The War That Killed Achilles (34 page)

17
More specifically, Wilusa was one of four kingdoms in western Anatolia referred to in the archives as “the Arzawa Lands.” Trevor Bryce,
The Trojans and Their Neighbours
(Abingdon, Oxon, 2006), 107ff. Bryce and Michael Wood (
In Search of the Trojan War
), 214ff., discuss the nature of Troy's relationship to the Hittite Empire and its status within Anatolia.

18
See Trevor R. Bryce, “Ahhiyawans and Mycenaeans—an Anatolian Viewpoint,”
Oxford Journal of Archaeology
8, no. 3 (1989), 297-310.

19
The early Greek form of
Ilios
would have been
Wilios,
using the roughly
w
-sounding “digamma,” a letter that is present in Linear B and still “felt” in the Homeric poems, principally by certain metrical anomalies that are resolved if the lost letter is reinserted; once common to all Greek dialects, it fell out of use in each at different times. Confirmation of the Hittite geographical and political landscape was made only relatively recently with the translation of a key monumental and much-weathered cliff face inscription; see J. D. Hawkins, “Karabel, Tarkondemos and the Land of Mira: New Evidence on the Hittite Empire Period in Western Anatolia,”
Würzburger Jahrbücher für die Altertumswissenschaft
23 (1998), 7-14; and J. D. Hawkins, “Tarkas nawa King of Mira: ‘Tarkondemos,' Boǧazköy Sealings and Karabel,”
Anatolian Studies
48 (1998), 1-31.

20
For the full, fragmented text of this letter, see John Garstang and O. R. Gurney,
The Geography of the Hittite Empire
(London, 1959), 111-14; the reference to Wilusa is at IV 7-10, p. 113.

21
On the seal, see J. David Hawkins and Donald F. Easton, “A Hieroglyphic Seal from Troia,”
Studia Troica
6 (1996), 111-18.

22
For evidence of Troy's trade, see Bryce,
The Trojans and Their Neighbours,
122ff.

23
Manfred Korfmann, “Bes̜ik Tepe: New Evidence for the Period of the Trojan Sixth and Seventh Settlements,” in Mellink, 17-28 and figs. 14-23.

24
For the sparse evidence of a Mycenaean presence in the Black Sea region and an examination of the several obstacles to Mycenaean penetration, see Marta Guzowska, “The Trojan Connection or Mycenaeans, Penteconters, and the Black Sea,” in Karlene Jones-Bley and D. G. Zdanovich, eds.,
Complex Societies of Central Eurasia from the 3rd to the 1st Millennium B.C.,
vol. 2 (Washington, D.C., 2002), 504-17. Korfmann points out that as late as 1908, the British Admiralty's
Black Sea Pilot
stated that the stiff, contrary wind coming out of the Dardanelles “lasts sometimes so long that it is not a rare occurrence to see 200 or 300 vessels . . . waiting a favourable and enduring breeze”; Korfmann, “Troy: Topography and Navigation,” 7. Benjamin W. Labaree, “How the Greeks Sailed into the Black Sea,”
American Journal of Archaeology
61, no. 1 (1957), 29-33, argues that knowledgeable navigation could have exploited monthly variations in shifting southerly winds in both the Bosporus and Black Sea.

25
This possibility is raised by Richard Janko, “Go away and rule” (a review of Joachim Latacz's
Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery
),
Times Literary Supplement,
April 15, 2005, 6-7.

26
The first sack of Troy at the hands of Herakles is referred to at
Iliad
5.628-51; see P.B.S. Andrews, “The Falls of Troy in Greek Tradition,”
Greece & Rome,
2nd series, vol. 12, no. 1 (April 1965), 28-37; Andrews suggests that a horse raid was the motive for the Trojan War. For the failed expedition to Troy, in which the Greeks mistakenly landed near the wrong city, see the
Cypria,
argument 7; Strabo passes censorious judgment on the escapade: Strabo
, Geography
1.1.17. The event has an intriguing parallel in Hittite texts: L. A. Gindin and V. L. Tsymbursky, “The Ancient Greek Version of the Historical Event Reflected in a Hittite Text,”
Vestnik Drevnej Istorii
176 (1986), 81-87 (English summary of the Russian on p. 87). Rhys Carpenter has argued that the two Achaean attempts on Troy represent two traditions: “one school (shall we call it the Aeolic?) attaching Troy and its river to Teuthrania at Pergamon above the Kaikos [River], the other (shall we call it the Ionic?) to the Hellespont at Ilios on the Scamander”; Rhys Carpenter,
Folk Tale, Fiction, and Saga in the Homeric Epics
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1958), 57ff. The story of the first, botched landing is the subject of a recently discovered fragment of a poem by Archilochus: “Gladly did the sons of the immortals and brothers, whom Agamemnon was leading to holy Ilium to wage war, embark on their swift ships. On that occasion, because they had lost their way, they arrived at that shore. They set upon the lovely city of Teuthras, and there, snorting fury along with their horses, came in distress of spirit. For they thought they were attacking the high-gated city of Troy, but in fact they had their feet on wheat-bearing Mysia. . . . ” (P. Oxy, LXIX 4708, D. Obbink, trans.). The translation as well as images of this exciting new papyrological find can be seen at
www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk/POxy/monster/demo/Page1.html
.

