Byline: WILL SELF
TROY
Cert 15, 160 mins (ADEQUATE)
IN his seminal work The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes theorised that when the events that the Homeric Iliad describes took place, the ancient Greeks literally heard the voices of their gods. Like schizophrenics, these bronze-age peoples had a tenuous grasp on the thinking "I" most of us take for granted; so, when the voices spoke to them in commanding tones, they obeyed. It's a bold theory, and helps to explain the particular way in which the ancient Greeks thought their deities were involved in initiating and partially controlling their actions.
In Troy, ...