# The Trojan War  ## Metadata - Author: [[Barry Strauss]] - Full Title: The Trojan War - Category: #greek-mythology #ancient-warfare ## Highlights - The Greeks were the Vikings of the Bronze Age. They built some of history’s first warships. ([Location 231](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=231)) - Much of what we thought we knew about the Trojan War is wrong. In the old view, the war was decided on the plain of Troy by duels between champions; the besieged city never had a chance against the Greeks; and the Trojan Horse must have been a myth. But now we know that the Trojan War consisted mainly of low-intensity conflict and attacks on civilians; it was more like the war on terror than World War II. There was no siege of Troy. The Greeks were underdogs, and only a trick allowed them to take Troy: that trick may well have been the Trojan Horse. ([Location 271](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=271)) - Some things in Homer that may seem implausible are likely to be true because the same or similar customs existed in Bronze Age civilizations of the ancient Near East. For example, surprise attacks at night, wars over livestock, iron arrowheads in the Bronze Age, battles between champions instead of armies, the mutilation of enemy corpses, shouting matches between kings in the assembly, battle cries as measures of prowess, weeping as a mark of manhood—these and many other details are not Homeric inventions but well-attested realities of Bronze Age life. ([Location 291](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=291)) - The Trojans enjoyed all the rewards of wealth and sophistication. But the Greeks had three advantages of their own: they were less civilized, more patient, and they had strategic mobility because of their ships. In the end, those trumped Troy’s cultural superiority. And so we come to the Trojan War. ([Location 357](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=357)) - The war probably took place sometime between 1230 and 1180 B.C., more likely between 1210 and 1180. ([Location 360](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=360)) - Paris, prince of Troy, has come to Greece, having commissioned new ships especially for the occasion. He knows that he has to put his best foot forward, because Troy and Greece are rivals, and the Greeks would seize on any sign of weakness. By the same token, Paris is supposed to be at his diplomatic best. By accepting the hospitality of the king of Sparta, Menelaus, Paris has an unspoken obligation to behave like a gentleman. ([Location 397](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=397)) - They might well have spoken Greek. Troy’s language was probably either Luwian, the main tongue of southern and western Anatolia, or Palaic, the main language of the north. Both were Indo-European tongues, closely related to Hittite. ([Location 418](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=418)) - Some ancient sources insist that Menelaus was about to go abroad: urgent business was calling him away to Crete. If he indeed left Helen alone with Paris, then Menelaus was the most foolish husband since Cronus had trusted Rhea, and she took advantage of him by helping their son Zeus overthrow the old man. Menelaus should have paid more attention to Helen’s feelings: others surely were doing so. ([Location 427](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=427)) - According to Homer, Helen was passionate, intelligent, and manipulative. ([Location 433](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=433)) - Homer’s Paris is handsome and amorous. He is stylish, lithe, athletic, and a talented bowman. History lends credibility to the picture. Anatolians were famous as archers. ([Location 442](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=442)) - Menelaus is a “soft spearman.” ([Location 452](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=452)) - Paris was no fool for love either. His abduction of Helen may have had less to do with lust than with power politics. By capturing Helen, Paris carried out a bloodless raid on enemy territory. ([Location 455](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=455)) - The Bronze Age was an era that preferred to put things in personal terms rather than in abstractions. Instead of justice, security, or any of the other issues that would be part of a war debate today, the Bronze Age tended to speak of family and friendship, crime and punishment. ([Location 463](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=463)) - So Troy became what the Hittites called a “soldier servant,” that is, a Hittite vassal state with military responsibilities, with a promise of Hittite military protection in return. ([Location 480](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=480)) - Paris’s Greek name—Alexander—might mean that he was descended from King Alaksandu, who forged Troy’s alliance with the Hittites. ([Location 496](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=496)) - But Menelaus knew the rules too. He went to war not because his bed was cold but because his future was shaky. Paris had not only cuckolded the king but abused his hospitality. The Trojan was like a high roller who openly cheats in front of the casino owner. Unless he punished Paris, Menelaus would be branded as an easy mark. Since he ruled Sparta by marriage and not birth, unless he forced the return of his wife, he would eventually face someone wanting to knock him off his throne. But Menelaus had an immediate problem: his treasury was lighter thanks to Helen’s decision to take a