The Trojan War by Barry Strauss

Everyone knows the story of the Trojan War. Classical literature was full of references to it, and the people of ancient Greece and Rome took for granted that it was an historical event. Modern historians for many years doubted it’s reality, until archeological finds showed that Troy did indeed exist and had been destroyed by war at about the time classical history had placed the Trojan War. So, eventually, historians concluded that the war did happen, though the questioned all the details of it.

Barry Strauss, a professor of history and classics, has taken a very interesting approach in re-examining the Trojan War. He basis his work on archeology and on a deep understanding of ancient history – but he also basis it on Homer. He essentially tells the story of the war by following Homer, taking Homer as someone who was passing along the basics of the actual story, and analyzing whether this was plausible, expanding on how it could have actually been, and placing it in the context of the history of the time. Noting that the names of famous men often survive better in history than many other details, he even uses the names as Homer uses them (pointing out that, even if the names aren’t correct, using them is as good as using any other). Even Homer’s inclusion of the Gods is worked in, as Strauss points out that this is how men of the bronze age viewed their world.

Strauss follows the course of the war, at each part analyzing the classical story and discussing if it could happen this way and supplying details of how things did work in that period. For example, the classical explanation of the war is Paris’s abduction of Helen (and incidentally his absconding with a large portion of the Spartan treasury). Today, many tend to assume that that couldn’t have been the reason. Countries go to war for bigger reasons, to gain territory or resources, for example. But in the bronze age, war and the reasons for war were often put into such personal terms, even if underneath other causes were also at work. Moreover, Paris’s act was a slap in the face to Menelaus, an act that would cause him to lose face and power if he did nothing.

Chapter by chapter, Strauss takes scenes from Homer (and occasionally from the greater Homeric cycle, though he considers the other sources less reliable than Homer) and analyzes them. How would the Greeks have actually stormed the shore? What was the Trojan army like, and why did they have so little naval power? (While a major trading power, Troy came from a tradition – they were allies with the Hittites – that looked toward land for empire and power; they weren’t a sea power. Strauss, to show that they weren’t alone in being this way, quotes one Middle Eastern ruler of bragging that some day he would extend his empire to the sea – something no Greek or Roman would have said, since they would not have considered the sea an edge to their empires.) Strauss examines everything from battle tactics to ethics, from equipment and technology to political organization and alliances.

A quote will give you a feel for his technique, as he describes the wounding of Menelaus:

Menelaus did not require surgery, but if he had, a Bronze Age practitioner had cutting tools made of obsidian or bronze as well as such bronze instruments as forceps, probes, spoon, razor, and saw. Opium was available to ease the pain. Linen bandages were known in Egypt, but the only bandage in Homer is a woolen sling doing double duty as a dressing. An unbandaged wound may have been a common sight in a Greek camp.

He also describes where Homer exaggerated or could not have been right. The war could not have lasted for ten years. There was no way, given the logistical ability of the period, that a war for that long could have been managed. But he also notes that in the Ancient Near East there was a common expression “nine times and then a tenth” which means “over and over until finally.” So “ten years” in this case can just mean that it was a long, strenuous war.

I’ve read The Iliad a number of times over the years, so this is a subject I’m very interested in. I found Strauss’s book an intriguing look at how it could have happened, a wonderful mix of both history and literary analysis (and, I suppose, fiction, given his technique). After this, I’m going to have to go back and re-read Homer (which translation? Perhaps at some point I’ll do a review of my views of the handful of translations I’ve read and which translators I think are best for which work) and maybe even Virgil (I did just pick up Fagles’s new translation of The Aeneid).