Trojan Language - Greek Epics

Greek Epics

The Trojans in the Iliad have no difficulty in speaking to their Greek opponents. However, this may merely be evidence that a fictional convention frequently used in narratives in later times had already been adopted by the poet of the Iliad: for example, Jason finds no language barrier with Medea in Colchis, and Trojan Aeneas converses without difficulty both with Punic Dido and with Latin Turnus.

Greek legend gives further indications on the subject of language at Troy. For one thing, the allies of Troy, listed at length in the Trojan Battle Order which closes book 2 of the Iliad, are depicted as speaking various languages and thus needing to have orders translated to them by their commanders (2.802-6). Elsewhere in the poem (4.433–38) they are compared to sheep and lambs bleating in a field as they talk together in their different languages. The inference is that, from the Greek point-of-view, the languages of Trojans and their allied neighbors were not as unified as those of the Achaeans.

Hilary Mackie has detected in the Iliad a consistent differentiation between representations in Greek of Achaean and Trojan speech; in simplest terms, Trojans speak poetically, with the aim of avoiding conflict, whereas Achaeans repeatedly engage in public, ritualized abuse that linguists term (from another source) flyting: "Achaeans are proficient at blame, while Trojans perform praise poetry" (Mackie 1998:83).