queen’s ransom with her to Troy. ([Location 500](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=500)) - Paris not only made off with Sparta’s queen, therefore, but with its Fort Knox. Later, Paris describes the Trojan War as a fight For beauteous Helen and the wealth she brought. ([Location 512](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=512)) - Like Helen, Menelaus was born royalty, brother of King Agamemnon of Mycenae, but Menelaus did not inherit the kingship. In Hittite society it was possible for a man to marry into the royal family and so win a throne, and the same may have been true for Greece. This usually happened only when a king had no sons, but Helen had two brothers, Castor and Polydeukes. Perhaps they, like Telemachus in the Odyssey, were too young to inherit, or more likely, Tyndareus decided it was worth passing them over in order to ally his family with the powerful dynasty nearby. Menelaus became king of Sparta. ([Location 524](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=524)) - Women in Bronze Age Anatolia had more freedom and power than their sisters in Mycenaean Greece. ([Location 537](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=537)) - If a royal marriage was an alliance, a royal seduction was an act of war. ([Location 599](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=599)) - The Bronze Age generally thought of war as a divine drama of law enforcement: war punished criminals who had offended the gods. ([Location 621](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=621)) - Helen was not the cause but merely the occasion of the war. By seducing a Greek princess, Troy had interfered in the politics of the Greek kingdoms and humiliated a powerful man. ([Location 642](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=642)) - Agamemnon towers above his servants. He is a big man, healthy and muscular. Homer gives him the broad shoulders of a javelin champion, and as a king he is likely to be well fed and tall—nearly six feet tall, to judge from the skeletons found in the royal graves of Mycenae. That was a great height then, when the average Greek male stood only about five feet five inches. ([Location 657](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=657)) - No wonder Homer reserves for Agamemnon the title anax, harkening back to the Bronze Age term for king: wanax. ([Location 666](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=666)) - Homer’s Agamemnon is arrogant, which makes him similar to the many Bronze Age kings whose monuments invited the mighty to look upon their works and despair. ([Location 669](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=669)) - Finally, to return to the mainland, there was Greece’s greatest warrior, a man known as the best of the Greeks, prince of the central Greek region of Phthia, leader of the fearsome unit of warriors called the Myrmidons: Achilles. ([Location 703](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=703)) - Achilles says that he plundered no fewer than twenty-three cities in the Trojan War and Odysseus proudly calls himself “sacker of cities.” ([Location 717](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=717)) - Each of Agamemnon’s generals was the leader of a band of warriors; Greek for warrior band is laos, a common term in Homer. ([Location 724](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=724)) - For example, the classical Greek word for army, stratos, means “encampment,” and for war, polemos means “engagement of opposing warriors or troops.” But both Homer and Linear B avoid these terms, preferring instead “warrior band” and “war spirit” or “war god” (Ares). The army that gathered at Aulis, therefore, was in a real sense, a collection of warrior bands and their chieftains. ([Location 730](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=730)) - In order to appease the goddess and make the wind stop, Agamemnon is said to have coldly consented to the murder of his daughter, Iphigenia. ([Location 757](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=757)) - Legend has her come from Mycenae, riding with her servants on a mule cart—a common Bronze Age conveyance—and thinking that she had been summoned to her wedding. A different kind of altar awaited her. No doubt the girl had expected the feasting, music, and dance that marked a royal wedding. ([Location 770](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=770)) - The thought may not have occurred to him, but Agamemnon was looking at one of the glories of ancient Greek civilization. It was technological, it was bloody, and it was new: it was as revolutionary in military affairs as that other Bronze Age invention, the chariot. The 1300s and 1200s were a great age of innovation at sea. The Greeks of that era were the first sea power in history on the continent of Europe. They may have picked up the know-how of shipbuilding and sailing from Aegean islanders, especially the Minoans on Crete, themselves great seafarers, but the Greeks established a navy in the harbors of the mainland and they invented a new ship: the galley. The galley is an oared, wooden ship, built for speed, and used mainly for war or piracy. Mycenaean galleys were light and lean. The hull was narrow, as hydrodynamics dictated, and straight and low, to cut down on wind resistance and to ease beaching. ([Location 778](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=778)) - Bronze Age Greeks had an advantage in sea battles because of their navies and their know-how. Like today’s missiles, airplanes, or tanks, the galley provided