Hi ER

What you said was priceless...

There is a scene in the Iliad where Hector stands on the city walls and prepares to go fight his last battle, certain, pointless death at the hands of the invincible Achilles. His wife Andromache tries to dissuade him, begging him not to go, and shows him his infant son in a last attempt to stop him. The child cries, terrified by his father's helmet, and Hector removes it so he can say goodbye to little Astyanax for the last time. What better comment on familial devotion and love of country could we possibly want?

These voices come to us out of the distant past, and they reveal our ancestor's, their differences and similarities to us. The details of the production of the script and even it's authorship seem almost irrelevant.

...and while that's true there's a lot of rubbish that passes for received wisdom when it comes to that period. The worst is the supposed "Dark Age" c. 1200-800 BC which screams for reassessment.

Adam