The Apple of Discord

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by malloyd

And of course I'm absolutely certain no goddesses actually appeared to offer bribes to any Trojan prince, so assuming the Illiad records any real preference the city had for Aphrodite, and admittedly it may not, it must have some other source.

Well, Apollo is definitely a Trojan god in the Iliad, so the audience definitely understood that some of their gods were worshipped there.

On the other hand the war in the poem doesn't actually need to record anything historical at all. There probably wasn't a war anything like that one, even if you ignore the theological elements, just for purely logistical reasons.

[sir_pudding]

Note that the True Cross doesn't usually have powers related to crucifixion, so why should the Apple necessarily relate to causing war?

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Note that the True Cross doesn't usually have powers related to crucifixion, so why should the Apple necessarily relate to causing war?

Well the True Cross was just a cross. It was made of ordinary wood and cut by ordinary men who wouldn't have any reason to expend much artistry on the cutting. It had the powers of ordinary men which in this case was providing a painful death. They probably burned it afterwards. Or saved it for the next execution. What else would they do with it?

Ok that's being cynical, but it is hard to believe the soldiers cared much about it. It was just a job to them and not the most pleasant. They wouldn't have bothered to save it and I am not aware of tales of miraculous intervention to prevent it being disposed of like all other crosses.

It does however have powers related to crucifixion, obviously. Someone was crucified on it. That's what it was for.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

On the other hand the war in the poem doesn't actually need to record anything historical at all. There probably wasn't a war anything like that one, even if you ignore the theological elements, just for purely logistical reasons.

From what I have discovered, most of the ten years of the war was mostly a siege and blockade action with increased build-up as the Spartans and Trojans both sought allies with very few actual battles; think of it as ten years of Desert Shield and then The Iliad and the Trojan Horse essentially being Desert Storm.

Despite it being massively mythologically inaccurate (on top of various other factors that made me cringe at times), the movie Troy is an interesting depiction of how the war would probably have played out.

[whswhs]

In any case, I don't think we need to look to regional ethnic attachments to explain why Aphrodite won. Here we have Paris going on a mission to Greece and bringing home the most beautiful woman in the world, who happens to be another man's wife. Which of the goddesses would have giving him that as a bribe? Probably not Hera, who's the goddess of marriage, and probably not Athena, who's one of the three virgin goddesses and also is the goddess of prudence; it's not in their idiom. But Aphrodite is the goddess of love and beauty and has had more affairs than any other Olympian except Zeus. And she's also the goddess most likely to inspire Helen to forget her home, children, and husband, as Sappho says in one of her surviving poems. Purely in literary terms it's the obvious choice.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

From what I have discovered, most of the ten years of the war was mostly a siege and blockade action with increased build-up as the Spartans and Trojans both sought allies with very few actual battles; think of it as ten years of Desert Shield and then The Iliad and the Trojan Horse essentially being Desert Storm.

It seems unlikely to me that a Mycenaean alliance c. 1500 BC could have sustained a ten year siege of a city on the far end of the Mediterranean, just based on how that kind of war wasn't very easy much later for much more unified states with much better logistics.

[Apollonian]

It's not the far end of the Med, it's on the other side of the Aegean - which is to say, well within usual raiding and trading range. That said, it seems a loose blockade and alliance-building phase is more likely than the classic siege, and would also make an excellent RP campaign. PCs could be envoys/heroes for either side, and alternate between blockade running/enforcing and trying to woo allies to their side, plus the usual business of propitiating gods, killing monsters, and continuing petty feuds with their nominal friends.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

It seems unlikely to me that a Mycenaean alliance c. 1500 BC could have sustained a ten year siege of a city on the far end of the Mediterranean, just based on how that kind of war wasn't very easy much later for much more unified states with much better logistics.

To be fair, much of the first five years of war was gathering the alliance, from what I discovered. (Various references from Plutarch, Solon, and other classical mythographers about the war that to them was already legendary history.) And technically it was on the other side of the Aegean, not the Med; much closer to home. :)

That said, I expect there was some exaggeration of timelines involved in order to fit the "ten years of war" established by Homer. Realistically, I can see maybe three years of declared war, with much of that time being ships blockading the Trojan port on the Aegean but unable to prevent overland travel from Anatolia or farther up the Dardenalles. I could expect there to be a constant shifting of forces in the region until the final push. Mythologically, the war was basically a stalemate until Odysseus came up with the Horse ploy anyway.

From a historical point of view, the war was probably over Trojan taxation of ships entering and leaving the Dardenalles/Hellespont in order to pass through to the Black Sea for the amber that was mined there. If we assume a grain of truth to the "Prince of Troy absconds with the Queen of Sparta" part of the story, we either have a woman running from an abusive husband into the arms of a charming visiting prince, or an arrogant prince thinking he can get away with it because he's the prince of Troy and he's claiming a "royal privilege" from a "subject" city-state - quite possibly both! - and the King of Sparta and his brother using that as an excuse to feed their own ambition. If there is a historical grain of truth to the myth that Helen's half-brother Heracles sacked Troy a generation and a half before, instilling Priam as king there, the Trojan War of The Iliad was not the first time the Mycenaeans and Ionians bashed heads over the route.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

From a historical point of view, the war was probably over Trojan taxation of ships entering and leaving the Dardenalles/Hellespont in order to pass through to the Black Sea for the amber that was mined there.

Sure, but "some period of unpleasantness between a constantly shifting network of Mycenaean and Ioian city-states" describes a war that is nothing like the Iliad, except metaphorically. It certainly isn't "the Iliad but atheist" the way Troy was supposed to be.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Sure, but "some period of unpleasantness between a constantly shifting network of Mycenaean and Ioian city-states" describes a war that is nothing like the Iliad, except metaphorically. It certainly isn't "the Iliad but atheist" the way Troy was supposed to be.

Well, yeah, The Iliad is first and foremost a war novel about a war that happened a thousand years earlier, not a historical account. :) It lasted ten years because Homer liked his (her?) ten year spans. The Trojan War? Ten years. Odysseus's journey home? Ten years. Odysseus's post-return exile for violation of hospitality rules? Ten years. Everyone else in classical times detailing the Trojan War built upon Homer's work trying to figure out the first nine years of the war from scanty or non-existent records, and had to in many cases stretch out the timeline.

I think the issue is that we're discussing both the historical Trojan War and the legendary one detailed by Homer and others at the same time and signals are getting crossed. I quite admit that it's unlikely (though not impossible) for the Trojan War to last ten years; however, everyone in classical times who wrote their plays and poems about it felt compelled to keep it "ten years" and filled in the blanks, not realizing or ignoring how unlikely some of the stuff really was.

As I said before, I can see the actual war lasting three years tops, with the events of The Iliad and Odysseus's Trojan Horse ploy and subsequent Sacking of Troy happening in the spring of the third year before the harvest. (Planting season in the Aegean is in the fall, due to mild winters and roasting summers. The original myths in the Classical Greek recorded Persephone spending the summers, not the winters, with Hades due to it being way too hot to grow crops in the summers there. It's only translations by those used to Northern European climate that didn't understand the Aegean climate being that warm that translated the myth to her spending winters.... but I digress big time.) And most of that three year time period would be spent blockading the port with a rotation of Achaean ships from the various factions in order to put pressure on Troy. Think of how it tends to work in real life: before the ground war starts, there are attempts to pressure capitulation through blockades preventing reinforcements/trade and projection of air power to smash the anti-air defenses. Given that there are no dragons or giant eagles to ride, even in The Iliad, we can ignore the smashing of anti-air defenses. :)