strategic mobility. As in modern warfare, the key to much of Bronze Age fighting was to “get there firstest with the mostest.” ([Location 794](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=794)) - Greek kingdoms also maintained professional seamen, such as pilots and pipers (who kept time for the rowers), as well as sail weavers and other specialists. Naval architects supervised teams of skilled woodworkers in building and taking care of galleys. It took six months for a team of a dozen carpenters, supervised by an architect, to build a Bronze Age galley, as an expert estimates. ([Location 801](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=801)) - If true, then a Greek coalition around 1200 might well have mustered hundreds of ships at Aulis—but not 100,000 men. Fielding an army that big in a protracted war seems beyond the means of a Bronze Age society. A more modest figure is in order, and here is a way to an educated guess: Troy’s excavators estimate a total population for the city of 5,000–7,500 people. ([Location 818](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=818)) - On that reckoning, the Greek army was greater than 11,250–17,000 men. So a conservative estimate might calculate armies of about 15,000 men per side. ([Location 825](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=825)) - They averaged twenty-five men on a side, and each of them pulled an oar. The men’s grain was stored in leather bags; their water and wine were in clay jars or skin bottles. Their gear was under the benches. If challenged, the men would have to grab a shield, spear, and sword and take on the enemy’s boarding party, but they would not be challenged: they had the greatest navy in the world. ([Location 860](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=860)) - Amazingly, despite its location by the sea and its economic dependence on maritime trade, Troy had no navy, or at least no significant one. ([Location 868](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=868)) - The Trojans no doubt had boats but not of the quality of the Greek warships nor in large enough number to compete. For example, when Paris went to Sparta to bring back Helen, he had ships specially made for the trip. ([Location 876](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=876)) - Troy had little incentive to build a navy. Middlemen have no need to go abroad for plunder. Warships had little appeal to men who could garner wealth, glory, and security by breeding horses. ([Location 888](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=888)) - Yet there were indeed Mycenaean merchants at Troy. In fact, the archaeologists have found so much Mycenaean pottery at the site, both imports and imitations made of local clay, that if we didn’t know better, we might have thought the place was a Mycenaean colony and not Troy. ([Location 908](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=908)) - The priests might have been doing what Hittite priests did before battle: hosting the enemy’s gods at a ritual meal, of wine and slaughtered sheep, at which they blame the war on enemy aggression. ([Location 956](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=956)) - Around 1225 B.C. the ruler of a western Anatolian kingdom not far from Troy had his portrait carved in relief on a cliff. The king strides boldly with a spear in one hand, a bow slung over his shoulder, and a dagger tucked into his belt. What was good enough for him was probably good enough for Hector. ([Location 967](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=967)) - Homer’s Hector is tall and imposing, with a streaming mane of black hair and a handsome face, and eyes that no doubt flash from time to time with his reckless and aggressive spirit. ([Location 970](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=970)) - Old King Priam, white-haired and scratchy-voiced, confined to the city rather than the battlefield he once strode, still had the power of command. Priam was shrewd, self-controlled, and an old hand at the ways of war as it was waged in the Bronze Age. ([Location 977](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=977)) - The preferred option was to defeat the enemy on the beach as he tried to land. Should that fail, the Trojans would fight the Greeks on the plain of Troy, keeping them away from the city. If that tactic should not work in turn, then they would fall back to the anti-chariot trenches and palisades that protected the lower city—with the great walls of the citadel themselves as the final refuge. ([Location 982](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=982)) - If there is anything to the epic tradition that Achilles’ mother had forced him as a boy into a humiliating hiding place on Scyros in girl’s clothing in order to dodge the war, which she foresaw, then this would have been sweet revenge for him. ([Location 998](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=998)) - Lemnos was also a potentially crucial source of supplies for any Greek camp at Troy as well as a potential market for any captives whom the Greeks would want to sell as slaves. It was essential to secure Lemnos before going on. ([Location 1006](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1006)) - But the Greeks had three advantages when it came to grabbing a beachhead. Their ships were, as Homer says, “horses of the sea”: fast, mobile, and, even with just their half-decks, serving as raised platforms from which to throw down spears and arrows on the Trojans below. The Greeks were experienced at making fighting runs up onto the