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Aug 2024
59m 44s

Choose Your Fighter: Achilles as a Manly...

Spencer Klavan
About this episode

The game is on, Helen is abducted, and now it's time to gather the Greeks for war. There are lots of stories about how the Achaean forces made their way to Troy, and some of them--like the story of the Achilles heel--are permanently associated in the popular imagination with Homer's stories. But how many of them are actually in the Iliad? And what's Homer doing by making this version of Achilles the central focus of his story? This week we sift through the myths to get to know the man, and what he tells us about masculinity in the 21st century.

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