27
Thucydides 1.11-12, in
History of the Peloponnesian War,
Rex Warner, trans., rev. ed. (New York, 1972), 42.

28
Iliad
9.328-29. On the traditions associated with these other raids and their sublimation to the Panhellenic
Iliad,
see Gregory Nagy,
The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry
(Baltimore, 1979), 140f. For the numerous associations of Lesbos in particular with the Trojan War tradition, see Emily L. Shields, “Lesbos in the Trojan War,”
Classical Journal
13 (1917-18), 670-81.

29
For the end of the Mycenaean world and the Dark Age that followed, see Carol G. Thomas and Craig Conant,
Citadel to City-State: The Transformation of Greece, 1200-700 B.C.E.
(Bloomington, IN, 1999); and Robin Osborne,
Greece in the Making: 1200-479 B.C.
(London, 1996). A classic study of the archaeological evidence of this period of great transition is V.R.d'A. Desborough,
The Last Mycenaeans and Their Successors: An Archaeological Survey c. 1200-1000 B.C.
(Oxford, 1966). For the Dark Ages, see again V.R.d'A. Desborough,
The Greek Dark Ages
(New York, 1972); and A. M. Snodgrass,
The Dark Age of Greece: An Archaeological Survey of the Eleventh to Eighth Centuries B.C.,
rev. ed. (Edinburgh, 2000). For Mycenaean Boiotia, see John M. Fossey,
Topography and Population of Ancient Boiotia,
vol. 1 (Chicago, 1988), especially 424ff.; for Thessaly, Bryan Feuer,
The Northern Mycenaean Border in Thessaly
(Oxford, 1983). Also Desborough,
The Greek Dark Ages,
87ff., discusses the Thessalian migration. The evidence for the arrival of the Mycenaeans on Lesbos and their apparent coexistence with the Lesbian population is discussed in Spencer, “Early Lesbos between East and West,” 269-306, and especially 275f.

30
For the evolution of the epic and the Aeolic phase, see especially West, “The Rise of the Greek Epic,” 151-72; and Paul Wathelet, “Les phases dialectales de l'épopée grecque et l'apport de l'éolien,”
Eikasmos
14 (2003), 9-26. A succinct précis of this complex linguistic history is given with much clarity in Richard Janko,
The “Iliad”: A Commentary, Volume IV: Books 13-16
(Cambridge, 1992), 15ff. (“The Aeolic Phase of the Epic Tradition”).

31
On the import of Troy's proximity, see, for example, Bryce,
The Trojans and Their Neighbours,
189.

32
For Anatolian phraseology in the
Iliad,
see, for example, Emile Benveniste,
Indo-European Language and Society,
Elizabeth Palmer, trans. (Coral Gables, FL, 1973), 371ff., on the Aeolo-Phrygian word for “the people” of the king in Homer; and Jaan Puhvel, “An Anatolian Turn of Phrase in the
Iliad,
”
American Journal of Philology
109 (1988), 591-93. Intriguingly, despite waves of migrations that continued over several generations, the archaeological record indicates that the Mycenaean newcomers did not displace native Lesbian culture, and one must surmise that the immigrant usurpers were not wholly intolerant of Anatolian ways. The relationship between the native inhabitants of Lesbos and the Aeolian colonizers in the Archaic Age, but with implications for the late Bronze/Dark Ages, is also examined in Nigel Spencer, “Multi-dimensional Group Definition in the Landscape of Rural Greece,” in Nigel Spencer, ed.,
Time, Tradition and Society in Greek Archaeology: Bridging the “Great Divide”
(London and New York, 1995).

33
Contacts between Lesbos and Ionic Euboia, the long, thin island that parallels mainland Greece, makes the latter a likely site for this transference, a likelihood borne out by certain elements in the
Iliad
itself: West, “The Rise of the Greek Epic,” 166f. For compelling evidence of Euboian diffusion of the Homeric epics, see Thomas and Conant,
The Trojan War,
65ff.