beach; the Trojans had little practice in such operations. The Greeks knew how to jump down onto shore rapidly while holding up a shield against enemy arrows, and how to land the ships in a formation that would give their archers maximum protection. ([Location 1101](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1101)) - But the most important Greek resource was the quality of their infantry, the backbone of their land power. ([Location 1108](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1108)) - So when Protesilaus son of Iphiclus became the first Greek to set foot on Trojan soil it was not merely a high honor, it was a necessity. ([Location 1181](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1181)) - The Greeks were not certain of victory until Achilles—by now ashore—killed Cycnus, a Trojan ally who was inflicting big casualties on the Greeks. ([Location 1206](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1206)) - War is deception: no one knows this better than Odysseus. His traveling companion, Menelaus, might dream of avenging his honor, but Odysseus just wants to win. ([Location 1255](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1255)) - Ancient Near Eastern etiquette demanded that a king lay down an official challenge to his opponent. It was unmanly, said a Hittite king, to start a war with a sneak attack. ([Location 1268](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1268)) - Odysseus was different. His remarks were delivered with the strategic skill that was his trademark. First, he softened up the audience by playing the hick, too intimidated by the big city to do any more than hold his scepter and look at the ground. But when his turn came, Odysseus let out words that fell on the assembly like a snowstorm. It was a verbal reminder of the man’s toughness. War was Odysseus’s business. As he reminded Agamemnon when the going got rough: This is what Zeus has given us, from youth to old age: To fight hard wars to the finish, until we are all dead. ([Location 1291](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1291)) - Returning Helen would be admitting that it had been a mistake to let her into Troy in the first place. And that admission might well bring the downfall of the house of Priam. It would have been an invitation for a coup by a member of another branch of the royal family, which was not short of pretenders, or even by an outsider like Antenor. ([Location 1315](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1315)) - They were never willing to stand their ground against the armed might of the Greeks. ([Location 1343](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1343)) - This is exaggeration, but the Trojans did indeed spend most of the war on defense, leaving attacks to the Greeks. Perhaps some of the Trojans were cowards, as Poseidon says, but most were sound strategists. Like their brethren elsewhere in the ancient Near East, they knew that coming out and fighting made better rhetoric than strategy. ([Location 1348](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1348)) - The Late Bronze Age knew three ways to conquer a fortified city: assault, siege, or ruse. ([Location 1354](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1354)) - During years of intermittent fighting on the plain of Troy, the Greeks reached the walls a few times, but the Trojans always quickly forced them back. ([Location 1359](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1359)) - A woman like Andromache had perhaps the most to lose in a sack of the city because she would end up a slave and mistress to one of the victors. ([Location 1393](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1393)) - But the Trojans had a hard time picking Odysseus out of a crowd because he was shorter than some of the other Greek heroes, so perhaps Andromache missed him. ([Location 1404](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1404)) - Idomeneus was son of Deucalion and king of Crete, the island that, two centuries earlier, had been among the Greeks’ first conquests. ([Location 1406](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1406)) - Ajax son of Telamon of Salamis was no genius but he was a murderous giant who never passed up a fight. He and Achilles were cousins. Among the Greeks, only Achilles was bigger and stronger than Ajax, and Idomeneus reckoned Ajax could defeat Achilles in a hand-to-hand fight though he could never match Achilles’ speed. Ajax would fight Hector, Troy’s greatest warrior, to a standstill. Ajax was more like a wall than a man, which is why they called him “the bulwark of the Greeks.” ([Location 1414](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1414)) - Ajax son of Oïleus of Locris suffered in comparison to the prowess of the comrade whose name he shared, so he was called the Lesser Ajax. But he was in no way deficient when it came to mayhem. He was a foul-mouthed brawler with a short temper and ready fists. He is remembered in the Epic Cycle for dragging Cassandra from the altar of Athena to rape her. ([Location 1421](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1421)) - Diomedes son of Tydeus was king of Argos. ([Location 1424](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1424)) - Troy’s outer wall was similarly surrounded by a wooden palisade and a trench, cut into the bedrock, to eight feet deep and ten to eleven feet wide. ([Location 1451](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1451)) - Perhaps the trench was filled in for public-health reasons, since rainwater in it might have represented breeding