The Trojan War (7 page)

The Greeks would have a great deal to worry about when they got there: finding the right landing ground; protecting themselves from the slings and spears and arrows of the Trojan army that would surely be there to await them; securing local sources of food, fodder, and water; and winning some easy loot in order to keep the men happy. But there was one thing the Greeks would not have to worry about—the Trojan navy. Amazingly, despite its location by the sea and its economic dependence on maritime trade, Troy had no navy, or at least no significant one.

This was more than a passing weakness; it was a major vulnerability for the Trojans. Because they had command of the sea, the Greeks were able to raid the enemy coast at will. If it had similarly possessed competitive naval power, Troy could have brought the war to the enemy with an offensive across the Aegean Sea into the Greek heartland. Without a fleet, however, the Trojans were continually stuck on the strategic defensive. Agamemnon might have felt like the Hittite King Hattushilish III, who said that he could “cast a glance” at the enemy's country but the enemy could not cast a glance back at him.

Here is a paradox: Troy was a seaport that did not fight at sea. Founded by continentals looking
outward
to the sea, it became rich by offering sailors a foothold in the wind, but without developing its own navy. The Trojans fit the description of Bronze Age peoples of whom Thucydides says “although they inhabited the lowlands they were not sea-goers”—at least not when it came to fighting at sea. The Trojans no doubt had boats but not of the quality of the Greek warships nor in large enough number to compete.

For example, when Paris went to Sparta to bring back Helen, he had ships specially made for the trip. The builder was Phereclus son of Tekton and grandson of Harmon. Phereclus was a superb craftsman, described by Homer as someone who “knew how to make, with his hands, many elaborate and skillfully crafted things.” Indeed, his name means Famous, son of the Builder and grandson of the Joiner. Homer says:

Phereclus built Paris “well-balanced ships” for his getaway. The implication is that the ships on hand in Troy were no match for Menelaus's fleet.

Troy had little incentive to build a navy. Middlemen have no need to go abroad for plunder. Warships had little appeal to men who could garner wealth, glory, and security by breeding horses.

Archaeology as well as myth makes the Trojans latecomers to the horse. Myth considers Troy's horses a gift from Zeus. Excavation shows that the horse was not native to Troy but arrived around 1700
B.C.
, late, by Near Eastern standards, after which horse bones abound in the ruins. Trojans took to horses with the zeal of converts. Homer's Priam has royal stables in Troy and a horse farm near the city of Abydos on the Dardanelles. Andromache feeds her husband Hector's horses grain and wine, while Pandarus goes one better, by fighting on foot in order to spare his mounts from missing mealtime.

These were princes who could have rubbed shoulders with any age's bluebloods, including the horsey Hittites, Troy's powerful ally. And like the Hittites, the Trojans couldn't see beyond a silken mane. Landlocked in central Anatolia, the Hittites tended to imagine the coast as the edge of the world. Hittite kings boasted of extending their realm to “the border of the sea,” as if nothing lay beyond. Their treaty with Troy, for example, says nothing about ships, while it specifically mentions Troy's obligation to send infantry and chariotry to Hatti when needed. The horse was king, or so it seemed, but danger came by sea.

According to Homer, a generation before the Trojan War, King Laomedon of Troy promised horses to Heracles in exchange for ridding Troy of a sea monster. Heracles killed the beast but Laomedon reneged. The angry hero attacked the city and “filled the streets with widows.”

True, Heracles had only six ships at his disposal, but Heracles's son Tlepolemus brags that his father destroyed Troy, and evidence from Ugarit supports his boasting. In a letter from around 1200
B.C.
the last king of Ugarit, Ammurapi, complained that an enemy did serious damage to his country with only seven ships. The crews of Heracles' six ships would have amounted to just several hundred men, and they could not have taken a walled city like Troy, but the harbor town, farmhouses, and other unwalled settlements in the Troad would have all been at their mercy. And who knows? Pushed by Heracles' famous hot temper, they might even have found a weak point in the walls.

Nor should we discount help from their friends within Troy. They needn't have been many; in fact, most Trojans might have winced at the sight of Mycenaean ships, given the tide of violence in Mycenaean culture. How many Mycenaean traders turned into raiders when, like Heracles, they were hoodwinked?

Yet there were indeed Mycenaean merchants at Troy. In fact, the archaeologists have found so much Mycenaean pottery at the site, both imports and imitations made of local clay, that if we didn't know better, we might have thought the place was a Mycenaean colony and not Troy. One of the most eloquent signs of Mycenaean commerce comes from a grave in a cemetery at Troy's harbor: it is a seal stone with a stylized face, mouth open in a wide grin. The style is typically Mycenaean, and perhaps the seal was a trader's device, used to mark his wares. Somebody at Troy did business with men like him. Someone—perhaps a Trojan, perhaps an immigrant—traded with the Mycenaeans for horses or textiles or slaves. And that person might have opened the gates to Heracles' men. Consider the
Iliad
's Antenor, a Trojan elder who was well-disposed to the Greeks and who proposed that Helen be returned to them. When Troy was sacked, he was spared—some say because he in fact opened the city gate to the enemy.

By developing land power to the exclusion of sea power, the Trojans made the smart choice—or so they thought. It may well be that the Trojans had enough warships to project their power into the nearby islands, but they could not fight off an armada like the Greeks'. Trojan strategists might have reasoned that their land defenses were sufficient to repel any invasion from the sea.

Troy would not be history's only example of a state located on the sea but without a strong navy. Japan, for example, is an island nation that had superb infantry and cavalry but never had a navy before the late 1800s. Japan was not a trading state, but history records commercial powerhouses whose forte was maritime trade and yet had no navy. Consider the cities of the Hanseatic League of the late Middle Ages: at its core about sixty great merchant cities in northern Europe, mainly Germany. They dominated trade in the Baltic Sea but they had no permanent army or navy. Only in the face of a serious threat from Denmark in the 1360s did they put together a fleet, but that lasted only for a few years, until Denmark was defeated. In the 1400s, the new nation-states of northern Europe, such as Sweden and Poland, easily outmatched what little naval power existed in the disorganized League. Another case is the Netherlands: it was a giant of maritime trade in the 1650s, but it had only a small navy, and so it was battered by the English fleet. If the Dutch had strengthened their navy in time, New York might still be New Amsterdam, as it was until the English fleet seized it in 1664.

Like Troy, the Netherlands and the Hanseatic cities were rich and unrealistic. They all faced a similar temptation of putting their resources into productive or prestigious things instead of necessities. They were wrong.

Agamemnon did not make the same mistake. The king of Argos and many an isle built a war machine for all seasons. Argos, a land that Homer calls “horse-nourishing,” was a hothouse of chariots, while the islands were guarded by the Greek fleet. The Greek way of war was versatile and it had been for centuries. Now, as Agamemnon sat in his flagship, his fleet of black ships crossed the billowing waves. On every stroke, as we may imagine, calloused hands of rowers strained at the wooden oars, while grooms whispered to the tethered horses not to fear the sea. Slaves checked the chariots against any loosening by the waves, and the surge made one man sick while lifting another to reveries of gold. Warriors missed their wives, seers prayed to Poseidon, and a veteran seaman reached for a goatskin's slug of wine. As the ships advanced, the Harpies of Death flew ahead to scout the plain of Troy.

H
elios the Sun, who sees everything and knows the gods, is beginning his ride in his four-horse chariot, turning the sky a gauzy blue and the sea the color of widows' tears. Gulls fly toward the cliffs of the Gallipoli Peninsula across the Dardanelles to the north, framed by the barren peaks of the islands of Imbros and Samothrace. The scene is completed by the brown hills of the island of Tenedos in the west and, in the east, the rolling Trojan Plain, with the long ridge of Mount Ida rising ghostlike in the distance. A pastoral scene, as we might imagine it, then the Greek fleet appears.

