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.

[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.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by 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.

It might be more general too. We know enslaving girls from elsewhere was a relatively normal part of the economy of Mycenean palaces (from IIRC palace inventories that list them with the other textile production stuff), and Aphrodite is a war goddess too - this is more obvious in the Near Eastern goddesses, but isn't absent from the Greek side if you don't buy that link - both in her relationship to Ares and in some of her cults - Aphrodite Areia as Sparta for example. It's possible Aphrodite was just generally considered responsible for girl stealing raids, and her patronage of this particular one flowed from that.

[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. :)

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

. . . I quite admit that it's unlikely (though not impossible) for the Trojan War to last ten years; . . .

As I said before, I can see the actual war lasting three years tops.

We'll never know for sure. However, from the lectures I've heard Mycenean warfare against other city states generally involved a long period of raiding, looting & slave-taking to improve your own finances (so to speak) and damage your enemy. Once your opponent is sufficiently whittled down, you could finish him off one last attack.

IIRC Homer (or the Homeroi -- some scholars now think that "Homer" was a name given to the fictitious single author of a batch of poets) wrote about five hundred years after the events of the Iliad/Odyssey. So they may well have not known how Myceanean warfare worked.

I could see a period of years in which groups of Greeks would be home in the spring to get the planting in, raid the shores of Troy's region in the summer, and return home in time for the harvest. "Homer" may simply not have known that the Greeks didn't actually camp outside the walls for the years of warfare.