from
An Iliad
by
Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare

AN ILIAD started out as an examination of war and man’s tendency toward war. In the end, it also became an examination of the theater and the way in which we still tell each other stories in order to try to make sense of ourselves, and our behavior. Someone started telling the story of the Trojan War, in all its glory and devastation and surprise, over 3,000 years ago. We pass it on.

Back then, oh I could sing it. For days and nights. On and on, every battle, every old digression, I would sing and sing ... in Mycenae once I sang for a year — you don’t believe me? In Babylon, I sang it differently, but the crowds came ... in Alexandria I started to notice a few empty seats, but still I sang it. Shorter though — three or four days. Know where it went down really well? Gaul, something about those people, they had a real taste for it — of course they were hard to control, they used to get up on tables and sing along, they threatened to take the whole thing over, went outside, screaming, building fires, terrible.

Every time I sing this song, I hope it’s the last time.

Nine years. So for — so you left home when your baby was one, you come back and your baby is ten. You left your baby was one, you come back your baby is dead. You come back your — your wife is dead. You come back your wife is fat. You come back your wife has had three affairs and two more kids. “Uh, hi honey, y-uhhhhh, don’t get mad, don’t get mad.” You know, or you come back, and the farm is ruined. Or there’s been a war and you’re no longer Greek. You’re now Diocletian or whatever it is — you’re Spartan now. They came and took over, while you were hanging out at Troy, and you have no title to your land anymore. Um, your father died while you were gone. You know, oh no (Gasp.) we don’t wear those leggings any more, we stopped wearing them like that a long time ago ...

And so, you can imagine, after nine years of this, well, they want to go home. They’ve forgotten why they’re fighting.

Where do the old gods go? That’s a song. Where do the old gods go when they die? I don’t know. There’s one in the gin bottle, there’s one in the vodka bottle ... Spirits. Oh look, Athena in the ... she’s in the tequila. Yeah. Athena tequila. Gods never die. They change. They, they, they burrow inside us ... They become us, they become our impulses. Lust? Aphrodite. Mischief? Hermes. A good idea? Athena ...

Athena tequila. Ah very good.

Oh, the things the gods could do to us.

Hector believes in — he believes in institutions, he believes in — in country, he believes in his family, he believes in the army. Isn’t funny how hard it is to describe a good man?

He’s a brave man, but deep down, he’d rather be taming horses.

Have you ever seen a front line? Let’s take — I want to show you what that bloody field looked like, what Hector walked back to just then, with all those other boys scattered across it. It’s like, it’s like — I have a picture here. It’s from another war but — oh, I can’t — well here. (He holds up his hand instead, using it as a map.) — you see, outside the trenches where there had been a particularly bad day — this was, oh, a hundred years ago but you get the picture — and uhhh the battlefield was just littered with bodies and when you look at it you think, “Oh, well these are a bunch of bodies,” but they’re not just bodies ’cuz this is — this is Jamie and this is Matthew and this is Brennan and this is Paul. This is Scottie, he was nineteen, (About Paul.) he was twenty-one, (About Brennan.) he was eighteen, Brennan was meant to go to Oxford — he had gotten a scholarship because of his writing — his father was a postman. He would have been the first child in his whole family ever to go to university — but he didn’t ...

Do you see?

You know that feeling when, for whatever reason, you could kill somebody? Right then and there. You could kill them. [...] You could rend them limb from limb. The guy in front of you who cuts you off, you could ram him with your car, you don’t care about the result — just ram him! And you could see the charred metal and you could see the [—] see the smoking thing and you could see the air bag and you hope the air bag smothers him.

Yes. That’s how it happens. We think of ourselves: not me, I’m not like that, I’m a peaceful —

but it happens anyway, some trick in our blood and —

— rage.

Do you see?

Oh! If you could see the way they look at each other ...

What do they see?

I wonder if he’s scared — look at him, he may be yelling and shaking his spear but when it comes right down to it he wants to stay alive. And I can even imagine, we could leave here, now, we’ll get drunk together somewhere and we’ll talk about like, “Hey, remember that battle, when was it four days ago when you guys had us pinned against the wall and then out of nowhere that young spearman got your charioteer and you guys got thrown ... that was intense.” “Yeah, yeah, and how ’bout that bird that came out of nowhere, that was kinda freaky.” “Yeah, that thing just landed in the middle of the field and for a minute we were all staring at it. Was it a heron?”

That’s an awful moment, isn’t it? It starts with uhh, a bad feeling or an intuition or why did the phone ring at 3 o’clock in the morning? Or I didn’t get a phone call, or, he didn’t come home or it’s late, it’s really late, he should have been home by now, I should have heard by now, the plane should have landed by now, he should have called ...

She starts to walk, trying to keep herself calm, trying not to panic — but her heart begins to race and she starts getting that weird throbbing and she starts, her eyes start to go kinda dim — she can’t actually see where she’s going — and she comes out and even before she gets to ask a qustion she looks out across the plain and she actually sees her husband, dead, being dragged behind the chariot —

And she starts to yell at him —

And now here’s the thing. What I love singing, and I hope I can make you see: For once, Achilles, who is addicted to rage — as so many of us are, really, when it comes right down to it — this fighting man feels the rage well up in his heart ... and he makes it disappear.

He just — (The Poet breathes out, showing how Achilles lets go of his rage.)

How did he do that?

I don’t want to tell you about what happens next — I know you know — about the trick that did it — the Trojan Horse — I can’t do it — how the Greeks pretended to leave, and Troy rejoiced and they thought it was over, the war was over — but that night Greek soldiers snuck out — and began the slaughter and the burning — the Sack of Troy, that’s not — I’m not singing that song ... the song of the murder of Priam, the song of the death of Achilles ... the song of Hector’s infant son thrown from the battlements — how the Greek soldier held him up in one hand, but the baby laughed, the soldier’s helmet made him think of his father, and this time he thought it was a game — the sound of the boy’s head splitting on the pavement ... the song of the Trojan women, all of them kidnapped and raped and taken to Greece, the song of Aeneas escaping with his father on his back, the song of Odysseus, trying to get home, no, it’s too much, all these songs ...

Imagine it for yourselves, the destruction of a city, a civilization, you know what that looks like ... like ...

... Alexandria, all that history lost ...

... like ...

... Constantinople, burning for weeks ...

... like ...

... the Aztec temples, razed ...

... like ...

Dresden ... Hiroshima ...

like ...

Sarajevo ...

like ...

Kabul ...

like ...

I will tell you this:

Cassandra saw them first. Priam and the wagon and the body of Hector.

Priam told his people of the cease-fire, not to worry, there would be no war for eleven whole days, they could bury Hector the proper way. And so they built a pyre, and they mourned him, and on the tenth night they burned his body — until the sun came up.