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| Cassandra Imploring Athena's Revenge Against Ajax by Jerome, Martin Langlois |
Massive
world wars are not fought over mere trifles. The stakes of the Trojan War went
beyond mere honor or wealth. The war would also determine whether the Trojans
as a distinct people would survive. What may be seen as a war for love was also
simultaneously a savage war of annihilation, and genocidal tendencies are on
display, as Agamemnon perhaps makes clear in Book 6 of the Iliad:
"So soft, dear brother, why? Why such concern for enemies? I suppose you got such tender loving care from the Trojans. Ah, would to god not one of them could escape his sudden plunging death beneath our hands! No baby boy still in his mother's belly, not even he escape- all Ilium blotted out, no tears for their lives, no markers for their graves." (Fagles, Penguin Classics translation, page 197)
There would be no mercy. We are told of the events of the sack of Troy: the men were killed, the women were raped and sold into slavery, babies (including Hector's infant son Astyanax) were flung from the city walls, and all of the wealth Troy had acquired was looted. The city was destroyed, and serves as an example for all time of the erasure of one community of humanity by another. In our times, the Greek heroes would probably be wanted by the international community so they could be tried for genocide and the long list of human rights violations that go along with it.
It is in the recognition of those facts that perhaps allows us to breathe a sigh of relief and pat ourselves on the back, congratulating ourselves for how far we've come in recent centuries and our improvements in how we treat one another.
And yet, when we look at recent events in places like Burma, Agamemnon's words come to life in our news stories. It seems that we as a species haven't changed very much at all. It begs the question- in times of chaos, when pretenses of civility are lost, will our humanitarian collective agreements still hold, or will we give way to the savagery in our hearts? Time and again, our nobler sentiments have been disappointed. Even Hector, the model soldier in the Iliad, had his darker characteristics, and was prone to giving into them more than once. Civilization is fragile, as is civilized behavior. We are probably less removed from the ghastly stories than we think.
It is this conflict between our humanitarian ideals and our instinctual bloodlust that is on display throughout the saga of the Trojan War, and is, from a modern standpoint, the most glaring flaw in all of the Homeric heroes.
"So soft, dear brother, why? Why such concern for enemies? I suppose you got such tender loving care from the Trojans. Ah, would to god not one of them could escape his sudden plunging death beneath our hands! No baby boy still in his mother's belly, not even he escape- all Ilium blotted out, no tears for their lives, no markers for their graves." (Fagles, Penguin Classics translation, page 197)
There would be no mercy. We are told of the events of the sack of Troy: the men were killed, the women were raped and sold into slavery, babies (including Hector's infant son Astyanax) were flung from the city walls, and all of the wealth Troy had acquired was looted. The city was destroyed, and serves as an example for all time of the erasure of one community of humanity by another. In our times, the Greek heroes would probably be wanted by the international community so they could be tried for genocide and the long list of human rights violations that go along with it.
It is in the recognition of those facts that perhaps allows us to breathe a sigh of relief and pat ourselves on the back, congratulating ourselves for how far we've come in recent centuries and our improvements in how we treat one another.
And yet, when we look at recent events in places like Burma, Agamemnon's words come to life in our news stories. It seems that we as a species haven't changed very much at all. It begs the question- in times of chaos, when pretenses of civility are lost, will our humanitarian collective agreements still hold, or will we give way to the savagery in our hearts? Time and again, our nobler sentiments have been disappointed. Even Hector, the model soldier in the Iliad, had his darker characteristics, and was prone to giving into them more than once. Civilization is fragile, as is civilized behavior. We are probably less removed from the ghastly stories than we think.
It is this conflict between our humanitarian ideals and our instinctual bloodlust that is on display throughout the saga of the Trojan War, and is, from a modern standpoint, the most glaring flaw in all of the Homeric heroes.
The
Trojan War was a fact of history to the ancient Greeks, and stood as a stark
reminder of not only the consequences of failure on the battlefield against an
enemy bent on your annihilation, but that everything we hold dear in this life
is ultimately protected only by the successful use of force in defense of those
things. A fanatical, homicidal attacker can't be bought off by wealth, as this
exchange between Achilles and Lycaon in Book 21 of the Iliad attests:
"Achilles! I hug your knees-mercy!-spare my life! I am your suppliant, Prince, you must respect me! Yours was the first bread I broke, Demeter's gift, that day you seized me in Priam's well-fenced orchard, hauled me away from father, loved ones, sold me off in holy Lemnos and I, I fetched you a hundred bulls- and once released I brought three times that price."
Achilles responds:
"Fool, don't talk to me of ransom. No more speeches. Before Patroclus met his day of destiny, true, it warmed my heart a bit to spare some Trojans: droves I took alive and auctioned off as slaves. But now not a single Trojan flees his death." (Fagles, Penguin Classics translation, page 523)
The lesson? The failure or inability of a people to defend themselves from aggression means that they are at the complete and utter mercy of the aggressors- subject to whatever whim the latter desires.
Modern alien invasion stories are perhaps the most easily recognizable reminder in modern fiction of this fact, but they also let us see into our deepest fears. The alien invasion genre is probably more reminiscent of what we have done to each other than anything pertinent to ET- and the Trojan War is its greatest antecedent and illustration.
"Achilles! I hug your knees-mercy!-spare my life! I am your suppliant, Prince, you must respect me! Yours was the first bread I broke, Demeter's gift, that day you seized me in Priam's well-fenced orchard, hauled me away from father, loved ones, sold me off in holy Lemnos and I, I fetched you a hundred bulls- and once released I brought three times that price."
Achilles responds:
"Fool, don't talk to me of ransom. No more speeches. Before Patroclus met his day of destiny, true, it warmed my heart a bit to spare some Trojans: droves I took alive and auctioned off as slaves. But now not a single Trojan flees his death." (Fagles, Penguin Classics translation, page 523)
The lesson? The failure or inability of a people to defend themselves from aggression means that they are at the complete and utter mercy of the aggressors- subject to whatever whim the latter desires.
Modern alien invasion stories are perhaps the most easily recognizable reminder in modern fiction of this fact, but they also let us see into our deepest fears. The alien invasion genre is probably more reminiscent of what we have done to each other than anything pertinent to ET- and the Trojan War is its greatest antecedent and illustration.
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