Waxing on the Trojan War

And from this expedition we may infer the character of earlier enterprises. Now Mycenae may have been a small place, and many of the towns of that age may appear comparatively insignificant, but no exact observer would therefore feel justified in rejecting the estimate given by the poets and by tradition of the magnitude of the armament.

This is an interesting point. We have to be very careful about inferring the military power of a place from the insignificance of the towns. If an atom bomb leveled our civilization and left us with nothing but huts to later generations, later historians couldn't infer from this that America's military was insignificant. Sparta was a humble farming town, but their armament was intimidating. The less sophisticated colonies had an armament that beat the more sophisticated British.

For I suppose if Lacedaemon were to become desolate, and the temples and the foundations of the public buildings were left, that as time went on there would be a strong disposition with posterity to refuse to accept her fame as a true exponent of her power. And yet they occupy two-fifths of Peloponnese and lead the whole, not to speak of their numerous allies without.

Lacedaemon was the ancient Greek name for Sparta, used by Homer. If Sparta was desolate, why would later posterity think she was famous? Because of her power? Later posterity wouldn't be disposed to think that, because they think power is a reflection of the luxury of the towns.

Still, as the city is neither built in a compact form nor adorned with magnificent temples and public edifices, but composed of villages after the old fashion of Hellas, there would be an impression of inadequacy. Whereas, if Athens were to suffer the same misfortune, I suppose that any inference from the appearance presented to the eye would make her power to have been twice as great as it is.

Sparta is made up of villages. It looks like they wouldn't have an inadequate armament. But they did. Athens was the opposite of Sparta. Later posterity would look at how luxurious Athens is and wrongly infer that their military was more great than it was. Good points. Bruce Lee may be smaller than John Candy, but that doesn't mean Lee would lose in a fight.

We have therefore no right to be sceptical, nor to content ourselves with an inspection of a town to the exclusion of a consideration of its power; but we may safely conclude that the armament in question surpassed all before it, as it fell short of modern efforts; if we can here also accept the testimony of Homer's poems, in which, without allowing for the exaggeration which a poet would feel himself licensed to employ, we can see that it was far from equalling ours.

We shouldn't look to a town as a reflection of its power, or to the extent of a town's power as a reflection of the luxury of a town. Sparta, even though it was a farming society with villages, had the strongest military, stronger than any that came before it. But even so, says Thucydides, this Spartan power didn't equal 'ours'. I'm assuming he is talking about Athens, since he is an Athenian who commanded a fleet in the Peloponnesian War.

He has represented it as consisting of twelve hundred vessels; the Boeotian complement of each ship being a hundred and twenty men, that of the ships of Philoctetes fifty. By this, I conceive, he meant to convey the maximum and the minimum complement: at any rate, he does not specify the amount of any others in his catalogue of the ships. That they were all rowers as well as warriors we see from his account of the ships of Philoctetes, in which all the men at the oar are bowmen.

Boeotia was a region of ancient Greece. Philoctetes evidently led seven ships from Methonē and other towns of that region in the expedition to Troy. He was eventually dumped off on the coast of the island of Lemnos, because he was bitten by a snake, and the festering wound made him cry out and curse the Greeks. Odysseus had had enough and persuaded everyone to abandon him on the coast - but not before Philoctetes had the bow and arrows of Heracles, arrows which never missed their mark. When Odysseus captured Helenus (a Trojan seer), he told Odysseus that he'd never win unless Philoctetes could fight with his bow and arrows. After his snake bite was healed, he shot Paris, son of King Priam of Troy, and helped win the Trojan War.

1. Philoctetes ships - 50 men - rowers and warriors.
2. Boeotian shipts - 120 men - rowers and warriors.

Now it is improbable that many supernumeraries sailed, if we except the kings and high officers; especially as they had to cross the open sea with munitions of war, in ships, moreover, that had no decks, but were equipped in the old piratical fashion. So that if we strike the average of the largest and smallest ships, the number of those who sailed will appear inconsiderable, representing, as they did, the whole force of Hellas.

Supernumeraries (Latin for 'beyond the number) just meant in excess of the normal number of whatever. But the number who sailed appears inconsiderable, of small relative size. And this was the Greek military force during the Trojan War.

And this was due not so much to scarcity of men as of money. Difficulty of subsistence made the invaders reduce the numbers of the army to a point at which it might live on the country during the prosecution of the war.

That makes sense. With little subsistence, there can be little invaders, since many invaders would soon not be able to subsist. 20 armed men can easily overtake a solitary homemaker; but what if her house doesn't have enough to feed the 20? They'll either have to get the subsistence themselves, or overtake some other house.

Even after the victory they obtained on their arrival- and a victory there must have been, or the fortifications of the naval camp could never have been built- there is no indication of their whole force having been employed; on the contrary, they seem to have turned to cultivation of the Chersonese and to piracy from want of supplies.

