittersweet reminder of the difference real leadership could have made to the events of the Iliad. Agamemnon's panicked prize-grabbing in Book One and even Nestor's rambling "authority" pale beside Achilles' instinctive and absolute command of himself and the dangers of this occasion.”
― Caroline Alexander, The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War

“Dawn veiled in saffron rose from the streams of Ocean, to carry light to the immortals and to mortal men, and Thetis arrived at the ships carrying the gifts from Hephaestus. She found her beloved son lying with his arms around Patroclus, keening, and his many companions about him dissolved in tears; and she stood among them, the shining among goddesses, and clasped his hand, and spoke to him and said his name: "My child, grieved though we be, we must leave this one lie, since by the will of the gods he has been broken once for all; you now take the splendid armor from Hephaestus, exceeding in beauty, such as a mortal man has never worn upon his shoulders." Then so speaking the goddess laid the armor down before Achilles; and it clashed loud, all that was elaborately wrought. And trembling took all the Myrmidons, nor did any dare to look upon it straight, and they shrank afraid; but Achilles as he gazed upon it, so anger entered him all the more, and his eyes terribly shone out beneath his lids like fire flare; and he rejoiced as he held in his hands the glorious gifts of the god.”
― Caroline Alexander, The Iliad

“The greatest war story ever told commemorates a war that established no boundaries, won no territory, and furthered no cause.”
― Caroline Alexander, The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War

“Homer's epic does not tell of such seemingly essential events as the abduction of Helen, for example, nor of the mustering and sailing of the Greek fleet, the first hostilities of the war, the Trojan Horse, and the sacking and burning of Troy.
Instead, the 15,693 lines of Homer's Iliad describe the occurrences of a roughly two-week period in the tenth and final year of what had become a stalemated siege of Troy.”
― Caroline Alexander, The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War

“Nestor is the spokesman for the status quo, for the tradition-hallowed belief that institutional power equates with unquestioned authority.”
― Caroline Alexander, The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War

“And there fate bound Diores son of Amarynkeus;
for he was struck beside the ankle by a jagged stone
on his right shin; the leader of the Thracian men hurled it,
Peiros son of Imbrasos, who had come from Ainos.
Bone and both tendons the ruthless stone
utterly crushed; and he fell on his back in the dust,
stretching his hands to his beloved companions,
breathing out his soul; and he—Peiros, the man who wounded him—ran up,
and with his spear struck Diores beside his navel; all his
bowels were poured out upon the ground, and darkness covered his eyes.”
― Caroline Alexander, The Iliad

“And Athena, daughter of Zeus who wields the aegis,
let fall her rippling robe upon her father's floor,
elaborate with embroidery, which she herself had made and labored on with her own hands,
and putting on the cloak of Zeus who gathers clouds,
she armed herself for tearful war.
Around her shoulders she flung the tasseled aegis
a thing of dread, crowned on every side with Panic all around,
and Strife was on it, and Battle Spirit and chilling Flight,
and on it too the terrible monstrous Gorgon head,
a thing of awe and terror, portent of Zeus who wields the aegis;
and on her head Athena placed her helmet, ridged on both sides,
with four golden bosses, adorned with fighters of a hundred cities;
she made her way on foot toward the flame-bright chariot, and seized her spear
heavy, massive, powerful, with which she beats down the ranks of warrior
men, with whom she, born of the mighty Father, might be angered.”
― Caroline Alexander, The Iliad

“And white-armed Andromache led the lament among them, holding in her arms the head of horse-breaking Hector: "My husband, you were lost from life while young, and are leaving me a widow in your halls; and the child is still just a baby, whom we bore, you and I, ill-fated both, nor do I think he will reach young manhood; before that this city will be wholly ravaged; for you its watchman have perished, who used to guard it, who protected its devoted wives and tender children. They soon will be carried away in the hollow ships, and I with them; and you then, my child, either you will follow with me, and there do work unworthy of you toiling for a harsh master-or some Achaean man seizing you by the arm will hurl you from the ramparts, unhappy death, in his anger, one whose brother, perhaps, Hector slew, or his father or even his son, since so many of the Achaeans gripped the broad earth in their teeth at Hector's hands. For your father was no gentle man in sad battle; therefore the people mourn him through the city, and cursed is the grief and lamentation you have laid upon your parents, Hector. And to me beyond all others will be left painful sorrow; for you did not reach out your hands to me from your bed as you were dying, nor did you speak some close word to me, which I might always remember through the nights and days as I shed my tears." So she spoke, crying, and the women in response mourned.”
― Caroline Alexander, The Iliad

“the tortured master’s mate, his long hair loose, his shirt collar open, he with his gentlemanly pedigree and almost mythic name: Fletcher Christian.”
― Caroline Alexander, The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty

“Bligh made an announcement. “I now thought it for the Good of the Service to give Mr. Fletcher Christian an Acting Order as Lieut. I therefore Ordered it to be read to all hands.”
― Caroline Alexander, The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty

“of cattle, a bringer of dreams,”
― Caroline Alexander, The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War

“Mandatory, and soon despised, dancing sessions were implemented under this same improving philosophy.”
― Caroline Alexander, The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty

“In these easygoing conditions he ordered the entire ship washed and then rinsed down with vinegar, which served as a disinfectant.”
― Caroline Alexander, The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty

“That after the roll of centuries, this same Iliad, whose message had been so clearly grasped by ancient poets and historians, came to be perceived as a martial epic glorifying war is one of the great ironies of literary history. Part of this startling transformation can undoubtedly be attributed to the principal venues where the Iliad was read—the elite schools whose classically based curriculum was dedicated to inculcating into the nation's future manhood the desirability of "dying well" for king and country. Certain favorite outstanding scenes plucked out of context come to define the entire epic: Hektor's ringing refusal to heed the warning omen, for example—" 'One bird sign is best: to fight in defence of our country' "—or his valiant resolution—" 'not die without a struggle and ingloriously.' " Homer's insistent depiction of the war as a pointless catastrophe that blighted all it touched was thus adroitly circumvented.”
― Caroline Alexander, The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War

“Éris—strife—between heroes, it will be recalled, was a favorite theme of epic. Looked at coldly, stripped of the dignity of their noble epic contexts, these quarrels are almost always petty. In the Cypria, "Achilles quarrels with Agamemnon because he received a late invitation" to a feast; in the Aethiopis, "a quarrel arises between Odysseus and Aias over the armor of Achilles"; the Odyssey tells of a quarrel between Achilles and Odysseus at a festival, not to mention the Iliad's own dramatic action arising from the "quarrel" between Achilles and Agamemnon.”
― Caroline Alexander, The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War

“Never for me the lowered banner, never the last endeavor."
-Sir Ernest Shackleton”
― Caroline Alexander

“When conditions allowed, he ordered fires lit to dry his men’s sodden gear.”
― Caroline Alexander, The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty

“It would seem that to Bligh, infliction of punishment was like sickness, and scurvy, something that had no place on a well-run ship. William Bligh had set out to make the perfect voyage.”
― Caroline Alexander, The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty