Troy

[The following is Episode 4 of my 16-part documentary series entitled Larger than Life, about the role that beliefs play in shaping the events of our civilization.]

            It was a battle fought more than three thousand years ago, in a small coastal city in Asia Minor, but it is still remembered to this day.  Two great peoples clashed in a fierce struggle that lasted for more than ten years, and the fate of an entire kingdom lay in the balance.  On the one side, a confederation of kings, joined by their common desire to exact vengeance on a single enemy, and on the other side, a mighty sea power, its capital guarded by impregnable walls and the desperate resolve of its citizens to defend it to the bitter end.  Great heroes on both sides faced each other in combat, their swords clanging violently on massive shields, drawing strength from a bitter rage and unyielding determination that both inspired them and goaded them, driving them on relentlessly to fight or to die.  War chariots raced across the battlefield, in a flurry of arrows, battle cries, and screams of anguish.  It was said that at times so many died that the sheer number of their bodies clogged up entire rivers.  It was even said that the gods themselves joined in the battle, fighting alongside their mortal allies.  History had never seen a war like this one.  And its outcome would shape the course of civilization.  What brought the armies of so many countries together into such a cataclysmic conflict?  It was not the desire for conquest, or wealth, or revolution.  Tradition tells us that the war was fought over a woman, Helen.  Hers was “the face the launched a thousand ships”, and their common destination, the land where two great powers would clash and ultimately shape their destinies, was Troy.

            Two hundred years before the battle of Troy, a great empire met its downfall.  This was the Minoan Civilization, based on the island of Crete that had dominated the seas for hundreds of years before succumbing to a series of natural disasters.  The Minoans had gained their wealth and power through trade and commerce, not through war or conquest, but even before their civilization collapsed, powerful rivals were rising up in nearby Greece.  The Mycenaeans had migrated into the Greek mainland around 2200 B.C.  In contrast to the Minoans, they were a militaristic people, and their societies were organized around small, highly fortified citadels.  Each city, or acropolis, as it was called, was led by a king who served as both military leader and high priest.  The Mycenaean peoples made up a warlike society that was constantly engaged in small-scale feuds and raids.

Although their belligerence may have distinguished them from the Minoans, the Mycenaean peoples, like the Minoans, were also culturally advanced.  The people practiced a high degree of craftsmanship, particularly metalwork, and engaged in extensive trade.  They were literate, and used the same alphabet that had been adopted by later Minoan society.  Perhaps not coincidently, the Mycenaean civilization reached its peak at the same time that Minoan civilization went into decline - about 1400 B.C.  Its cultural predominance lasted approximately 200 years until the civilization ended abruptly around 1200 B.C. – right around the time, as a matter of fact, that the battle with Troy was supposed to have taken place.  Historians believe that this abrupt end came about as the result of invasion or internal revolution.  But there is little that we can learn of this people through the fragments of pottery and remnants of writing that have been unearthed in excavated ruins.  Their story comes to us from a different source.

When the Mycenaean era ended, no civilization arose to fill the void.  In fact, the entire region went into a general decline, known as the Dark Ages.  This decline affected all areas of culture, including technology, architecture, and art.  The people even forgot how to read and write.  Perhaps more significantly, the general population declined.

            While we don’t know what exactly caused the Dark Ages, it is known that two large-scale migrations were occurring at this time.  From the north of Greece, a relatively uncivilized Greek people known as the Dorians moved overland to the south.  This migration in turn pushed the existing population, called Ionians, from northern Greece into Attica, a region in the southeastern part of Greece that would later become the site of Athens.  The Ionians also migrated off the mainland, across the neighboring islands and onto the coast of Asia Minor.  Only one significant technical advance occurred during this time - the replacement of bronze by iron as the principal metal. 

For these new Greeks who came to dominate the land during the Dark Ages, history began in the year 776 B.C., a year remembered by them as when the first Olympic games were ever held.  This was their “0 AD”, and all important events in their memory were marked off of this date.  By 750 B.C., writing had been reintroduced, but events preceding this era were only dimly remembered by the Greeks, and survived as legends, myths, poems, epics, and songs.  Two men who lived at the beginning of the new age attempted to preserve this prehistoric legacy in poems and verses.  They were Homer and Hesiod.

Homer

            Homer, according to Greek tradition, was a blind poet who lived in the eighth century B.C.  He is credited with composing two epic works of poetry, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which described events during and immediately after the Trojan War.  His works were regarded by Greeks of later generations as authoritative sources on theology, tradition, ancient history, and morality.  They were regularly copied, memorized, recited, and alluded to by the poets, singers, dramatists, and intellectuals of classical Greece.  The Homeric hero served as a model for all young men growing up in Greek city-states.  In a very real sense, the Iliad and the Odyssey together were revered as a sort of bible by the ancient Greeks.  Hesiod was also a poet, and his verses covered many subjects, ranging from practical advice on how to live a successful life in his Works and Days, to a great epic called the Theogony that recounts the origins of the gods, the creation of the universe, and other mythical tales.

            The names of the Greek gods and goddesses are still familiar to us today - Zeus, Hera, Athena, Aphrodite (called Venus by the later Romans), Apollo – and in the stories handed down to us of their adventures, we see parallels to the myths of the Sumerians and Egyptians.  We learn that Zeus, for example, rose to power by overthrowing an older generation of gods, called the Titans, of whom his own father, Cronus, had been the most powerful.  And, just as we found in the myths of Sumer and Egypt, there is evidence that this revolution in heaven mirrored events on earth, in this case the appearance of the Dorian invaders, whose personal gods and goddesses displaced those who had been worshiped by the peoples that the Dorians had conquered or driven out.  There is even another flood legend.  In the Greeks’ version, Zeus became displeased with human treachery, and sent the devastating flood, but not before Prometheus, the Titan who had created mankind, warned Deucalion and his wife to build an ark.  As the rains subsided, the ark settled upon Mount Parnassus and, upon hearing the advice of an oracle, Deucalion and his wife threw stones over their shoulders.  The stones that he threw became men, the stones that she threw became women, and their son became the leader of a new race of people, separate from the rest of barbarian humanity, called the Hellenes.  Hellenes, by the way, is what the ancient Greeks called themselves – the word “Greek” comes down to us from the Romans, who called them “Graeci”.  Needless to say, another parallel between the gods of the Greeks and those of the Sumerians and Egyptians is that they had very human qualities – they could be petty and cruel, jealous, greedy, impetuous and spiteful.  They had very human personalities, but superhuman powers.  And, according to legend, it was because of them that the Trojan War started.

            We are told that the Trojan War, like many great sagas, began with a wedding - the wedding of King Peleus of Pthia and Thetis, a goddess.  The ceremony was not immodest, including as it did the cream of nobility both in Peleus’s kingdom and in neighboring kingdoms, as well as virtually all of the gods.  Only one of the immortals was not invited - Eres, the goddess of strife.  Angered by this slight, and true to her name, Eres resolved to introduce some trouble into the gathering.  She inscribed the phrase "For the fairest" on a golden apple and rolled the apple into the middle of the wedding reception.  Three goddesses lunged for the apple: Hera, the queen of the Gods, Athena, the goddess of war and wisdom, and Aphrodite, the goddess of love.  They began to quarrel among themselves over who was truly worthy of this prize and its flattering inscription.  It was resolved that a beauty contest should be held, with a human judge selecting the winner.  A young prince of Troy, named Paris, was selected for this task.  It was doomed to create trouble, because whomever he picked, there would be two very unhappy and very powerful losers. 

The Wedding of Thetis and Peleus . . . 

. . . and a Wedding Crasher

            But Paris didn’t shrink from his obligation.  He was young, vain, and not unappreciative of the finer qualities of the female sex.  But the goddesses made his task a little more challenging.  Each offered him a bribe in return for his vote: Hera pledged him an empire over Asia and the furthest reaches of Europe, Athena promised to put him at the head of a great army which would conquer Greece, and Aphrodite offered him the most beautiful woman on earth.  Now Paris, being a young man, preferred love to power, and he accepted Aphrodite's bribe.  Aphrodite kept her promise, but the result was disaster for Troy.  The most beautiful woman in the world was Helen, who happened to be already married and, even worse, married to a king - Menelaus of Sparta.  But this didn’t deter Paris.  With Aphrodite's aid he removed Helen from Menelaus's palace and took her back to Troy.  By accepting Aphrodite's bribe, Paris would cause his people to face the wrath of Menelaus, the Spartans, the Greek kingdoms which would ally themselves with Sparta, and two very angry and very powerful goddesses, Hera and Athena.

