The Trojan War (30 page)

There are unusual and original insights into the mentality of early poets such as Homer in Elizabeth Wayland Barber and Paul T. Barber,
When They Severed Earth from Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).

WARFARE

For all his prominence in Western culture, Homer's description of warfare remains highly debated, and poetry is often ambiguous. A fundamental study of the Homeric battlefield is Joachim Latacz,
Kamfparänese, Kampfdarstellung und Kampfwirklichkeit in der Ilias, bei Kallinos und Tyrtaios
(Munich: Beck, 1977). Latacz argues convincingly that pitched battle in Homer is mainly a matter of mass combat rather than individual duels, yet he contends that rather than Homer describing the Bronze Age battlefield, the poet describes Greek warfare of his own day, shortly before 700
B.C.
Hans Van Wees wrote a thorough and astute study of the varieties of Homeric warfare, including raiding, although there is more of the Bronze Age in Homer's battles than Van Wees allows. See, among other works, his
Status Warriors: War, Violence and Society in Homer and History
(Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1992) and his “The Homeric Way of War: The ‘Iliad' and the Hoplite Phalanx (I),”
Greece and Rome,
2nd series, 41:1 (1994): 1–18 and “The Homeric Way of War: The ‘Iliad' and the Hoplite Phalanx (II),”
Greece and Rome,
2nd series, 41: 2 (1994): 131–55; also
Greek Warfare, Myths and Realities
(London: Duckworth, 2004), 151–65, 249–52, 290–94. Like Latacz, Van Wees largely removes Homeric battle from the Bronze Age. He differs from Latacz in dating Homer to the 600s
B.C.
and in taking heroic duels literally. He reconstructs Homeric battle as a matter of the constant ebb and flow of group and individual, which he compares to war in New Guinea. Latacz's reconstruction is more persuasive, but he underestimates the presence of Bronze Age arms and armor in Homer and the existence of mass combat in the Bronze Age. For a corrective, see Shear,
Tales of Heroes.
As Pritchett argues, the phalanx was hardly an invention of Archaic Greece but dates back to the Sumerians: Pritchett,
Greek State at War,
part 4: pp. 5–32. Still useful on raiding is Walter Leaf,
Troy: A Study in Homeric Geography
(London: Macmillan, 1912).

Van Wees and Ralph Gallucci are among those arguing, against the skeptics, that the chariot tactics in Homer are realistic and historical. See Gallucci, “Studies in Homeric Epic Tradition,” in Karlene Jones-Bley et al., eds.,
Proceedings of the Tenth Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, Los Angeles 1998
(Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man, 1999), 165–82. In this same piece Gallucci shows that Bronze Age Assyrians named their siege engines after horses, and suggests that the Trojan Horse is a dim, mythic memory of that.

Skeptics will doubt the relevance of Bronze Age warfare to Homer, but nothing could be more pertinent to the premise of this book. Although four decades old, Yigael Yadin's two volumes are the best introduction to Bronze Age warfare:
The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands in the Light of Archaeological Discovery
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1963). There is much of value in Nigel Stillman and Nigel Tallis,
Armies of the Ancient Near East, 3000
B.C.
to 539
B.C.
(Worthington, England: Wargames Research Group, 1984). There are good but brief discussions of Bronze Age warfare in General Sir John Hackett, ed.,
Warfare in the Ancient World
(New York: Facts on File, 1989) and in Simon Anglim, Phyllis G. Jestice, Rob S. Rice, Scott Rusch, and John Serrati,
Fighting Techniques of the Ancient World 3000
BC–AD
500: Equipment, Combat Skills, and Tactics
(New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2002). Robert Drews offers many important insights into conflict in the Late Bronze Age in his
The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe c. 1200
BC
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); his theories of chariot warfare, the limited role of infantry, and the disconnection between Homeric and Mycenaean society are, however, unconvincing. A. Harding's thoughtful essay considers war and the era's culture: “Warfare: A Defining Characteristic of Bronze Age Europe?” in John Carman and Anthony Harding, eds.,
Ancient Warfare: Archaeological Perspectives
(Stroud, England: Sutton Publishing, 1999), 157–74.

