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.