This week I have been looking into Alfred Crosby's controversial analysis of the Columbian Exchange and his argument that European colonization was accelerated and aided by the transfer of European biota (specifically animals, weeds and pathogens). I have also been looking into his critics, such as David Arnold, who argues that Crosby's emphasis on "biological determinism" seems to remove human agency from the colonization of the Americas and Oceania and excuses their genocide as the result of "better germs" (and animals and weeds)

I've been working through evidence on the story of Troilos -- the Trojan prince that Achilleus ambushed; Troilos fled on horseback, Achilleus pursued on foot, and either (1) caught him and dragged him to the altar of Apollo, or (2) caught him when he took refuge at the altar of Apollo; and there he killed him as a twisted kind of human sacrifice, beheading him in the process.

There's only very sparse textual evidence of the story, but it was extraordinarily popular in pictorial arts, especially in the period ca. 550-480 BCE. Depictions of the Troilos story account for 20% of all ancient depictions of Achilleus. That's an astounding proportion, especially given the complete absence of poetic treatments!

Conventional wisdom is that the artistic tradition is largely independent of, or at most only loosely influenced by, the poetic tradition. I was very happy to opt for the former, since there was essentially no poetic tradition (at least until Sophokles wrote a play on the subject in perhaps 418 BCE, and there's nothing to indicate that play was influential). But some aspects of the artistic evidence have just now put doubt in my mind. Troilos is normally shown as a youth, occasionally even a child. But two early depictions make him a bearded man, i.e. an adult warrior: LIMC "Achileus" nos. 251 and 252, both non-Attic vases, and dated to 600-575 and ca. 550 respectively. (The very earliest Attic Troilos vases start to appear ca. 570-560.)

And I am wondering if there is some literary influence leading to the "Troilos as handsome youth" trope after all. We have two brief fragments of the early sixth century poet Ibykos, frs. S151 and S224, that have the following phrases: fr. S151 "Trojans and Greeks likened Troilos to [Zeuxippos], as thrice-refined gold to oreichalkon"; and in fr. S224 Achilleus "killed the boy like the gods, outside the citadel of Ilion". These give the better-known version of Troilos as a handsome youth. (There's a passing mention of Troilos in the Iliad, but it gives no hint of his age, only that he liked horses; two ancient commentaries on that passage suggest that he may have been a grown man, but that seems to be under the influence of a much later revisionist account known as "Diktys of Crete". The Cyclic epic the Kypria also mentioned Troilos' death, but apparently only briefly: based on the surviving evidence it looks like the Kypria narrative might have occupied about 40 lines at most.)

So now I'm wondering if the handsome youth Troilos that we see consistently from 550 onwards could be under the influence of Ibykos after all. The only halfway decent dating information we have on Ibykos tells us that he came to Samos in the 560s, in the time of Polykrates' father, making him already a court poet at that date and implying he was already famous -- i.e., he had already been active prior to that.

On the other hand, as I think about it, frs. S151 and S224 can't be the origin of the handsome youth Troilos, since they come from a poem (poems?) in honour of Polykrates -- i.e. it's many years later than Ibykos' arrival on Samos. So maybe we are back to the situation where no substantial literary treatments exist.

That's good news for me, actually. The Gigantomachy is another myth where there are oodles of pictorial representations and definitely no poetic inspirations. I'd be very happy to imagine pictorial artists ignoring poetic treatments of myths, in the 500s at least. So I'm glad I talked this out here and overcame my doubt.

(Incidentally, if anyone's got a prior interest in the Troilos story, be aware that the mediaeval Troilus is totally separate from the ancient Troilos. The mediaeval Troilus stories are based on one of two revisionist accounts of the Trojan War written in the 1st-4th centuries CE, "Dares of Phrygia" or "Diktys of Crete": Dares was the canonical story in the west, Diktys in the east. Both of them have Troilus as a hulking hero, second only to Hector in might. Dares even has Troilus wound Achilles at one point. If you're looking for the inspiration for Chaucer and Shakespeare, it goes back to Dares.)

I said this elsewhere, and I will say it again, but I have been reading Blue Latitudes, a book about Captain Cook, the Pacific and Polynesian culture, maritime life during the era and more! So this week my researches have mainly been about West Africa (My main forte) and now Polynesian and Maritime culture and history!

I've been reading The Texas Indians by W.W. Newcomb (1950). He's giving quite an interesting overview of the Indians of this state, though the use of the words "savages" and "barbaric" does pop up a lot. All in all though, he's pretty impartial and makes comparisons to our mode of life. It has to be said that most of our sources are from De Soto, La Salle and de Vaca and they were not the most sympathetic to the Karankawa, Caddo, etc. Some interesting things I've found according to this book:

• the Lipan Apache had a severe fear of the dead coming to take the living.
• It was almost universal that the women of all the tribes seemed to tattoo their breasts in concentric circles, using needles to prick the skin till blood ran then rubbing in charcoal. Same with the males upon the face, and some tribes liked to wear pretty bows upon their privates. Very few wore pants.
• The arrival of the Comanche (Numuru) was pretty devastating for the residents of Texas, and those squeezed between the Comanche and the Spanish either had to join Spain, submit to the invaders or move to very fringe lands with few resources. Such as
• The Coahuiltecans, who were forced to eat any and everything, including deer poop and seeds harvested from their own poop. Of the cultures described in this book, they seemed to have the most difficult and hard-scrabble life.
• He places a theory that the Southeastern Mississippian complex, circum-Caribbean, was colonized not by land but by sea. He just gives this as a possibility but no information or sources on why.
• EDIT: Forgot to add, the familial links in most tribes were very interesting, as they practiced levirate (marriage of dead spouse to brother) and sororate (marriage of one man to numerous sisters of the spouse). Also interesting was the Hawaiian kinship system, where all uncles and aunts were "mother" or "father" and all cousins were "sisters" or "brothers." Even more interesting, in the Wichita, brothers-in-law would sometimes refer to each other as "rival," probably half-joking, as they were indeed in line to marry the other's widow if another passed on or was killed.

I'm extremely interested to find out if he has made any interesting discoveries since 1950, and fully intend to read his colleague's book which he references often, Spanish Texas 1519-1821 by Donald Chipman.

If you have a moment, please read "My Last Hanging—Thoughts on an Execution", by John L. Gaffney. He wrote this short essay in 1939, after witnessing the execution of one of fewer than a dozen men to be legally put to death in Alaska before the abolition of the death penalty in 1957. It's one of the most powerful Alaskana essays I've had the privilege to read, and it almost stayed hidden forever. After writing it, Gaffney kept it unpublished for more than 50 years.