The Trojan War (15 page)

Homer is not, as some critics think, merely exploiting the occasion to roll the credits, as it were. Instead, he is describing sound, simple, and standard military policy. For example, the conquering Hittite King Shuppiluliuma I (1344–1322
B.C.
) stopped in southeastern Anatolia to review his troops and chariots before continuing onward to his goal, the siege of the city of Carchemish. From Pharaonic Egypt to Pennsylvania Avenue, parading the troops in review, unit by unit, has been a basic way of building morale. And if there was ever a force that needed its morale reestablished, it was the Greek army at Troy.

No general could have been dressed with more spit and polish, no titan could have bestrode the earth with greater satisfaction than royal Agamemnon did as he moved among his men,

But Agamemnon was not overconfident. He knew that on the far side of the plain, Hector would be mustering his troops.

A smart general knows you cannot suppress a wartime mutiny without shedding blood. Nothing wipes the slate clean like a corpse. Not having executed anyone for the wild dash to the ships, Agamemnon did the only sensible thing he could do: he sent his men out to die.

W
hen the Hittites went to war, they sang hymns to the war-god. Before battle, they would chant an old poem whose refrain asks that they be buried at home with their mothers. When, in the
Iliad,
the Trojans and their allies rush out against an unexpected Greek attack, they shout battle cries to steel themselves. The Greeks are as silent as a boxer conserving his energy for a knockout punch. Two armies approach each other on the Trojan Plain, barely visible through the dust raised by their marching feet.

Suddenly one man steps forward through the ranks on the Trojan side; another man dismounts from his chariot on the Greek side, which makes the Trojans retreat. Then, a third man, a huge figure, appears in the middle of the Trojan ranks and gestures with his long spear. All around him the soldiers sit down, and soon he is the only Trojan standing.

The long-haired Greeks begin to shoot at this perfect target with arrows and slings. The Persians called arrow feathers “messengers of death,” and Bronze Age archers could hit a target at 300–400 yards. Estimates are that a top slinger could reach a speed of 100–150 miles per hour and hit a target 150 feet away.

Homer identifies the Locrians and some of the Thessalians as great bowmen among the Greeks. The Cretans were also famous as archers. The Locrians included slingers as well. Most archers and slingers fought without armor or shield and were stationed behind the lines of heavy-armed spearmen. Some were outfitted with composite bows, made of wooden staves reinforced with horn and sinew, much more powerful than the simple wooden bows.

But Agamemnon called for his men to cease their fire. It was clear that Hector wanted a parley. The Trojan proposed that, instead of a general engagement, there be a battle between two champions: none other than Paris and Menelaus, the originators of the war, as it were, and, in fact, the two men who had just stepped forward on each side (it was Paris who had then quickly retreated). If Menelaus killed Paris, the Trojans would return Helen and the Spartan treasure; if Paris killed Menelaus, the Greeks would allow Helen and the treasure to remain in Troy. In either case, the two sides would swear friendship and the Greeks would go home. The Greeks agreed, with the proviso that the Trojans show their good faith by having Priam ride out to the field and sacrifice two lambs while he swore an oath to abide by the outcome of the duel. The Trojans accepted this condition.

Homer shows Paris under pressure from his hard-as-nails older brother, Hector, to prove himself in combat. Hector insults Paris by calling Paris “girl crazy”: real men think about war not women. The rebuke was an old one in the Near East. Consider a case around 1800
B.C.
involving two Mesopotamian princes, Yashmah-Addu and his older brother, Ishme-Dagan, both sons of King Shamsi-Adad of Ekallatum (1814–1781
B.C.
). Ishme-Dagan was the favorite, and chosen to succeed his father, while Yashmah-Addu was made king of nearby Mari.

Shamsi-Adad writes to his younger son with the good news that Ishme-Dagan has triumphed in battle and won a name for himself as a great general. Then comes the kicker: “Here your brother has killed the [enemy] general,” writes the old king, “while there you lie about among the women.” He then tells Yasmah-Addu to be a man and lead an army against his enemies. Yasmah-Addu might have sympathized with Paris's predicament.

A contest between champions was standard procedure in the Bronze Age. Two kings could fight it out, or two corporals—a low-risk alternative chosen when the Greek Attarissiya invaded southwestern Anatolia around 1400
B.C.
Now, at Troy, champion battle suited both sides' needs. The Greeks had suffered significant manpower losses as a result of disease and defection, and their morale was shaky. The Trojans had hurried out to battle from an assembly, with little time to spare for buckling their war belts.