grounds for mosquitos, leading in turn to outbreaks of malaria. ([Location 1456](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1456)) - The citadel of Troy, called Pergamos, rose about one hundred feet above the plain, a half-acre stronghold. The defenders could stockpile food and they could also rely on a supply of fresh water from an underground spring, reached via a network of manmade tunnels dug some five hundred feet into the rock. ([Location 1465](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1465)) - We would also expect to find Achilles’ right-hand man at his side, Patroclus son of Menoetius. Patroclus played a role in the Myrmidons akin to that in the Egyptian army of the top general Horemheb, who was “Sole Companion, he who is by the feet of the lord on the battlefield on that day of killing Asiatics.” In other words, Patroclus was Achilles’ chief deputy, and no mean commander in his own right. He was murderous on the battlefield but gentle off it, having learned a thing or two since boyhood, when he killed a playmate in a fit of rage during a game of dice. Later Greek writers made Achilles and Patroclus lovers, and perhaps they were, but Homer doesn’t say so. ([Location 1507](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1507)) - Homer says nothing about the notorious heel. ([Location 1515](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1515)) - Achilles came from Phthia, a region in central Greece at the raw edge of Bronze Age Greek civilization. He embodied the best and the worst of the era, its talent and its violence. In all the Greek army no one could match Achilles for his looks or physique. ([Location 1521](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1521)) - Because they enjoyed command of the sea, the Greeks could strike the long Trojan coastline virtually at will. So they ransacked cities; carried off Trojan women, treasure, and livestock; killed some leading men, ransomed others, and sold most of the rest as slaves on the islands of Lemnos, Imbros, and Samos. ([Location 1536](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1536)) - Livestock loomed large in the Late Bronze Age’s list of booty. Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Hittite texts, for instance, often list it as a coveted prize of war. Among the Greeks, raiding cattle, horses, and sheep was honorable, profitable, and violent. ([Location 1545](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1545)) - Slaving was lucrative as well. Anatolian slaves were prized in Greece, no doubt in part because of stereotypes about slavish easterners that were common in classical Greece. But Anatolians fetched high prices in the Bronze Age for a more practical reason: in general, they were better-educated, more sophisticated, and more highly skilled than ordinary Greeks. ([Location 1553](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1553)) - For nine days an epidemic had gripped the camp. It started with the mules and the dogs, then it spread to the men. Infection followed a trajectory like that of anthrax, plague, SARS, avian flu, and the many other diseases spread from animals to human, but no specific illness can be identified from Homer’s brief description. It is enough to know that the beach at Troy was crowded with funeral pyres. ([Location 1747](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1747)) - Malaria had been a major problem around Troy until recent years. Did it exist there as early as the Bronze Age? Biomolecular science may one day provide an answer, but we don’t yet know. ([Location 1758](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1758)) - Of the various heroes who vied for the right to be called “best of the Greeks,” none hated each other more than Achilles and Agamemnon. Achilles found fault with Agamemnon for taking the lion’s share of the booty even though Achilles did most of the sacking of cities. Agamemnon found Achilles insolent and uppity. Achilles lacked respect for Agamemnon’s preeminence as Greece’s leading king, while Agamemnon felt threatened by Achilles’ preeminence as a warrior. ([Location 1784](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1784)) - After Briseis left him, Achilles sat on the beach and cried like a baby: tears of rage, to be sure, but perhaps of loss as well. He was not a happy man. Then again, who could be happy knowing as Achilles did that he was fated to die young? Like many other men in the epics, Achilles weeps freely and regularly. ([Location 1832](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1832)) - The Myrmidons made up about 5 percent of the Greek force. And an oracle had said that the Greeks would not take Troy without Achilles. ([Location 1845](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1845)) - Odysseus’s quick thinking saved the day. Borrowing Agamemnon’s royal scepter, he ran into the multitude and restored order. The scepter was part escutcheon and part relic. An ancient symbol, the scepter denoted kingship throughout the ancient world, for the Assyrian King Tukulti-Ninurta (1244–1208 B.C.) as well as for Agamemnon. The scepter stood for divine approval, ([Location 1892](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1892)) - But Agamemnon was not overconfident. He knew that on the far side of the plain, Hector would be mustering his troops. A smart general knows you cannot suppress a wartime mutiny without shedding blood. Nothing wipes the slate clean like a corpse. Not having executed anyone for the wild dash to the ships, Agamemnon did the only sensible thing he could do: he sent his men