Paris Judges a Beauty Contest

            The Greek alliance was formed under the leadership of Agamemnon, older brother of Menelaus and king of the Mycenaens.  The combined Greek forces gathered at the port of Aulis, but their fleet of one thousand ships was detained by the absence of favorable winds.  Agamemnon learned through his prophet Calchas that the goddess Artemis was holding back the winds - she was displeased with him for reneging on an earlier pledge that he would sacrifice to her the finest thing that had been produced in his household.  She wouldn’t allow the ships to sail until he sacrificed that finest thing, which – much to the distress of Agamemnon – was his oldest daughter, Iphigenia.  Reluctantly, he complied, and told his wife Clytemnestra to send their daughter to Aulis.  Naturally she wished to know the reason.  Agamemnon explained that Iphigenia was going to be married to Achilles, the son of King Peleus, that King whose wedding had caused the war with Troy.  Clytemnestra was overjoyed at the news, but her joy turned to horror when she learned of the true fate of her daughter.

Principal Locations and Characters in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey

            Homer's Iliad describes important events that occurred over the span of a few days in the Trojan War.  When the epic begins, the war has been going on for nine years.  The Greeks have not been able to overcome Troy's walled defenses, and have had to content themselves with raids upon neighboring villages allied to Troy.  Tempers are running high on both sides of the war, morale is low, and the Greek forces face a new threat that has come upon them in the form of a devastating plague.  A prophet learns that the god Apollo is responsible for the plaque - he has learned that Agamemnon, during one of the Greek raids, has abducted the daughter of one of Apollo's high priests.  The prophet trembles at bringing this news to Agamemnon, but Achilles urges him on, and promises his support.  Agamemnon doesn’t take the news well.  In a display of ill grace, he reluctanctly agrees to send the girl back to her father, but only on the condition that he will take Achilles' war prize instead - a beautiful young woman named Briseis.

            It’s only with the help of Athena that Achilles restrains himself from killing Agamemnon on the spot, but his anger doesn’t pass.  He removes himself and his fellow countrymen, the Myrmidons, from the battle.  He appeals to his mother, the goddess Thetis, for aid in getting redress from Agamemnon for his insult.  Thetis, in turn, carries the plea to Zeus, king of the Gods, reminding him that Achilles is fated to die in this war, and insisting that he deserves at least to die with honor.  Zeus sympathizes with her appeal and her son's plight, and resolves to restore honor to him by turning the tide of battle against the Greeks, which will in turn force Agamemnon to repent for his rash actions and beg Achilles for assistance.

            The Trojans do gain the upper hand in battle - at one point even chasing the Greeks back to their ships - and Agamemnon sends messengers to Achilles' tent with a personal apology and a plea for him to reenter the battle.  Achilles refuses.  The Greeks continue to suffer heavy casualties.  At last, Achilles' close friend Patroclus cannot bear to watch his fellow soldiers being slaughtered in the battle any longer.  He pleads with Achilles to lend him his armor and let him lead the Myrmidons back into battle.  After Achilles reluctantly agrees, Patroclus and his countrymen enter the battle and fight valiantly.  The tide of battle appears to be turning again, in favor of the Greeks, until Patroclus himself is killed at the hands of Hector, brother of Paris and the greatest warrior on the Trojan side.  Achilles, horrified and grief-stricken at the sight of his dead comrade, enters the battle with a vengeance, killing so many Trojans that their bodies actually clog a river.  But Achilles doesn’t end his killing frenzy until he at last confronts Hector and exacts retribution for the death of his close friend.  Not content with merely killing Hector, Achilles ties his body to the back of his chariot and drags it around the battlefield.  The Iliad ends with King Priam of Troy entreating Achilles to return the body of his son to him; Achilles agrees, the two men weep over the tragedy of the war, and a temporary armistice is declared so that the Trojans can give Hector a proper funeral and burial.

