Zack Case
Note: this article contains spoilers
Disclaimer: this article is not another complaint about season eight of Game of Thrones
What does a classicist have to offer Game of Thrones and what can Game of Thrones, seen from a classical perspective, offer its viewers?
There are direct routes from classical literature to Game of Thrones. Classical myths, for example, are re-enacted in memorable moments throughout the series: one thinks immediately of Agamemnon in Stannis Baratheon’s divinely-inspired filicide or Thyestes in Walder Frey’s Thyestean feast. There are also indirect routes. Scorching feminist criticism has been quick to point out, for example, that Game of Thrones ended up supporting, rather than subverting, a patriarchal system. In this it seems to share an ideological affinity with the male-written fantasies of much ancient Greek literature, in particular tragedy, since male power is ultimately affirmed and female power turns out to be either dangerous or ineffectual.[1] In literary theoretical terms, we might bluntly call the former cases of allusion (where the classical parallel was intended to be noticed) and the latter a case of intertext (where the classical parallel was not necessarily intended but is very much valid).
Perhaps the most useful interpretive tool the classicist viewer of Game of Thrones offers is a generic perspective. Being an epic by genre, the television series cannot help but be in dialogue with the epic tradition since Homer. To adopt the most influential metaphor in reception theory,[2] there is a ‘chain of receptions’ which bind the texts of antiquity to the texts of modernity via everything in between. Hence, for example, when Daenerys atop her dragon hesitates as the bells of surrender ring around King’s Landing immediately before burning it the ground, it would not be crazy to think of Aeneas’ hesitation immediately before slaughtering the surrendered Turnus at the climax of the Aeneid – with Aeneas having already carved his way through Italy, including the obliteration of one particular innocent town the destruction of which is compared to a smoked-out beehive.[3]
The degree to which each hero acts in cold blood, with each murderous outburst being at least partly triggered by the thought of revenge for someone close to them (Missandei and Pallas), is up for debate.
It is the manner of the coup de grâce, not the fact that that Circe and Turnus need to be defeated, which is so troubling in both cases. Nor would it be ridiculous to compare the love affair between all-too-similar heroes Daenerys and Jon (aunt : nephew) with that between Dido and Aeneas (Diana (sister) : Apollo (brother))[4], with the male in both cases forfeiting his lover to serve a higher cause at the cost of her death by his own sword. Tyrian’s all-too-literal aphorism, “duty is the death of love,” applies as much to Jon’s personified ‘shield that guards the realms of men’ as it does to Aeneas’ pietas. Italiam non sponte sequor, indeed.[5]
This chain is endowed with meaning, realised by the reader/viewer at the point of reception. In the examples above, it is not that Daenerys is analogous to either Aeneas or Dido – we have seen she can be both – but that drawing the comparisons opens up possibilities of meaning. Take the epic convention of the aristeia, in which the hero achieves his ‘finest moments’ on the battlefield. In Homeric terms, this is precisely what Daenerys gets as she, in Amazonian style, annihilates every single one of her enemies in King’s Landing. She outdoes what even Achilles could do by sacking a city singlehandedly. She is truly deinos: formidable, awesome, terrifying. Game of Thrones, however, twists this triumphalist perspective: there is no justification for Daenerys’ killing spree in terms of ‘immortal glory’ (kleos aphthiton).[6] Triumph has become bloodbath; ‘beautiful death’ (thanatos kalos) has become a contradiction in terms. We might say the emphasis on the suffering inhabitants of King’s Landing is truer to war, particularly to modern warfare where individuals in hand-to-hand combat seem meek in the face of impersonal weapons of mass destruction (or dragons). Homeric battle, on this reading, represents what Wilfred Owen spitefully brands ‘The old Lie.’ No wonder everyone is so pissed off with Daenerys.
This reading in dialogue with the Iliad works the other way as well, insofar as Daenerys’ aristeia in Game of Thrones activates an anti-reading already present in Homer. For the Iliad does not merely valorise war. It also recognises the paradox that the pursuit of kleos rests upon dead bodies. The foreshadowing of Troy’s total destruction,[7] which is even more total than the reduction of King’s Landing to ashes, and which will entail the shattering of domestic life,[8] is one of the ways in which the Iliad maintains a deep sense of pathos for the vanquished. It is, arguably, only the perversity of readers which has elevated Homeric poetry to the aesthetic sublime at the cost of ignoring all the blood and gore and death.
There are probably more shattered skulls and gouged eyeballs in the Iliad, and the Odyssey for that matter, than there are in Game of Thrones itself.
At any rate, Greeks versus Trojans, unlike humans versus White Walkers, is not a matter of good versus evil (that’s why the White Walkers came and went in one episode). Moral ambivalence is not unique to the characters of Game of Thrones. Indeed, to be a Homeric hero is to transgress ethical norms: Daenerys is no more devil than Achilles is saint.
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Nevertheless, Game of Thrones is obviously not as tightly chained to Homer and Virgil as Dante or Milton is. Viewers of the show who think that Homer is the father of Bart Simpson might not be all that interpretively starved, while they certainly would be if these bumpkins ever dabbled in Virgil. What I will do in the rest of this article is explore a classical intertext from outside the epic tradition, though it may well be allusion, and consider what we can gain from this more creative venture.
The risk of seeing nuggets of classical literature in popular television is the risk of uncritical unboundedness. Such is the approach of Ayelet Lushkov’s You Win or You Die: The Ancient World of Game of Thrones (2017), which finds analogies between the worlds of Westeros and classical antiquity without doing anything with them (the wall = Hadrian’s wall, the war of the five kings = the year of the four emperors, etc.). If the uselessness of this as anything more than pub trivia was not already self-evident, her speculations – ‘fan theory’ – about how the plot might unfold, assuming they followed the classical precedents she had unearthed, turned out to be completely wrong.[9] One can draw a link from anything to anything, even from the most divergent literary or cultural traditions, if one is creative enough. The usefulness of doing classical reception in popular culture seems to have its limits. Beyond them, it is a matter of satisfying nerdy instincts, showing off, or taking the piss.