out to die. ([Location 1980](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1980)) - When the Hittites went to war, they sang hymns to the war-god. Before battle, they would chant an old poem whose refrain asks that they be buried at home with their mothers. When, in the Iliad, the Trojans and their allies rush out against an unexpected Greek attack, they shout battle cries to steel themselves. The Greeks are as silent as a boxer conserving his energy for a knockout punch. ([Location 1985](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1985)) - Bronze Age archers could hit a target at 300–400 yards. Estimates are that a top slinger could reach a speed of 100–150 miles per hour and hit a target 150 feet away. ([Location 1993](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1993)) - Most archers and slingers fought without armor or shield and were stationed behind the lines of heavy-armed spearmen. ([Location 1996](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1996)) - It was clear that Hector wanted a parley. The Trojan proposed that, instead of a general engagement, there be a battle between two champions: none other than Paris and Menelaus, the originators of the war, as it were, and, in fact, the two men who had just stepped forward on each side (it was Paris who had then quickly retreated). If Menelaus killed Paris, the Trojans would return Helen and the Spartan treasure; if Paris killed Menelaus, the Greeks would allow Helen and the treasure to remain in Troy. ([Location 1998](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=1998)) - Homer shows Paris under pressure from his hard-as-nails older brother, Hector, to prove himself in combat. Hector insults Paris by calling Paris “girl crazy”: real men think about war not women. ([Location 2004](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2004)) - Then one of the Trojan commanders broke the truce. According to Homer, the gods persuaded Pandarus son of Lycaon, one of Troy’s leading allies, to shoot an arrow that wounded Menelaus. Now both sides reached for their weapons. As has often happened in the history of war, a rogue soldier upset the generals’ plans. ([Location 2023](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2023)) - Because Pandarus had broken the truce to which Priam had solemnly sworn, a pitched battle ensued. It was unplanned, and yet Agamemnon could not have arranged things better: ([Location 2041](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2041)) - Agamemnon may emerge as an unappealing personality in Homer, but he could be a good general. He did make a number of mistakes, but he knew how to admit errors and switch course—fast. He gave up Chryseis, for example. He let his colleagues Odysseus and Nestor quell the troops’ mutiny. ([Location 2049](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2049)) - Arrow wounds were frequent and often fatal; merely removing a barbed arrowhead could kill, because of shock or infection, and the pain could be agonizing. ([Location 2066](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2066)) - The warrior might fight from his chariot but it was more usual for him to dismount and exchange blows on foot. The main advantage conferred by chariots was mobility. Secondarily the chariot was a psychological weapon, since the noise of the wheels and the sight of the horses may have frightened some of the enemy. The tanklike charge of a mass of chariots in order to break the enemy’s line may have played a big role in Egyptian and Hittite warfare—the experts disagree—but it was not to be found at Troy. For most of the year the terrain was too wet for that and, besides, neither side had enough chariots for a mass charge: Troy lacked the imperial wealth and Greeks lacked the horse power! ([Location 2071](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2071)) - When the infantrymen clashed, the best fighters stood in the front lines, unless the commander had thrown ordinary troops before them to prevent those troops from fleeing. Homer refers to the best soldiers as “fore-fighters” (promachoi) or simply “the first men.” ([Location 2076](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2076)) - Duels were probably not unusual on the Bronze Age battlefield. But surely they were not nearly as prominent as they are in Homer. Bronze Age battle poetry exaggerates heroic individualism and downplays group effort. Homer’s emphasis on duels between heroes is more likely to reflect Bronze Age literary style than actual Bronze Age warfare. ([Location 2104](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2104)) - But they were not prepared to fall back tamely behind the city walls. For the first time during the war, they pitched their camp on the Trojan Plain, in an open space free of the bodies of the fallen. By camping on the west bank of the Scamander River, the Trojan army took a calculated risk, but it kept the pressure on the Greeks. Homer calls the place “the bridges of war.” The Trojan Plain was marshy, especially in its northern end, and “bridges” possibly refers to an area of solid ground for chariots to cross. ([Location 2237](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2237)) - Agamemnon had ordered a teary-eyed abandonment of the expedition. Diomedes responded with a reckless pledge to stand, conquer, or die, and the men cheered. Nestor came to the rescue with a levelheaded plan: post sentries along the wall and call the chiefs to a council of war. The stakes couldn’t have been higher. As Nestor said: This night will either destroy the encampment or save it. ([Location 