Quote:
Originally Posted by Anders
DanH, Jason, you are discussing two different sets of people and two different wars. Jason is discussing the mythical Trojan war of the Iliad and various other literary works. In the mythical war, Agamemnon is clearly there for Helen - he's quite willing to call of fighting and head for home if Menelaos can defeat Paris and get Helen back.
In the historical war.... well, who knows? All we have is a layer of ash at Troy at approximately the right time. We don't know who participated, how long the war took, all we know is that Troy presumably lost since the city was burned. The cause may well have been trade, but we don't have enough information about the war. And statting the heroes of the historical Trojan war... well, how could we? We have no sources for what happened.
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Yes, but the point is that we must not assume so just because we assume habitually that the only reason a king would fight would be material interests or that what constitutes material interests in our world are the same as in his. It is for instance ahistorical to assume that kings don't care about honor; all kings care about honor, they still do, they just give it different names now like public relations, or deterrence or what not. Likewise the only reason they won't go to war because their cousin was cuckolded was that kin politics is just not that important anymore. Mucking up the will really did matter even from the materialistic point when that meant shifting provinces around. Just think of how much of Britain was changed by the fact that Henry VIII couldn't produce a son that would live long enough. Henry the VIII comitting adultery with a cockney girl would not have bothered anyone but whether or not he did so with Anne Boleyn mattered a whole lot. And to this day people are having an honor quarrel over an obscure city called-Jerusalem. And it seems pretty clear that the leaders of the parties involved have often been as caught up in that as anyone else, however useful they may find it for mundane political reasons. For the matter of that, if money is so important, why are so many of the most successful politicians wrapped up in ideology? Are you going to say that Robbespiere was not serious when he said that he would rather guillotine kings then call himself one?
I am not saying that kings never fight for money. I am saying we should not put blinders on and give ourselves a pseudorationality of assuming that money is the only thing they fight for or entertaining the chronological snobbery of assuming only motives we comprehend are things that affect politics. Or of assuming that the things that kings claimed to motivate them would not have real material ramifications whether or not the king believed. The real Trojan war could have been fought for the Black Sea trade. It could also have been fought for the World's Most Beautiful Woman. It could even have been fought for both. For the matter of that, the World's Most Beautiful Woman could have herself had something to do with the Black Sea trade, could for instance have had kin that ruled land there.