            According to legend, Achilles was himself slain shortly after the death of Hector by Hector’s brother Paris.  Now Paris didn’t have Hector's valor or courage, but he was an excellent marksman with a bow - he managed to murder Achilles by lodging a poison-tipped arrow in Achilles’ famous vulnerable heel.  The death of Achilles did not prevent the fall of Troy.  Its walls remained impregnable until a clever scheme devised by Odysseus put Greek soldiers inside.  The soldiers were hidden inside of a huge, wooden horse, which was left on a plain of the battlefield.  When the Trojans discovered the horse, they also found that the Greeks had apparently departed in their ships, leaving only one soldier behind.  This soldier explained to the Trojans that the large horse was an idol dedicated to Athena - an oracle had told them that its possessor would be the victor in this great war.  After some discussion, and against the advice of Laocoon, a Trojan priest - the one who said that famous line, "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts!" - the Trojans decided to bring the horse within their walled city.  That night, the Greek soldiers came out of the horse and opened the city gates, where their comrades, who had returned in their ships under cover of darkness, were waiting.  Troy was defeated and sacked.  All of its adult males (except a few who escaped) were killed, the women and children were taken as slaves, and the city itself was burned to the ground.

            Not all of the surviving Greeks would enjoy the fruits of victory.  Agamemnon returned home to a very bitter wife Clytemnestra, who, in collusion with her lover, murdered him in his own bathtub.  (She and her lover would in turn be murdered by her children Electra and Orestes as an act of retribution for their father's death.)  Odysseus did not see his home until after ten years of wandering at sea, during which time he lost his entire crew to various enemies and disasters.  Upon his return, he discovered that his home had been invaded by a company of suitors competing for the hand of his wife, Penelope.  He was not able to reclaim his home and kingdom until murdering all of the suitors with the help of his son, two loyal farmhands, and the goddess Athena.  King Menelaus, whose misfortunes had caused the war, returned to a more pleasant life than these men.  He’d originally resolved to murder his wife, Helen, after coming to believe that she had willingly joined company with Paris.  But upon seeing her after the fall of Troy, his anger disappeared, they reconciled, and then they returned together as a happy couple to Menelaus' palace in Sparta.

            By the dawn of the Greek historic age, when Homer was reciting his tales of the Trojan War, and Hesiod was describing the exploits of the gods, the Greek people were no longer ruled by kings.  Instead, each city-state was generally run by a privileged group, an elite caste of aristocrats or other powerful men who dominated their fellow citizens.  Many of these elite had gained their power through success in business and trade, rather than military victories or landholding.  Their rule gradually became more inflexible and harsh, particularly toward the poor and underprivileged, and it was during this time that slavery became common in the land of Greece.  In desperation, the people put their trust in self-proclaimed saviors – generally aristocrats themselves – who promised relief in return for loyalty.  But the relief was short-lived, for whenever a champion of the people gained enough power, he soon turned into a tyrant, occasionally benevolent, but often at least as cruel as the ruling class that he had overthrown.

            As tyranny became more intolerable among the peoples of Greece, bold new experiments in lawmaking began to appear.  Nowhere was this more true than in the two city-states that were destined to become the most important in Greece, Athens and Sparta.  In Athens, two great lawgivers, Solon, and later Cleisthenes, implemented a series of bold reforms that brought an end to slavery and relief to the poor, and introduced a new form of government that would be forever associated with Athens, democracy.  In Sparta, the legendary lawgiver Lycurgus introduced an equally bold, and much more radically unique, form of government. 

The civilization of Sparta was unlike any other in Greece.  Its people had evolved into a society of warriors.  Their ancestors, after founding the city-state of Sparta, had conquered the inhabitants in the neighboring land of Messenia.  But the Messenians were not content to remain a race of slaves, and the persistent threat of rebellion forced the Spartans to adopt a permanent military lifestyle.  Their children were trained to live the harsh and austere life of a soldier from a very early age, and were brought up to believe that there was no greater virtue than to be a fierce warrior, and to die in battle, if necessary.  Now this was hardly a land conducive to democracy, but the lawgiver Lycurgus did not believe that rule by an elite caste or by a single king was any better.  His solution was to create a government that was a mix of all three – monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy.  The Spartans were ruled by two kings, each from a different clan, and these in turn were advised by a council of elders.  But there was also a general assembly, which consisted of all males over thirty years of age.  Of all of the Greek city-states, only Sparta never succumbed to tyrants.  While its unique government may have helped to prevent this, the Spartan attitude toward money probably also made it difficult if not impossible for tyranny to arise.  Wealth was abhorred in Sparta, and the accumulation of it was actively discouraged through the use of large metal ingots as money.  With no wealthy class, and an underclass that was completely beaten and dominated, the conditions of social unrest that had led to tyranny elsewhere in Greece were held securely in check by the Spartans.