Greece won the initial battles on their arrival to Troy. They needed to win, because they needed a naval camp. But Greece didn't use everyone in their military. There wasn't enough subsistence on Troy. Chersonese (a peninsula that runs in a south-westerly direction into the Aegean Sea) was important as a wheat growing district.

This was what really enabled the Trojans to keep the field for ten years against them; the dispersion of the enemy making them always a match for the detachment left behind. If they had brought plenty of supplies with them, and had persevered in the war without scattering for piracy and agriculture, they would have easily defeated the Trojans in the field, since they could hold their own against them with the division on service.

What enabled the Trojans to keep the field for ten years is that the Greeks always needed to do some piracy and farming. As the Greeks were always dispersed by the Trojans, the dispersed Greeks would always meet their match against some Trojan detachment. It was like the stalemate with the trenches in World War 1: each charge met their match by some defensive detachment. If the Greeks had brought enough supplies initially, they wouldn't be easily dispersed, and so they'd be able to defeat the Trojan detachment. A house not divided won't easily fall.

In short, if they had stuck to the siege, the capture of Troy would have cost them less time and less trouble. But as want of money proved the weakness of earlier expeditions, so from the same cause even the one in question, more famous than its predecessors, may be pronounced on the evidence of what it effected to have been inferior to its renown and to the current opinion about it formed under the tuition of the poets.

The Greeks could have won the war a lot sooner if they weren't easily dispersed. If the Greeks had more money, they would have had more supplies; if they had more supplies, they wouldn't have had to resort to being pirates and farmers; if they weren't farmers and pirates, they wouldn't have had a weak expedition in Troy; Troy would have been won a lot sooner, and it wouldn't have taken 10 long years.

Thucydides: chapter 1 continued

I decided a line-by-line analysis was better because of the density of the text, and I didn't want to do my understanding an injustice, and it would be all the more clear where I'm not picking up on something.

With respect to their towns, later on, at an era of increased facilities of navigation and a greater supply of capital, we find the shores becoming the site of walled towns, and the isthmuses being occupied for the purposes of commerce and defence against a neighbour.

More facilities of navigation and more capital! More Navy. The shores begin to have towns, and the towns begin to have walls. The isthmuses begin to be occupied; they begin to have commerce, and they gain the capacity to defend themselves against the neighbors if need be. So, these facilities of navigation and the capital seem to be the result of the shores getting their walled towns, and their isthmuses becoming occupied, with their commerce and capacity for defense.

But the old towns, on account of the great prevalence of piracy, were built away from the sea, whether on the islands or the continent, and still remain in their old sites. For the pirates used to plunder one another, and indeed all coast populations, whether seafaring or not.

The old towns were built away from the sea because of pirates. This is the case with islands and on the continent. The pirates would plunder both each other and the coast populations, regardless of whether they traveled by sea. It's amazing how prevalent piracy was. I wonder what kept the pirates from wondering inland? Maybe it wasn't an airtight strategy; but it worked on the whole.

The islanders, too, were great pirates. These islanders were Carians and Phoenicians, by whom most of the islands were colonized, as was proved by the following fact.

From Caria ('deep country'), the Carians are mentioned in 2 Kings 11:4 and possibly at 2 Samuel 8:18, 15:18, and 20:23. Herodotus says the Carians were the aborigines of Caria, before they became more civilized when moving inland, after they were islanders. The Phoenicians (who basically came up with the alphabet from which ours is derived) took up what today is Lebanon, Syria, and northern Israel. They evidently moved from this mainland to populate the islands.

During the purification of Delos by Athens in this war all the graves in the island were taken up, and it was found that above half their inmates were Carians: they were identified by the fashion of the arms buried with them, and by the method of interment, which was the same as the Carians still follow.

When the Athenians dug up the graves after they purified Delos (the island in the middle of the Cyclades, a group of islands south-east of Greece), they found Carians, because of the kind of weapons they had on them, and the kind of burial they had. The Carians of 'today' have the same weapons and the same burial.

But as soon as Minos had formed his navy, communication by sea became easier, as he colonized most of the islands, and thus expelled the malefactors.

Three generations before the Trojan War, Minos (ruler of Crete, the biggest Greek island) ruled the seas, or the islands of the Aegean Sea to be exact. Because of this, he could now communicate by sea much more efficiently.

The coast population now began to apply themselves more closely to the acquisition of wealth, and their life became more settled; some even began to build themselves walls on the strength of their newly acquired riches.

Because of Minos' rule, the people on the coast could more easily gain wealth, and the Greeks became more settled. Using their wealth, they could build walls to keep out the pirates.

For the love of gain would reconcile the weaker to the dominion of the stronger, and the possession of capital enabled the more powerful to reduce the smaller towns to subjection. And it was at a somewhat later stage of this development that they went on the expedition against Troy.