Archaeological artifacts, military architecture, and the Linear B tablets are rich in detail about Late Bronze Age Greek warfare. For an overview of the subject, see Sarah Monks, “The Aegean,” in R. Osgood, Sarah Monks, and Judith Toms,
Bronze Age Warfare
(Phoenix Mill, England: Sutton Publishing, 2000), 115–37. The first generation of Linear B evidence is discussed in Michael Ventris and John Chadwick,
Documents in Mycenaean Greek,
2nd edition (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1973); for the recent evidence, see Thomas G. Palaima, “Mycenaean Militarism from a Textual Perspective: Onomastics in Context:
Lawos, Damos, Klewos,”
in Robert Laffineur, ed.,
Polemos: Le Contexte Guerrier en Égée à l'âge du Bronze,
vol. 2, in
Aegaeum
19 (1999): 367–80. On Mycenaean arms and armor, see Shear,
Tales of Heroes
, 29–60, and A. M. Snodgrass,
Arms and Armour of the Greeks
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 14–34.

For an introduction to Hittite warfare, see P. H. J. Houwink ten Cate, “The History of Warfare According to Hittite Sources: The Annals of Hattusilis I (Part II),”
Anatolica
11 (1984): 47–83; Richard H. Beal,
The Organisation of the Hittite Military
(Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitaetsverlag, 1992); Richard H. Beal, “Hittite Military Organization,” in Sasson, ed.,
Civilizations of the Ancient Near East,
vol. 1, pp. 545–54; Richard H. Beal, “Le Strutture Militari Ittite di Attaco e di Difesa” [in Italian], in M. C. Guidotti and Franca Pecchioli Daddi, eds.,
La Battaglia di Qadesh
(Livorno: Sillabe, 2000), 109–21. There is much of importance in these specialized studies: Kemal Balkan,
Letter of King Anum-Hirbi of Mama to King Warshama of Kanish
(Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, 1957); H. A. Hoffner, “A Hittite Analogue to the David and Goliath Contest of Champions?”
Catholic Biblical Quarterly
30 (1968): 220–25; Hans G. Güterbock and Theo P. J. Van den Hout, eds.,
The Hittite Instruction for the Royal Bodyguard, The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Assyriological Studies,
no. 24 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Gary Beckman, “The Siege of Ursu Text (CTH 7) and Old Hittite Historiography,”
Journal of Cuneiform Studies
47 (1995): 23–32; Schlommo Izre'el and Itamar Singer,
The General's Letter from Ugarit
(Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1990); T. P. J. Van den Hout, “Bellum Iustum, Ius Divinum: Some Thoughts About War and Peace in Hittite Anatolia,” in
Grotiana, New Series
12–13 (1991–92 [1994]): 13–35.

New Kingdom Egyptian warfare is very well documented, and it is at a minimum suggestive of Late Bronze Age fighting more generally. See Ian Shaw's succinct
Egyptian Warfare and Weapons
(Buckinghamshire, England: Shire Publications, 1991) and A. J. Spalinger's more detailed
War in Ancient Egypt
(Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1991), as well as Andrea Gnirs, “Ancient Egypt,” in Kurt Raaflaub and Nathan Rosenstein, eds.,
War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, Asia, the Mediterranean, Europe, and Mesoamerica
(Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies, 1999), 71–104. See also J. K. Hoffmeier, “Military: Materiel,” in D. B. Redford, ed.,
Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt
, vol. 2 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 406–12, and D. B. Redford,
The Wars in Syria and Palestine of Thutmose III
(Leiden: Brill, 2003).

On Early Bronze Age warfare in Mesopotamia, see J. S. Cooper,
Reconstructing History from Ancient Inscriptions: The Lagash-Umma Border Conflict,
vol. 2, fasc. 1 of
Sources from the Ancient Near East
(Malibu, Calif.: Undena Publications, 1983). The rich evidence for Middle Bronze Age warfare at Mari can be found in J. M. Sasson,
The Military Establishments at Mari, Studia Pohl
(Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1969) and W. Heimpel,
Letters to the King of Mari: A New Translation, with Historical Introduction, Notes, and Commentary
(Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2003). For an introduction to Mari, see S. Dalley,
Mari and Karana: Two Old Babylonian Cities
(New York: Longman, 1984).