            In their ancient legends, the Athenians and Spartans had fought and defeated great powers in distant ages.  The Athenians could pride themselves in defeating the inhabitants of Atlantis, when the peoples of this legendary island nation had become arrogant and cruel.  And it was the Athenians, again, or rather their champion Theseus, who humbled the mighty King Minos by destroying his monstrous son, the Minotaur.  Finally, it was the Spartan king Menelaus who became the rallying point for a combined Greek army to invade Troy and reclaim Menelaus’s abducted wife, Helen, in the battle that was best remembered by the Greeks of later times.  But two hundred years after the death of the poet Homer, who immortalized the legend of the Trojan War, Athens and Sparta together would face a powerful empire that threatened to conquer, if not destroy, Greek civilization.  The empire was that of the Persians, and its leader, Darius I, turned his wrath upon the Greeks after discovering that they had attempted to aid some of the cities under his dominion in a revolt.  At first, he demanded tribute from the Greeks, and all of the city-states gave in to the demands of his agents, except Athens and Sparta, who killed the agents.  Enraged, the Persian king sent an invading army into Greece in 490 B.C., but the army was repelled by Athenian soldiers at the battle of Marathon, and news of the victory was delivered by a runner back to Athens, giving name to a race that is commemorated to this day.  Another Persian army was more successful, overcoming valiant resistance by the Spartans, but the tide of battle turned when the Persian fleet was destroyed by Athenian soldiers, and the invaders were again driven out of Greece.

            Together, the Athenians and Spartans had defeated the most powerful empire of their day, but in their victory lay the seeds of their own downfall.  Athens now became a great sea power, and its great navy threatened to overshadow the legendary military might of the Spartans.  As Athens became more autocratic and inflexible, seeking to exert direct control over its Greek allies and turn them into subjects rather than partners, and as Sparta grew to envy the Athenians’ growing prosperity and influence, Sparta and its allies joined in common cause to keep this rising new power in check.  Conflict ensued, culminating in the long and mutually destructive Peloponnesian War.  The result was eventual ruin for both of these great city-states. 

           

The Death of Socrates

But it was now, during Athens’ final downfall, that she produced her greatest legacy to civilization.  For it was during this time that the greatest philosopher ever known, Socrates, enthralled young listeners with his keen mind and subtle wisdom, and left a legacy that still endures.  “All I know is that I know nothing,” he claimed, but during his life he demonstrated again and again that none was wiser than he.  If philosophy was not born in Greece, it was here that it found its fullest expression.  Even before Socrates, Greek wise men had laid the foundations for a tradition of intellectual inquiry that had never before been seen in the world.  For two hundred years, men such as Thales, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, and Democritus asked simple but profound questions that cast myth aside in the search for truth.  “What is the world made of?”  “How can we know what is real and what is true?” and “How should one live one’s life?” were the types of questions that guided their speculation.  For the first time in history, human beings – their role in the universe, their capacities, and their conduct, comprised a field of study.  “Man is the measure of all things,” a Greek philosopher once said, and this was the rallying cry for the new schools of ideas.  Today we call it humanism – the belief that man can find a purpose, a destiny, and a basis for right conduct in self-examination, and not in the supernatural.  Socrates was put to death for this attitude, but his beliefs were preserved, expanded upon, and refined through the writings of his pupil, Plato, and Plato’s equally eminent pupil, Aristotle.  Aristotle, in turn, tried to impart his wisdom onto a student of a different kind, the son of a Macedonian king.  Later, this young man, who had been the student of one of the greatest philosophers of all time, would find fame of his own, not as a sage, but as a conqueror.  Alexander the Great, as we remember him today, created an empire larger than any the world had yet seen, expanding outward from Greece to Persia and even to Egypt.  And in the wake of his conquering armies, Alexander planted the seeds of Greek philosophy which he had received from his teacher, seeds which would sprout, flourish, and survive in later civilizations, long after his own empire had fallen.

Alexander the Great

The legacy of the ancient Greeks remains with us to this day.  The simple but direct questions that they asked about truth, reality, wisdom, and right conduct, as well as many of the answers that they proposed, survive in our sciences, our laws, and even our traditions.  But there is another legacy, equally powerful, equally revolutionary, that we bear, a gift to us from another ancient people.  And just as the Greeks found their identity and their destiny through the defeat of a powerful, oppressive enemy, the Hebrews would cross the threshold of history when they successfully withstood and brought down the awesome power of the Egyptians.