'The love of gain': an interesting factor. This seems like rudimentary Capitalism. The weaker are reconciled to the stronger's dominion, because the stronger have the wealth, and the weaker enter into contracts with the stronger to make a living. This is the sense in which smaller towns (weaker) are subjected to the stronger, the ones who amass wealth. This snowballed into their eventual capacity to engage Troy in battle.

What enabled Agamemnon to raise the armament was more, in my opinion, his superiority in strength, than the oaths of Tyndareus, which bound the suitors to follow him.

Tyndareus, the father of Helen (of Troy: whose abduction caused the Trojan War), was indecisive about choosing a suitor for his daughter. Odysseus, being one of the suitors, saw that he had no chance, because he didn't have any gifts. Odysseus proposed to Tyndareus a solution for his indecisiveness, if Tyndareus would set him up with Penelope, daughter of Icarius. Odysseus gathered together all the suitors to swear that whoever was chosen, they would defend him against anyone who challenged. The oath was sworn. Menelaus was chosen, the brother of Agamemnon king of Mycenae and leader of the Greek army during the War; he was a central figure in the Trojan War. These are the oaths of Tyndareus. Thucydides proposes Agamemnon raised the armament more because of his strength than these oaths. It is better to be feared than loved.

Indeed, the account given by those Peloponnesians who have been the recipients of the most credible tradition is this. First of all Pelops, arriving among a needy population from Asia with vast wealth, acquired such power that, stranger though he was, the country was called after him; and this power fortune saw fit materially to increase in the hands of his descendants.

The Peloponnesus peninsula was named for Pelops. Pelops, father of Atreus and Thyestēs, was king of Pisa, an ancient town in the western Peloponnese, Greece. He arrived in a needy population from Asia; because of his wealth, he had lots of power, even though he was a stranger. Fortune decided to spread this power to his posterity.

Eurystheus had been killed in Attica by the Heraclids. Atreus was his mother's brother; and to the hands of his relation, who had left his father on account of the death of Chrysippus, Eurystheus, when he set out on his expedition, had committed Mycenae and the government.

Eurystheus was an interesting character, the king of Tiryns (ancient city of southern Greece in the eastern Peloponnesus) in Argos (city of ancient Greece in the northeast Peloponnesus near the head of the Gulf of Argolis), son of Sthenelus (Son of Perseus and Andromeda, and king of Mycenae) and Menippē, a descendant of Perseus.

We see here that he was killed in Attica (ancient region of east-central Greece around Athens) by the Heraclids, supposedly the descendants of Hercules himself.

Atreus was Eurystheus' mother's brother, which would make him Eurystheus' half-brother, and - remember - son of Pelops, and eventually father of Agamemnon and Menelaus. At one time though, Atreus is king of Mycenae, the Greek city in the northeast Peloponnesus.

Well, it looks like Atreus had killed Chrysippus (his half-brother), because he thought that Chrysippus would inherit the throne of Pelops. For clarification, Atreus was Eurystheus' brother, so that would mean that Eurystheus left for Attica, while leaving Atreus in charge of Mycenae. After Eurystheus was killed in Attica, Atreus was to inherit the throne.

As time went on and Eurystheus did not return, Atreus complied with the wishes of the Mycenaeans, who were influenced by fear of the Heraclids- besides, his power seemed considerable, and he had not neglected to court the favour of the populace- and assumed the sceptre of Mycenae and the rest of the dominions of Eurystheus.

Again, it is better to be feared than loved. Atreus used the fear the Mycenaeans had toward the Heraclids to become king! He already had much power, but the fear made it happen: in this case, it was power motivated by fear. In this way, Atreus gained the throne.

And so the power of the descendants of Pelops came to be greater than that of the descendants of Perseus. To all this Agamemnon succeeded.

It follows that "this power fortune saw fit materially to increase in the hands of his descendants." And because Agamemnon was the son of Atreus, it increased in the hands of him as well.

He had also a navy far stronger than his contemporaries, so that, in my opinion, fear was quite as strong an element as love in the formation of the confederate expedition. The strength of his navy is shown by the fact that his own was the largest contingent, and that of the Arcadians was furnished by him; this at least is what Homer says, if his testimony is deemed sufficient.

Here, however, fear and love work together, even though Thucydides would still hold that if you can't have them both together, better to work with fear, rather than love. The fear came from the strength he had, because he had the largest navy, given to the Arcadians, which is just another way of saying 'Greeks', or more specifically, southern Greece. Or, so says Homer.

Besides, in his account of the transmission of the sceptre, he calls him "Of many an isle, and of all Argos king." Now Agamemnon's was a continental power; and he could not have been master of any except the adjacent islands (and these would not be many), but through the possession of a fleet.

Remember, Argos was one of the most powerful cities of ancient Greece until the rise of Sparta. On the whole, Agamemnon had power on the mainland, and it extends to only a small amount of islands, which seems strange if he had a 'navy far stronger than his contemporaries'.