In 2018, the BBC aired an inventive retelling of the story surrounding Homer's Iliad called Troy: Fall of a City. The show attracted a lot of attention, particularly because it cast a number of major characters — Achilles, Artemis, Patroclus, Zeus — as black. The inevitable controversy highlighted a number of issues. Is this just a politically correct anachronism? Do we know what ancient Greeks actually looked like? Did they think black people fought on the Trojan plain? Did they think that white people fought? How did they understand skin colour? How did they see colour? What, ultimately, is skin colour: a fact of nature or a cultural construction, or something else entirely?
This event is part of the 2020 Cambridge Science Festival. With events from astronomy to zoology, the 2020 Cambridge Science Festival welcomes everyone to explore and discuss science through talks, hands-on activities, performances, exhibitions, tours and films. Cambridge Science Festival runs from 9-22 March 2020 with bookings open from 10 February 2020. Find out more at: www.sciencefestival.cam.ac.uk and follow us on twitter @CamScience #CamSciFest