The black ships fill the sea like horses at the starting gate. The land, in turn, is unclear at first and as the ships come closer, it reveals fields and scrub. The morning fragrance invigorates the men aboard ship. If they weren't working at the oars, the Greeks might shout, echoing the cry of a Hittite king on the warpath: “Behold, the troops and chariots of the land of Greece are coming!” Across the water, even the toughest Trojan in his bronze armor might shiver at the flutter of the polished firwood oars, driving the armada like birds of prey onto the Anatolian shore. It is the moment of decision.

But not of surprise: the Trojans have had plenty of warning and their troops are poised to stop the enemy from landing on the fertile soil of Ilion. They were waiting, just as a large number of Cypriot troops waited for the seaborne Hittite invaders of King Shuppiluliuma II (1207–?
B.C.
) when they disembarked on the island. The beach is thick with defenders. What Homer says of a later rallying of the Trojan forces would surely apply that day as well:

Offshore lies part of the small Trojan fleet; the rest is guarding another possible Greek landing ground. The rowers sit ready, while archers and shield-carrying spearmen prepare for the unequal battle ahead. Although they have no hope of defeating the Greek navy they can at least slow it down and ease the task of the Trojan shore defense.

As they watch the enemy ships grow larger on the horizon, the Trojans on shore get ready too. The priests might have been doing what Hittite priests did before battle: hosting the enemy's gods at a ritual meal, of wine and slaughtered sheep, at which they blame the war on enemy aggression. The soldiers no doubt have more mundane tasks. Veterans may be checking their bow or tightening their shield straps while the new men joke as if on an outing. Some might wish that they could reach under their breastplate and wipe off the sweat, while others don't even notice how sore their hands already are from clenching a spear.

The battle of the beach is about to begin. Of this key event, Homer says only that a Trojan killed the first Greek to jump ashore. But the historian Thucydides, writing centuries later, reasoned that the Greeks must have fought and won a battle on their arrival on Trojan territory; otherwise they could not have set up camp. Hector son of Priam struck the first blow, as we learn from the Epic Cycle, those non-Homeric early Greek poems about the Trojan War.

Hector was a great warrior but a mediocre husband. He was strong, agile, fearless, dogged, and by turns self-centered and sensitive. Hector could remember how he had lifted his bride's veil on their wedding night to tenderly offer her a cup of wine but could shrug his shoulders at the thought of the widowhood that awaited her thanks to his aggressive pursuit of glory in battle.

Homer makes Hector an expert spearman who could handle a sword if need be, but he was probably an archer as well. Around 1225
B.C.
the ruler of a western Anatolian kingdom not far from Troy had his portrait carved in relief on a cliff. The king strides boldly with a spear in one hand, a bow slung over his shoulder, and a dagger tucked into his belt. What was good enough for him was probably good enough for Hector.

Homer's Hector is tall and imposing, with a streaming mane of black hair and a handsome face, and eyes that no doubt flash from time to time with his reckless and aggressive spirit. He was probably clean-shaven and he might have kept his hair in a ponytail. He probably wore gold earrings, an embroidered kilt, and Hittite-style shoes with upturned toes. If Hector was uncomfortable beneath a bronze breastplate, he lacked the odor of someone permanently stained with sweat since, unlike commoners, royalty took daily baths.

Hector is a type well attested in the ancient Near East, the crown prince burning to prove himself as a warrior. He knew that the only way to show that he was no longer a boy was to lead armies and give commands. A Hittite king told his young Babylonian counterpart that unless he led an armed raid into enemy territory and soon, people would say that, like his father, the Babylonian was all talk and no action. Hector, by contrast, had an old fighter for a father, who advised caution.

Old King Priam, white-haired and scratchy-voiced, confined to the city rather than the battlefield he once strode, still had the power of command. Priam was shrewd, self-controlled, and an old hand at the ways of war as it was waged in the Bronze Age. It was under his leadership, no doubt, that Troy had put together an alliance and a strategy. Priam knew that Troy's best policy was defense and that the farther the Trojans fought from the city's walls the better. Priam might have known the words of the Hittite king who said that the alternative to fighting in the open was risking suffocation in the crushing embrace of an enemy siege. The preferred option was to defeat the enemy on the beach as he tried to land. Should that fail, the Trojans would fight the Greeks on the plain of Troy, keeping them away from the city. If that tactic should not work in turn, then they would fall back to the anti-chariot trenches and palisades that protected the lower city—with the great walls of the citadel themselves as the final refuge. But it would never come to that, not if the gods showed Priam the favor that they always had in the past.

