Status Updates From Trojan Women

Reading in preparation for The Odyssey (movie, 2026), with my attention on the women left behind: the women whose labor, grief, and survival sustain the worlds that wars destroy, and who bear the enduring costs of conflicts too often romanticized as sites of masculine heroism. Were we to center on the war stories of women and children, there would be fewer wars. Maybe let's try that? Also reading Helen and Hecuba.

Reading in preparation for The Odyssey (movie, 2026), with my attention on the women left behind: the women whose labor, grief, and survival sustain the worlds that wars destroy, and who bear the enduring costs of conflicts too often romanticized as sites of masculine heroism. Were we to center on the war stories of women and children, there would be fewer wars. Maybe let's try that?

I am reading the Bantam translation by Hadas and McLean. This is a very bad translation that lacks separation from the influences of the translators time. There is too much use of Heaven. In stronger translations, Olympus is alluded to through physical allegory not monotheistic, metaphysical entities such as the religious creation of Heaven. It’sthese bad translations which drive everyday readers from the classics.