Currently reading: The Trojan War. The book tries to marry history, archeology, the bronze age culture with the epics from classical Greek times, namely Homer's Illiad and Odyssey. Troy was a Bronze Age Anatolian city in the Dardanelles of modern day Turkey. Like England and France constantly being at war for multiple centuries due to being separated by a channel, the geography is similar with Troy and the Greek states, having the Aegean Sea between them.

The battle of ships

Troy, rather than being a Greek city, was Anatolian and under the wing of the Hittites whose political and military influence stretched from Turkey into Mesopotamia and Northern Syria. Strauss paints Troy as a city of middlemen whose tranquil harbor dominated the approach to the Black Sea and where it was safe for the bronze age era ships to wait out the stormy and windy seasons - for a price. Consequently Tory was a wealthy city. Sufficiently so that it could keep an alliance of Greek Cheiftains together for a ten year campaign to plunder it.

The premise of the Trojan War is that Paris cuckolded Menelaus, a Spartan King, by running off with his wife Helen; along with the wealth of Sparta. Cuckolded and furious, Menelaus brings in his powerful brother Agamemnon who creates a powerful Greek coalition - including heroes such as Achilles and Ajax - to bring back Helen, as well as plunder Troy, its surrounds, and its allies of their wealth.

Homer writes of the epic pitched battles but Strauss argues from historical evidence that the war - like the Peloponesian War - was largely assymetric with towns along the coast being sacked by Achilles and other Greek armies for food, cattle, women, slaves and gold. A well defended city like Troy was difficult to breach, but smaller towns were no match for battle hardened Greeks.

The heroes dominate the narrative. Successively offended the gods, the morality of the time, and the culture, and then forced to redeem themselves in battle, sacrifices or other means. So we see Hector kill Patroclus, who is then in turn killed by Achilles, who is then killed by Paris, who is then killed by Philoctetes.

The heroes, who tended to be royal or noble, are thought to have been about six feet tall judging by archeological remains. This was probably due to the better diet they received. The standard Greek or Trojan was closer to five foot five. The nobles wore bronze armor which we - as twenty first century consumers of industrial quality control - would consider of clunky design and poor workmanship.

The most common weapon was a spear tipped with bronze and using ash for the base. Metallurgical technology was sufficiently poor that swords were not trusted as they had a bad tendency to break at the hilt. The later slashing sword had not yet made its way from central Europe at the time of the Trojan War. Shields were common too, and a tall shield would be a replacement for body armor, a soldier wearing one or the other, but not both. The shields were leather rimmed with bronze.

In the tale of the War, after all the great heroes are lost through the attrition of warfare Odysseus places the ruse of the Trojan Horse. Strauss believes the horse itself to be myth, but does not doubt that a ruse was used to get the Trojans to open the gates and that the Greek sailing back at night was a highly likely tactic. It was not uncommon for commandos to sneak into a city and kill the gate guards, opening it to an invading force. It was also common for turncoats to be bribed in the cities to open the gates for armies as well. This was par for the course between the Spartans and Athenians as they fought centuries later.

This is a well written book which uses multiple sources to give a strong impression of what the violent world of the Bronze Age in the Aegean was like. It does so while still letting the mythical nature of the Trojan War and its epic roots breath as a story. This is a well written and entertaining history book. Highly recommended.

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