2252](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2252)) - Nestor spoke frankly. They were ruined, he said, unless they got Achilles and the Myrmidons back, and that would happen only if Agamemnon returned Briseis to Achilles. Nestor might have saved his words because Agamemnon had already reached the same conclusion. He claimed the gods had blinded him when he offended Achilles. Now that he had his wits about him once more, he would make amends not merely by returning the young woman (untouched by him), but by adding gifts worthy of a king whose property was as wide as the sea: seven women captured when Achilles took Lesbos, seven tripods, ten talents of gold, twenty cauldrons, and twelve prizewinning horses. ([Location 2263](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2263)) - When Dolon was captured, he begged to be ransomed and readily told the Greeks everything they wanted to know. He was a “man of tongue,” as informers were called in a letter of around 1800 B.C. from the city of Mari on the Euphrates. Dolon revealed the disposition of the Trojan and allied troops, the absence of guards around the camp, and the presence of Hector in a war council. He divulged new details about the Thracian reinforcements under their king Rhesus son of Eïoneus, with his magnificent team of white horses (a color especially valued in horses in the Late Bronze Age), as well as his chariot with its gold and silver decoration, and armor with gold details. ([Location 2306](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2306)) - The story of Dolon reveals the road not taken, the road that might have led Troy to victory. Although they were dealt a poor hand the Trojans could have played it better by displaying creativity and adaptability. Instead, they were all frontal assault, focused on a war of attrition, revealing a ponderous lack of maneuverability. ([Location 2328](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2328)) - The Trojans should have fought what has been called the “the war of the flea,” harassing the Greeks by taking a nip here, a bite there. ([Location 2330](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2330)) - A good rule of warfare is never stop an enemy from trying to withdraw. Instead, Hector did the worst possible thing by launching a frontal attack on the Greek camp. He drove Achilles and company right back into the other Greeks’ arms. ([Location 2615](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2615)) - Sweet as it was to drive his spearhead through Hector’s neck, to spit out taunts—no fewer than three times—about the dogs and birds that would soon eat the dying man’s corpse, to strip off his stolen armor from the Trojan’s body, to see his comrades poke the still-warm flesh with their spears, and to raise the victory paean among the Greeks, it was not enough for Achilles. Achilles brought the corpse back to his camp and dumped it before Patroclus’s bier. It lay there until after his friend’s funeral, when Achilles hitched up his chariot and dragged the cadaver around Patroclus’s tomb three times. Like Hittite and Egyptian generals, the Greek leader mistreated his enemy’s corpse. ([Location 2629](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2629)) - The Iliad tells how Priam journeyed courageously at night across the plain to the Greek camp and, at the risk of his own life, begged Achilles for Hector’s corpse. The old man fell to his knees before Achilles and kissed the Greek’s murderous hands. It was humiliating, but Priam was engaging in a classic gesture of prostration and self-abasement. ([Location 2643](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2643)) - Penthesilea is said to have come to Troy with twelve other Amazon warriors and to have distinguished herself in action. She is also supposed to have been so beautiful that, after Achilles took off the dead woman’s helmet and saw her face, he fell in love. ([Location 2665](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2665)) - Among other feats, Memnon killed Nestor’s son Antilochus before being killed by Achilles in turn. In Homer, Memnon is son of the legendary Tithonus and the goddess Dawn. Other sources claim a marriage tie between Memnon’s family and Priam’s. ([Location 2685](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2685)) - Memnon is too obscure a character for us to be sure that he existed, but it is worth speculating that he might have been black. Memnon came from Aethiopia, a place thought of by the Greeks in various and sometimes vague ways. ([Location 2687](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2687)) - And Achilles was on the verge of forcing his way into Troy when he was struck down by Paris. ([Location 2698](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2698)) - Paris must have taken up a position on the walls. At an elevation of twenty-five feet or more, there were few reference points to judge the distance accurately, which was critical because arrows shot from a compound bow follow an arched trajectory in flight. The ground was also packed with soldiers, so Paris pulled off an extraordinarily lucky shot. ([Location 2712](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2712)) - The Trojan girls’ verdict was reported to the Greeks, and Odysseus was declared the victor. Ajax, the original sore loser, went completely mad. Eventually he committed suicide, but not before destroying the cattle of the Greeks. Killing the animals was no small thing, since the cattle represented all the effort that had gone into many raids, usually led by Achilles, and