The influences behind Conan the Barbarian

1982

Conan the Barbarian

Film by John Milius

New Hollywood. United States. In English.

John Milius's 1982 sword-and-sorcery epic, co-written with Oliver Stone, follows a Cimmerian enslaved as a boy who grows into a warrior and takes revenge on the serpent-cult leader Thulsa Doom. It builds its episodes from Robert E. Howard's Weird Tales stories, opens with an epigraph from Nietzsche, and stages its battles with the Kurosawa films Milius admired in mind.

Where it came from

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1934

A Witch Shall Be Born

Robert E. Howard

American pulp era. United States. Written in English.

A witch impersonates her twin sister, the queen of Khauran; Conan, captain of the guard, is crucified in the desert and survives by biting a vulture to death.

What it handed down

To Conan the Barbarian (1982)

Direct source, well documented.

The crucifixion on the Tree of Woe, where Conan bites the neck of a vulture that lands on him, is lifted from this story. The film's rescue of the dying Conan by companions repeats Howard's scene in which Olgerd's riders cut him down.

Where it came from

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1932

The Phoenix on the Sword

Robert E. Howard

American pulp era. United States. Written in English.

The first published Conan story (Weird Tales, December 1932), in which King Conan of Aquilonia fights off assassins and a demon summoned by the Set-worshipper Thoth-Amon.

What it handed down

To Conan the Barbarian (1982)

Direct source, well documented.

The film's opening narration, 'Know, O prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis...', is taken from the 'Nemedian Chronicles' epigraph that heads this story. The serpent god Set, whose cult Thulsa Doom leads in the film, entered the Conan stories here through Thoth-Amon.

To A Witch Shall Be Born (1934)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Both stories turn on palace intrigue in a Hyborian kingdom, with sorcery used to seize a throne and Conan as the soldier who sets it right. Witch reuses the court-and-usurper setup that Phoenix had built.

To The Tower of the Elephant

Structural model, well documented.

Phoenix established the Hyborian world, its kingdoms and its sorcerers, and Conan as a Cimmerian. Tower set an earlier episode of his life inside that world.

Where it came from

The Shadow Kingdom, Robert E. Howard 1929
The Odyssey, Homer c. 725 BCE
Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, Ignatius Donnelly 1882
Histories, Herodotus c. 430 BCE follow this thread
A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs 1912 follow this thread

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1929

The Shadow Kingdom

Robert E. Howard

American pulp era. United States. Written in English.

The first Kull story: an Atlantean barbarian who has become king of Valusia uncovers shape-shifting serpent-men hidden in his court.

What it handed down

To The Phoenix on the Sword (1932)

Direct source, well documented.

Phoenix was Howard's rewrite of a rejected Kull story, and the Kull cycle that began with The Shadow Kingdom supplied the barbarian-become-king template. The Shadow Kingdom's serpent-men who take human form are also the ancestors of the film's Thulsa Doom, who turns into a snake.

Where it came from

Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, Ignatius Donnelly 1882

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1882

Atlantis: The Antediluvian World

Ignatius Donnelly

Gilded Age. United States. Written in English.

A popular pseudo-historical treatise arguing that Plato's Atlantis was real and was the source of all ancient civilizations.

What it handed down

To The Phoenix on the Sword (1932)

Thematic kinship, probable.

The epigraph's age 'when the oceans drank Atlantis' assumes Donnelly's picture of a real Atlantis whose drowning scattered survivors who founded later peoples. Howard's Hyborian Age essay elaborates the same scheme.

To The Shadow Kingdom (1929)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Kull is an Atlantean living before the sinking of Atlantis, in a lost antediluvian age of the kind Donnelly popularized. Howard built his prehistory from this kind of speculative history.

Where it came from

Critias, Plato c. 360 BCE

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CritiasPlato

c. 360 BCE

Critias

Plato

Classical Greece. Athens. Written in Ancient Greek.

An unfinished dialogue describing the island empire of Atlantis, its wealth and its war against ancient Athens.

What it handed down

To Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882)

Direct source, well documented.

Donnelly's book opens by reprinting and defending Plato's account of Atlantis in the Timaeus and Critias as literal history. His whole argument is built on Plato's description.

Where it came from

The Odyssey, Homer c. 725 BCE

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c. 725 BCE

The Odyssey

Homer

Archaic Greece. Archaic Greece. Written in Ancient Greek.

The epic of Odysseus' ten-year voyage home from Troy, including his visit to the dark land of the Cimmerians at the edge of the world.

What it handed down

To The Phoenix on the Sword (1932)

Direct source, probable.

Homer's Cimmerians, who live in mist and darkness at the edge of the world in Book 11, gave Howard the name of Conan's people. Howard's gloomy, cloud-covered Cimmeria keeps Homer's image.

To Critias (c. 360 BCE)

Disputed link, conjectural.

Scholars have compared Plato's Atlantis, an island of rich palaces, harbors and a sea-god founder, with Homer's Phaeacian island of Scheria. Whether Plato modeled it on Homer is not settled.

Where it came from

The Iliad, Homer c. 750 BCE

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c. 750 BCE

The Iliad

Homer

Archaic Greece. Archaic Greece. Written in Ancient Greek.

The epic of Achilles' wrath during the Trojan War.

What it handed down

To History of the Peloponnesian War

Thematic kinship, well documented.

Thucydides' opening 'Archaeology' uses the Trojan War as evidence for early Greek power and supplies. It measures his own war against Homer's.

To Histories

Thematic kinship, well documented.

Herodotus frames his history as an account of great deeds and the causes of war between Greeks and Asians, a Homeric subject. In Book 2 he argues with Homer's version of Helen and Troy.

To The Odyssey (c. 725 BCE)

Thematic kinship, probable.

The Odyssey assumes the story of the Iliad and continues it through the homecoming of one of its heroes. Its flashbacks retell events from Troy.

Where it came from

This is one of the oldest surviving works in its tradition; the line ends here.

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Where it came from

What it handed down

To Conan the Barbarian (1982)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Conan the Barbarian (1982)

To A Witch Shall Be Born (1934)

To The Tower of the Elephant

Where it came from

What it handed down

To The Phoenix on the Sword (1932)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To The Phoenix on the Sword (1932)

To The Shadow Kingdom (1929)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To The Phoenix on the Sword (1932)

To Critias (c. 360 BCE)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To History of the Peloponnesian War

To Histories

To The Odyssey (c. 725 BCE)

Where it came from

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