How might we, then, construct a Wall to guard against the territory of interpretive free-for-all?
The scene where the lords and ladies of Westeros must choose a new king seemed familiar to me. One might wish to draw a parallel here to the debate about the best form of government in Herodotus’ Histories,[10] though in Herodotus there is a far more systematic exploration of political power from different perspectives. After Edmure Tully is reduced by Sansa to a meme, and then, more intriguingly, Samwell Tarly is laughed at for his proposition in favour of what we would call democracy, Tyrion suggests that Bran should become king and this idea is met with unanimous agreement. Here is where things get juicy from a classical perspective.
The reasoning behind the selection of Bran maps onto one crucial aspect of the reasoning behind Plato’s selection of philosophers as rulers of his ideal state in the Republic. Namely, it is both their total qualification and their complete unwillingness to rule, regardless of their sex, which explains why they are the best possible rulers.[11] This means that they will be the most virtuous and least corruptible rulers since they know ‘the Good’ and have no interest in power (or any other material desires), but also, paradoxically, that they must be coerced into ruling benevolently since they would not otherwise do it of their own accord, with the political life (inside the cave) being far inferior to the philosophical life (outside the cave).[12] This selection logic is played out at the end of Game of Thrones.
Bran has “no interest in ruling,” Sansa asserts, and Tyrian reaffirms this: “I know you don’t want it. I know you don’t care about power.” It is only Bran’s impossibly deterministic outlook which explains why he “came all this way,” not his desire for power. He accepts that he has no choice but to rule. Tyrian is equally reluctant. Asked to be Bran’s Hand, he replies, “I don’t want it, I don’t deserve it” (nor, for that matter, does he want to be king). Most importantly, Bran coerces him into his position by giving him a moral imperative: he must serve the realm to remedy all those mistakes he has made in his life. At the same time, both Bran and Tyrian, even if they are not up to the physical and intellectual standards of Guardianship by the book (being both disabled and probably not experts in mathematics, astronomy and so forth), they are completely qualified to rule in a way in which Jon Snow, despite his aversion to power, was surely not. Bran is the wisest man in Westeros, being the three-eyed Raven, and as the repository of collective “memory” he would presumably be in a position to prevent the mistakes of the past from being repeated (and, without pushing the comparison too far, the unifying story of ‘Bran the Broken’ works to consolidate power in a similar way to Plato’s Noble Lie). What Bran lacks in politikē technē Tyrian has in abundance, and the sense from the scene demonstrating the high council in action is that the realm is in safe – that is to say, virtuous – hands.
What possibilities of meaning, then, are opened up by this comparison?
One answer, I think, brings us to the state of politics in 2019. Through Plato, Game of Thrones offers a political alternative both to tyranny (self-evidently bad) and to democracy (which has, in its representative as well as parliamentary forms, left us in quite the mess over the last few years). Just when you thought Samwell Tarley’s revolutionary suggestion had some weight as the lords and ladies let it sink in – and you thought it was a good idea – derisive laughter erupts. Horses and dogs might as well rule. The joke is on you for believing in the system that allowed Brexit and Donald Trump to happen. Plato would have laughed too. We do not need to push Plato’s ideas all the way – that might lead to totalitarianism – to take seriously his argument about how and why rulers should rule. David Attenborough for king, anyone? Game of Thrones itself provides the best evidence that those who care too much about ruling – which is everyone who has sat on the iron throne from Aerys to Daenerys Targaryen – are the worst possible rulers. Plato called it: “For when office and rule become the prizes of contention, such a civil and internecine strife destroys the office-seekers themselves and the city as well” (Republic 521a, trans. Shorey). In other words, you do not win or die if you play the game of thrones: you win and die.
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There are two general points to be made about classical reception from all this. The first is that we should not discount popular culture from being enriched by viewing it in dialogue with classical literature. Game of Thrones is awesome for its own sake, obviously, yet all the more so when we consider its place in the literary tradition which stretches right back to Homer. The second is that, on the other hand, we should maintain the value of the unique receptive process by not merely name-dropping classical parallels as if that was interesting in its own right. Cf. Plato is meaningless on its own. As antiquity recedes ever further into the distance (both temporally and culturally), the old game of tracking classical influence or spotting classical allusions in cultural phenomena will probably become increasingly more difficult. Creative intertextuality must be done with care. The bottom-line, however, is that as long as the page, stage or television screen deals with human concerns, I like to believe that classical literature has something meaningful to offer in exchange. Let this watch never end.
[1] E.g. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/game-thrones-season-8-finale-bran-daenerys-cersei-jon-snow-zizek-revolution-a8923371.html; https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/game-of-thrones-final-episode-season-eight-6-daenerys-cersei-arya-bran-broken-a8922836.html
[2] Esp. Charles Martindale (1993) Redeeming the Text: Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception.
[3] Aeneid 12.558-9, 587-92, 938-52.
[4] Aeneid 1.498-504, 4.143-50.
[5] Aeneid 4.361.
[6] E.g. Iliad 9.413.
[7] E.g. Iliad 12.10-33.
[8] E.g. Iliad 6.447-65.
[10] Histories 3.80-2. Thanks to Nir Stern for pointing this out to me.
[11] Republic 346e-47d, 519c-21b, 540b-c.
[12] Without getting into philosophical interpretation about how this coercion might work, the bottom line seems to be that the Guardians would recognise in any case that ruling in an ideal city cannot be worse than being ruled by bad people in a non-ideal city.