they represented wealth to bring home, sacrifices to the gods, and food for the troops. The Little Iliad says that Ajax so angered “the king” (Agamemnon?) that he was denied the usual funeral pyre, and consigned instead to a funerary urn or coffin. Among the Greeks, unlike the Romans, suicide was not considered to be an honorable end. ([Location 2741](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2741)) - With the bow of Heracles, Philoctetes avenged Achilles by killing Paris. The triumphant Greeks took the body and Menelaus wasted no time in showing his anger by treating the corpse with complete contempt. But the Trojans fought back and recovered what was left of Paris. He was given a decent burial. Trojan custom required that his widow cut short the time spent wearing mournful black. And shortly afterward Helen married his brother Deïphobus. ([Location 2763](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2763)) - Odysseus was on the verge of a propaganda coup. He sneaked into Troy on what turned out to be the first of two secret missions. The Odyssey reports that Odysseus took great pains to camouflage himself, not only exchanging his armor for rags but changing his appearance by striking his face with a whip or a stick until it swelled up. Nobody recognized him in Troy except Helen. Years later, telling the story back in Sparta, she claimed to have helped Odysseus with no less than a bath, a rubdown, and a fresh set of clothes. But she badgered him until he revealed his strategy. As usual, Helen wanted something in return for her attention. ([Location 2784](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2784)) - Sinon played a key role in the plot to take Troy, although he is often forgotten, overshadowed by the most famous trick in Western civilization. ([Location 2817](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2817)) - The Trojans were amazed to discover that after all these years, the enemy had slunk home. But what were they to do with the Horse? After a fierce debate, they brought it into the city as an offering to Athena. There were wild celebrations. The Trojans underestimated the cunning of their adversaries. That night, the men inside the horse sneaked out and opened the city’s gates to the men of the Greek fleet, who had taken advantage of Troy’s drunken distraction to sail back from Tenedos. They proceeded to sack the city and win the war. ([Location 2824](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2824)) - Everyone knows the story but nobody loves the Trojan Horse. Although scholars disagree about much of the Trojan War, they nearly all share the conviction that the Trojan Horse is a fiction. ([Location 2828](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2828)) - Although epic tradition might exaggerate the details of the Trojan Horse and misunderstand its purpose, that the object existed and that it played a role in tricking the Trojans into leaving their city without defenses might just be true. ([Location 2835](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2835)) - Although the traditional story of the Trojan Horse cannot be ruled out, it seems more probable that, if the Horse did exist, it was empty. There were simpler and less dangerous ways of smuggling soldiers into the city. The horse’s main value to the Greeks was not as a transport but as a decoy, a low-tech ancestor of the phantom army under General Patton that the Allies used in 1944 to trick the Germans into expecting the D-day invasion in the area of Pas de Calais instead of Normandy. ([Location 2902](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2902)) - Vergil makes much of Priam’s daughter Cassandra, an opponent of the Horse who enjoyed the gift of prophecy but suffered the curse of being ignored. ([Location 2909](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2909)) - Helen played a double game. She had helped Odysseus on his mission to Troy and learned of his plan of the Horse. Now she tried to coax the Greeks out of the Horse, but Odysseus kept them silent—or perhaps the Horse was empty. Helen is supposed to have gone back home that night and prepared herself for the inevitable. She had her maids arrange her clothes and cosmetics for her reunion with Menelaus. ([Location 2926](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2926)) - But the Greek known for scoring the most kills in the sack of Troy is Achilles’ son, Neoptolemus. ([Location 2939](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2939)) - Little Astyanax, Hector’s son, was murdered by Odysseus—thrown from the walls, in one version—lest he grow up and seek vengeance. ([Location 2948](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2948)) - When the Greeks sacked the city, they put Troy to the torch. Archaeology discloses that a savage fire destroyed the settlement level known as Troy VIi (formerly called Troy VIIa). ([Location 2956](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=2956)) - The refugees might have meditated on the irony of Troy’s fate. For all their fury, the Greeks never surrounded the city or sealed it off from the outside world. They tried to storm Troy’s walls but failed. Nor did pitched battle between armies led by heroes succeed in the conquest of Troy. Only the steady pressure of Greek raids on Troy’s hinterland, which lay open to Greek sea power, bled the city white. And in its vulnerable state, Troy fell prey to a fatal act of espionage. It was cunning and not courage that killed Troy. ([Location 3006](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000MGATX0&location=3006))