Priam, accompanied by Antenor, rode out of the city and sacrificed as required. The duelists stepped forward onto a measured field. They would fight with long spears. It was the hero's weapon of choice. The shaft was sometimes ash, sometimes olivewood, and the spearhead was bronze.

Paris drew the right to throw first but his spear broke on Menelaus's shield. Menelaus had better luck on his turn because his spear went clear through Paris's shield and breastplate. But the nimble Paris twisted away and received only a nick to his ribs. Menelaus followed up with a sword blow to Paris's helmet, but the sword shattered. In frustration, Menelaus manhandled Paris by the plume of his helmet and began dragging him back to the Greek ranks. But the leather chinstrap snapped and Paris broke free. It was the work of his patron goddess, who now whisked him to safety in his home in Troy. So Homer says, and no Bronze Age soldier would have reason to doubt it, since every king claimed to have a patron god or goddess on the battlefield.

Then one of the Trojan commanders broke the truce. According to Homer, the gods persuaded Pandarus son of Lycaon, one of Troy's leading allies, to shoot an arrow that wounded Menelaus. Now both sides reached for their weapons. As has often happened in the history of war, a rogue soldier upset the generals' plans.

Pandarus used his magnificent composite bow, which was made from the horns of a wild ibex—presumably set over wooden staves and reinforced with sinew—and tipped with gold. He braced the bow on the ground, took an arrow from his case, and fitted it to the string. Hiding for safety behind his men's shields, he drew the string and the arrow butt to his chest and shot. Pandarus's feathered arrow was tipped with an iron arrowhead, unlike the bronze arrowhead used by the Greeks. Iron weapons existed in Bronze Age Anatolia. But Menelaus escaped with only a flesh wound, because he was protected by his golden belt and his corselet.

But the wound bled enough to worry Agamemnon, who called for the doctor Machaon. In the Bronze Age, medics doubled as veterinarians, so between one thing and another, their linen tunics were usually clotted with blood. Machaon pulled out the arrow, sucked out the blood from the wound, and applied an ointment. It might have been a bitter root, such as Patroclus later used on a similar wound; an ancient commentator suggested Achillea (woundwort) or Aristolochia (birthwort). Or it might have been honey, a natural antibiotic used to dress wounds. A salve of one part honey and two parts grease (either animal fat or olive oil) appears on the Linear B tablets as antiseptic, fungicidal, and antibiotic.

Menelaus did not require surgery, but if he had, a Bronze Age practitioner had cutting tools made of obsidian or bronze as well as such bronze instruments as forceps, probes, spoon, razor, and saw. Opium was available to ease the pain. Linen bandages were known in Egypt, but the only bandage in Homer is a woolen sling doing double duty as a dressing. An unbandaged wound might have been a common sight in the Greek camp.

An expert treated Menelaus's injury, but Menelaus was the supreme leader's brother and so had special access to the scarce supply of physicians. Often in Homer even a champion settles for a companion to remove a spear or arrow, as both the Greek Diomedes and the Trojan ally Sarpedon do later that same day.

Because Pandarus had broken the truce to which Priam had solemnly sworn, a pitched battle ensued. It was unplanned, and yet Agamemnon could not have arranged things better:

Agamemnon may emerge as an unappealing personality in Homer, but he could be a good general. He did make a number of mistakes, but he knew how to admit errors and switch course—fast. He gave up Chryseis, for example. He let his colleagues Odysseus and Nestor quell the troops' mutiny. He reviewed the troops and then led them into battle. And he would soon eat his words by apologizing to Achilles and offering him a king's ransom, including the return of Briseis, to rejoin the fight.

One of the strengths of the Greek army was the collective experience of its leaders, from Ajax to Odysseus. Call them an army of forty kings, like the force from the Armenian Plateau that faced the Assyrians under King Tukulti-Ninurta (1244–1208
B.C.
). And call them an army of forty counselors, none more impressive than Homer's Nestor. Although he was too old to fight, he had not stayed at home; he was on hand to offer invaluable advice. The Trojan army had no counterpart. Priam stayed on the sidelines and was rarely listened to. Except when he let his emotions get the better of him, as he did with Chryses and Achilles, Agamemnon was careful to consult his colleagues. And he was able to judge who offered the best counsel.

