History is written based on existing evidence by the survivors. Sometimes evidence is lost or incomplete; sometimes bias clouds objective judgment about the events that occurred. Many times accounts are written deliberately to present one side of the story (often the victors’ perspective), but even eye witness accounts can distort the truth because their perspective of events is limited. New evidence forces us to rethink our perceptions of the past and what our predecessors may have missed or deliberately left out. As a historian of truth, you must weigh all the evidence and take into account the merits of each piece of evidence in constructing your narrative of what actually happened. What you choose to keep, what you choose to leave out, what you choose to emphasize will present a version of what happened.
Drawing from what you have learned in class about the Trojan War and the House of Tantalus, write a defense and prosecution speech for your assigned trial using evidence from what we have studied in class (ancient visual and textual evidence). While rhetoric makes a persuasive speech, a strong project will not only write convincingly but also make abundant use of evidence to convince the jury of both sides of the argument.
NOTA BENE (NB): You will need to keep these questions in mind as you evaluate your textual and visual sources: Who is the author/creator? When was s/he writing? How much time has clapsed from the time of the event? From whose perspective? Is there an inherent bias? How does the genre influence the kind of representation? What is the counterargument? etc.
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