On set battles in the ancient Near East, see, for Megiddo (1479
B.C.
), E. H. Cline,
The Battles of Armageddon
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 6–28; and for Qadesh (1274
B.C.
), W. J. Murnane,
The Road to Kadesh: A Historical Interpretation of the Battle Reliefs of King Sety I at Karnak
(Chicago: Oriental Institute of Chicago, 1990); and M. Healy,
Qadesh 1300
BC
: Clash of the Warrior Kings
(Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 1993).

On chariots, see S. Piggott,
Wagon, Chariot, and Carriage: Symbol and Status in the History of Transport
(New York: Thames & Hudson, 1992), Mary Aiken Littauer et al., eds.,
Selected Writings on Chariots, Other Early Vehicles, Riding and Harness
, in
Culture & History of the Ancient Near East,
vol. 6 (Leiden: Brill, 2002) and Juliet Clutton-Brock,
Horse Power: A History of the Horse and the Donkey in Human Societies
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992).

On Bronze Age and Homeric naval history, see S. Wachsmann,
Seagoing Ships and Seamanship in the Bronze Age Levant
(College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1998); Lionel Casson,
Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971), 30–35, 38–53, 445–46; Lucien Basch,
Le Musée Imaginaire de la Marine Antique
(Athens: Institut Hellénique pour la Préservation de la Tradition Nautique, 1987), 76–202; Shelley Wachsmann, “The Pylos Rower Tablets Reconsidered,”
Tropis V, 5th International Symposium on Ship Construction in Antiquity: Nauplia, 26, 27, 28 August 1993, Proceedings,
ed. Harry Tzalas (Nauplion, Greece: Hellenic Institute for the Preservation of Nautical Tradition, 1993), 491–504; T. G. Palaima, “Maritime Matters in the Linear B Tablets,”
Thalassa: L'Égée Prehistorique et la Mer
, in
Aegaeum
7 (1991): 273–310; J. Crouwel, “Fighting on Land and Sea in Late Mycenaean Times,”
Polemos,
455–64. For arguments that the Mycenaeans invented the galley in the Late Bronze Age, see Michael Wedde, “War at Sea: The Mycenaean and Early Iron Age Oared Galley,”
Polemos,
465–78, as well as Michael Wedde,
Towards a Hermeneutics of Aegean Bronze Age Ship Imagery
(Mannheim: Bibliopolis, 2000). On the Egyptian navy, see E. Linder, “Naval Warfare in the El-Amarna Age,” in D. J. Blackman, ed.,
Marine Archaeology,
Proceedings of the Twentythird [sic] Symposium of the Colston Research Society Held in the University of Bristol April 4th to 8th, 1971 (London: Archon Books, 1973), 317–25; Steve Vinson,
Egyptian Boats and Ships
(Princes Risborough, England: Shire Publications, 1994). On Bronze Age shipwrecks, see George Bass, “Cape Gelidonya: A Bronze Age Shipwreck,”
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society
57, part 8 (1967), cf. http://ina.tamu.edu/capegelidonya.htm; W. Phelps, Y. Lolos, and Y. Vichos, eds.,
The Point Iria Wreck: Interconnections in the Mediterranean ca. 1200
BC
(Athens: Hellenic Institute of Marine Archaeology, 1999); on the Ulu Burun wreck, see http://ina.tamu.edu/ub_main.htm.

Health conditions were surely no inconsiderable factor in the Trojan War. On war wounds and battlefield medicine, see Christine Salazar,
The Treatment of War Wounds in Greco-Roman Antiquity
(Leiden: Brill, 2000), 126–58; Guido Majno,
The Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), 142–47; Wolf-Hartmut Friedrich,
Wounding and Death in the Iliad: Homeric Techniques of Description,
trans. Gabriele Wright and Peter Jones (London: Duckworth, 2003); R. Arnott, “War Wounds and Their Treatment in the Aegean Bronze Age,”
Polemos,
499–506. There is much important and comparative information on malaria in Robert Sallares,
Malaria and Rome: A History of Malaria in Ancient Italy
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). There is an insightful discussion of battle stress in the
Iliad
in J. Shay,
Achilles in Vietnam
(New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1994). Poison in Homer is examined in A. Mayor,
Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs
(Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 2003).