Like modern battle, a Bronze Age engagement was complex. To orchestrate it required accurate information, which made scouts and spies essential. Before clashing, the two sides pushed, tricked, and feinted for the best ground. A Bronze Age army was a combined-arms force of foot soldiers and chariots, skirmishers and linemen, bowmen and spearmen. Each army would try to maximize the deployment of its strengths against the enemy's weaknesses: for example, by raining a cloud of arrows on light-armed troops. If the armies were coalitions, each side had the opportunity to sow discontent in the other by concentrating its attack on the allies while leaving the leader of the alliance relatively untouched.

We can grasp the outline of pitched battle from the daylong engagement that followed Pandarus's bow shot. At a signal the two armies, both thickly massed, marched toward each other. Now came a bombardment of arrows and slings, although archers and slingers are the forgotten men of the
Iliad.
Arrow wounds were frequent and often fatal; merely removing a barbed arrowhead could kill, because of shock or infection, and the pain could be agonizing.

The two phalanxes advanced, perhaps in a crooked line. But advance the Greeks and Trojans did, in close order, and with discipline and speed before coming to blows. Meanwhile, the chariots were coming.

Chariots carried leaders to and around the battlefield. They were light wooden carts, covered with either oxhide or wicker work. Sometimes they were inlaid with ivory and gold, and sometimes they were painted crimson both to stand out and to hide the color of blood. The wheels were also wooden. Each chariot was drawn by a team of two horses, and its crew consisted of a driver and a warrior. The warrior might fight from his chariot but it was more usual for him to dismount and exchange blows on foot. The main advantage conferred by chariots was mobility. Secondarily the chariot was a psychological weapon, since the noise of the wheels and the sight of the horses may have frightened some of the enemy. The tanklike charge of a mass of chariots in order to break the enemy's line may have played a big role in Egyptian and Hittite warfare—the experts disagree—but it was not to be found at Troy. For most of the year the terrain was too wet for that and, besides, neither side had enough chariots for a mass charge: Troy lacked the imperial wealth and Greeks lacked the horse power!

When the infantrymen clashed, the best fighters stood in the front lines, unless the commander had thrown ordinary troops before them to prevent those troops from fleeing. Homer refers to the best soldiers as “fore-fighters”
(promachoi)
or simply “the first men.” Elite troops, they inhabited a different world from ordinary soldiers. The elite were professionals, well armed, well trained, and well prepared for the shock of battle. Ordinary soldiers were conscripts, lightly armed, poorly trained, and ill-prepared for bloody combat. It was bad luck for them if they had to step up and replace their comrades, both the fallen and those who simply went to the rear to rest.

The men in the front lines, especially the champions, had a full set of arms and armor. The complete warrior wore bronze greaves (shin guards), a leather kilt, and a crested helmet. He may have worn a loose-fitting bronze breastplate and back plate, which could be extended with pieces to cover his neck, lower face, shoulders, and thighs. An alternative was a linen tunic with bronze scales to serve as a breastplate. An elaborate belt, perhaps red or purple and decorated with gold or silver, would be worn over the tunic or breastplate. The front line fighter carried a big, heavy shield, shaped either like a figure-of-eight or a tower, and composed of multiple layers of leather on a bronze rim. It hung from his shoulder on a strap that may have passed diagonally over his torso. The shield was meant to offer full protection, which is why very few warriors in Homer are described as wearing both a metal breastplate and holding a shield. A scabbard, holding a bronze double-edged sword, lay along his right thigh, suspended by a strap from his left shoulder.

The ordinary soldiers, the majority in either army, consisted of various kinds of light-armed troops. We can imagine them in a linen tunic without armor, leather helmet and kilt, and linen greaves. Most men did not carry a body shield but had to make do with a small, light, round shield. Some men might have had to manage by holding up, as some kind of protection, a simple, unfinished piece of leather without a bronze rim.

When the two phalanxes clashed, the men brought their oxhide shields together and attacked with their spears. The spear was the main close-range weapon at Troy. Swords were only second best because of their tendency to break at the hilt. A few of the heroes may have wielded a type of sword that was new in the Aegean, bronze and about two and a half feet long, much more efficient at inflicting slashing wounds than its predecessors. Because the blade had roughly parallel edges for most of its length, rather than the tapered edges of a dagger, this sword was good at cutting. And with a single piece of metal for both blade and hilt, it was less likely to break than its predecessors. This so-called Naue II sword was of central European origin, and it began to appear in Greece shortly before 1200
B.C.
But it was probably a rare import. We hear in the
Iliad
of a few Greeks and virtually no Trojans who wield slashing swords. In any case, a man could do a lot of damage with an ash-wood spear tipped with a six-inch bronze head, its sides bulging outwards like a leaf's—especially if he put his legs and back into thrusting it into the enemy.