When we think of Rome we envisage an empire and the civil strife prior to Caesar establishing himself as dictator for life and then Augustus becoming emperor with tribunal powers for life. But Rome grew from a little town to an Italian military power and then a western Mediterranean power before it looked east with any interest.

It is possible that the Etruscan nobility came from Greece, and the Greeks were well established in Sicily and Sardinia as well as with trading cities on the southern Italian coast. Carthage, which was to become Rome's greatest rival, was originally a Phoenician city. So Greece and the eastern Mediterranean cultures were not unknown to Rome, however by Greek cultural standards Romans were militaristic barbarians.

During the Second Punic War the Greeks, or more accurately, the Macedonians, came into Roman foreign policy considerations with Phillip. This was really the first time that any great absorption of Greek Culture occurred - and it was picked up by the Roman progressives, such as the Scipios, as well as resisted by Roman conservatives such as Cato.

H.H Scullard writes:

Cato, who with narrow nationalism had withstood the liberal policy of the Scipios, now set himself to stem the tide that threatened to sweep away the simplicity of Roman life.

Greek men of culture roused his puritanical suspicions; the corruption of others was only too patent and all were tarred with the same brush since they threatened to undermine the mos maiorium. In every field a bitter struggle was waged between the nationalists and the Hellenists, each of whom only saw the only one side of Greek culture.

But Cato fought a losing battle despite his fulminations a younger generation of enthusiasts for received the torch of Hellenism unquenched.

Interesting.

Cunning Realist writes on trauma cocktails which effectively make a nation accept anything; breaking down individual and social norms such that extremes become accepted as the new norm.

One of the interesting aspects of the Peloponnesian War was that the normal method of determining conflict between Greek city-states, hoplite battle, was replaced with political and ethnic genocide. Asymmetric warfare ruined the wealth, morality and power of Greece such that the Macedonians and then the Romans replaced them as the centre of Mediterranean power.

The shocks of two generations of continuous warfare, asymmetry, ethnic genocide, political turbulence, political genocide (people were wiped out for being oligarchic or democratic in their politics), plus the plague in Athens all led to a Greek trauma cocktail where plunder and genocide became the norm. It destroyed the power of Athens and Sparta; making them easy prey for Phillip of Macedonia and later the foreign policy politics of Rome's Scipio Africanus.

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.