34
Similar transferences across languages of other cultures are described in West, “The Rise of the Greek Epic,” 171f.

35
For the Homeric poets: Demodokos, at the court of the Phaecians, is found at
Odyssey
8.43ff., 8.254ff., and 8.486ff.; Phemios, in Ithaka, at 1.153ff. and 22.330ff.

36
The “Homeric” “Hymn to Delian Apollo” also perpetuates this tradition: “Think of me in future, if ever some long-suffering stranger comes here and asks, ‘O Maidens, which is your favorite singer who visits here, and who do you enjoy most?' Then you must all answer with one voice . . . ‘It is a blind man, and he lives in rocky Chios: all of his songs remain supreme afterwards. ' ” (vv. 166ff.); in West,
Homeric Hymns,
85.

37
But see Andrew Dalby, “The
Iliad,
the
Odyssey,
and Their Audiences,”
Classical Quarterly
45 (1995), 269-79, who argues that the audiences were more humble.

38
On the Book divisions, see Nicholas Richardson,
The “Iliad”: A Commentary, Volume VI: Books 21-24
(Cambridge, 1996), 20f.; for the argument that the poet himself made the Book divisions, see Bruce Heiden, “The Placement of ‘Book Divisions' in the
Iliad,
”
Journal of Hellenic Studies
118 (1998), 68-81.

39
Herodotus,
The Histories,
2.116.

40
The principal source of our knowledge of the lost epics is Proclus'
Chrestomathy,
or “compendium of useful knowledge,” reproduced in M. L. West, ed. and trans.,
Greek Epic Fragments: From the Seventh to the Fifth Century B.C.
(Cambridge, MA, 2003). It is clear from the distribution of the subjects of these epics that they were carefully composed around the Homeric poems; in other words, these poems deferred to Homer. For a survey of the possible dates and authorship of the Trojan War epics, as well as what can be gleaned of the lost epics themselves, see West, ibid., 12ff. The relationship of the lost epics to the poems of Homer is discussed in Jonathan S. Burgess,
The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle
(Baltimore, 2001). A succinct overview of the cycle is given in Malcolm Davies,
The Greek Epic Cycle
(London, 2003).

41
The seeds of Homer's tragic vision of the war appear to have been inherent in the wider body of epic tradition. In the lost epic
Cypria,
for example, it is stated that Zeus' plan was “to relieve the all-nurturing earth of mankind's weight by fanning the great conflict of the Trojan War, to void the burden through death.”
Cypria,
fragment 1, in West,
Greek Epic Fragments,
81f.; see also Hesiod,
Catalogue of Women or EHOIAI,
vv. II.3ff., in Glenn W. Most, ed. and trans.,
Hesiod: Volume 2, The Shield. Catalogue of Women. Other Fragments
(Cambridge, MA, 2007), fragment 155 (continued), 233. The
Iliad
itself appears to allude to this tradition; see G. S. Kirk,
The Iliad: A Commentary, Volume I: Books 1-4
(Cambridge, 1985), sub. v. 5, 53, for echoes between the
Cypria
and the
Iliad
's proem; and R. Scodel, “The Achaean Wall and the Myth of Destruction,”
Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
86 (1982), 33-50; and also J. Marks, “The Junction Between the
Kypria
and the
Iliad,
”
Phoenix
56 (1-2) (2002), 1-24. The Eastern antecedents of “the myth of destruction” are also discussed in M. L. West,
The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth
(Oxford, 1997), 480ff.; and Walter Burkert,
The Orientalizing Revolution,
Margaret E. Pinder and Walter Burkert, trans. (Cambridge, MA, 1992), 100ff. The application of this myth to the story of the Trojan War “must date from the time when it had become obvious that the Trojan war, though successful, was the beginning of the end for the Mycenaean age”: T.B.L. Webster,
From Mycenae to Homer
(New York, 1964), 181. Evidence that the Trojan War was perceived as pointless and destructive by the wider Trojan War Epic Cycle, as well as by the
Iliad,
has recently been examined by Ruth Scodel, “Stupid, Pointless Wars,”
Transactions of the American Philological Association
138 (2008), 219-35.

42
Iliad
1.152ff.; 1.277ff; 1.293ff.

1
G. S. Kirk,
The Iliad: A Commentary, Volume I: Books 1-4
(Cambridge, 1985), sub. vv. 29-31, 56, quotes Aristarchus and is the modern commentator.

2
Ibid., sub. v. 39, 57; Apollonius Sophistes is the scholiast. For Apollo Smintheus, see Simon Pulleyn,
Homer: “Iliad” I
(Oxford, 2000), sub. v. 39, 134ff.