[voidhorse]

Interesting point, but recall these narratives were spoken by bards and inscribed by scholars and monks, not warriors.

For the original authors, the tales of glory are the fantasy of victories they did not witness or commit but likely had to envision—just as modern rap is not the embodiment of power and wealth, but the fantasy and projection of power and wealth, the manifestation not of accomplishment, but of desire.

Narrativity and fiction have more kinship with what one doesn’t have than what one does—the actual ancient warrior’s “narrative” were his captors, heads on pikes, or the enemies he let live to tell the tale. In some respects the poets are responsible for sublimating the brutal, material symbology of war into something cultural, something detached from the event itself.