Where competition losers scoop prizes

And now we are there! Our guide, navigator, and translator is the yet-to-be-born blind but peerless Greek poet Homer (c. 750 BC). Yes, what we are about to see and hear is what blind Homer apprehended with his incomparable creative brain from oral sources dating from half a millennium before his own time (a period historians describe as ‘the golden age of Greece’) – and he converted those oral sources into a graphic, dramatic, and rhythmic verbal tale of lofty human endeavour. 

Before us is the City of Troy, which for the last 10 years has been under siege of Greek military forces – and is finally going to fall within a matter of days. (Purpose of the war: in a swift presumed one-day attack on Troy, to wrench back the Greek Queen, Helen of Sparta, who eloped with Prince Paris of Troy! Ten years on, Helen is still in the embrace of Paris behind the impregnable city wall.) Troy is going to be reduced to ruins by the Greeks, never to be rebuilt.

[But upon those ruins, future cities will arise to severally be the capitals of the Byzantine/Eastern Roman Empire (330-1453 AD), the Ottoman/Turkish Empire (1299-1922), and latter-day Turkish Republic (founded 1923)]. 

But weeks before the Greeks destroy Troy, one of their bravest fighters has been slain by a Trojan fighter. His name is Patroklos, only second in bravery to indomitable Achilles and Odysseus.

And how come a mighty Greek fighter, not a cheaper one, is slain by a Trojan? Ah, because patriotic Patroklos makes the unprofessional mistake of fighting in borrowed armour!

And yet Patroklos is no entirely to blame for his mistake. In the 10 years the Greeks have besieged Troy, their generals and ordinary fighters have been turning captured Trojan women into mistresses.

Lately, King Agamemnon, ‘the kingliest’ among the Greek kings involved in the war, has given his mistress back to her father, upon the father’s passionate pleas.

Not to be without a mistress for even one day, Agamemnon has grabbed that of Achilles, the mightiest of the Greek fighters. In seething anger, Achilles has temporarily withdrawn from the warfront; during which spell, his best friend Patroklos borrows Achilles’ armour – and dies in combat. 

Patroklos’s burial is marked by the highest military and cultural honours, in the course of which plenty comes to light concerning Greek views about life and death and the transition from the former to the latter. Patroklos’s body is burnt upon a decorated pyre, the flame extinguished with wine, and his bones placed in a golden jar for future burial back in Greece.

Then, as the last phase of the funeral rituals – partly for diverting the minds from grieving – Achilles institutes seven games to take place, namely: chariot race, boxing with spiked gloves, wrestling, single combat, discus, shooting with arrows, and throwing the javelin.

To our utter surprise, Achilles sets up prizes for both the winners and the losers! The prizes include: beautiful slave-girls, horses, oxen, mules, tripods, cauldrons, gold, and iron. Yes, in every sporting event the winner scoops the best prize, but every competitor also wins some prize!

Wow! As you and I spring back to the present from Greek antiquity, we both know what “Reward Inclusiveness” to recommend to Uganda National Sports Council.

Prof Timothy Wangusa is a poet and novelist. [email protected]