Le Saut troyen ΤΟΤ ΡΩΙΚΟΝ ΙΙΗΔΗΜΑ

Protesilaos, the first Greek warrior to fall before Troy, gets a brief mention in the Catalogue of Ships (Iliad II 695-707). In accordance with the proverbial Homeric reticence, neither the name of his young wife nor that of his slayer are given. These, however, and many other bits of information, can be tracked (with highly significant discrepancies) in the Homeric scholia and in a number of passages from the Epic Cycle and the Hesiodic Corpus. From these very fragmentary texts, an epic motif which we could call «the dangers of landing» can be reconstructed. Several centuries later, Alexander the Great of Macedonia remembered this compound of mythical-religious motifs and decided to recreate it when staging his own landing on the Asian shores.