The Storm God—Zeus, to the Greeks—held Priam and his people closer to his divine heart than he did any other king or country on earth. Known in Anatolia by such names as Tarhunt or Teshub, the Storm God was one of the chief deities of the Trojan pantheon. Priam was a favorite of his in no small part because the king knew that the gods help those who help themselves. Priam was not only intelligent but brave out of all proportion to his years. He was so bold and decisive that even an enemy marveled at Priam's “iron heart.” No one in the region was more blessed with wealth or sons than Priam. And then the Greeks came.

The Trojans would surely have learned about the Greeks' approach from signal flares sent up by their friends on the nearby islands of Imbros and Tenedos. Allies were expected to serve as “border guards” and “watchmen,” as Hittite treaties often state. The use of torches for military signaling goes back at least as far as Mesopotamia in the 1700s
B.C.
That same era is full of references to the importance of intelligence to warfare. The city of Mari had an intelligence bureau and it may have been headed by an official with the wonderful name of “Little Gnat.”

The Trojans may well have taken a leaf from the same book. Homer has the Trojans employ lookouts, perhaps like the “coastal watchers” of the kingdom of Pylos attested in the Linear B tablets. One of the Trojan lookouts was Hector's brother Polites. He was a fast runner and no doubt had excellent vision. Information that he provided would surely have been welcome, even though the Greeks had hardly kept their approach a secret.

On the way to Troy from Aulis, the Greeks seem to have stopped first at the island of Scyros and sacked it. If there is anything to the epic tradition that Achilles' mother had forced him as a boy into a humiliating hiding place on Scyros in girl's clothing in order to dodge the war, which she foresaw, then this would have been sweet revenge for him. When the Greeks attacked en route to Troy, the Scyrians would not have had a chance against so big a force. In addition to settling Achilles' private score, the attack would have been a morale builder for the men, who could thrill to their first victory. It was also an experiment, allowing the generals to see how their untested army might perform.

Then, continuing northeastward, the Greeks landed on Lemnos. The rugged island has unexpected bounties, such as its claylike soil with medicinal properties and its sweet red wine. On Lemnos the Greeks lived like Olympians, feasting on beef and chugging wine by the cupful. The more they drank, the more they boasted: each Greek could take on a hundred Trojans, no, two hundred! It was a last binge for the boys, but the generals had to think about strategy. Lemnos was a stepping stone on the route from northern Greece across the Aegean to Troy and the Dardanelles. Lemnos was also a potentially crucial source of supplies for any Greek camp at Troy as well as a potential market for any captives whom the Greeks would want to sell as slaves. It was essential to secure Lemnos before going on.

But the price of doing business on Lemnos was that it gave the Trojans time to prepare. And then some: the epic tradition outside Homer records that after Lemnos the Greeks took a wrong turn. Instead of landing at Troy they ended up about seventy-five miles to the south on the Aegean coast of the region known as Mysia. Mistakenly thinking they had reached Troy, they attacked the forces of King Telephus. The king's army bloodied the Greeks, but in the end Telephus was wounded by Achilles. Myth says that only a scraping of the wood from Achilles' spear could heal the wound—an unusual example of the herbal medicine practiced by the Greeks. Achilles' gigantic spear was made of ash wood, and boiled ash bark makes a good poultice to apply to a wound. In exchange for the medicine, Telephus showed the Greeks the way to Troy.

Whether or not there is any truth in this story, it underlines the fragility of early navigation—and of early military intelligence. If the tale is true, it means that the Trojans had even more time to prepare. They were indeed ready for the invader.

Troy had assembled a grand coalition. Some of the allies came from Europe—Thrace and Macedonia—but most were Anatolian. Alliances were the bread and butter of Anatolian politics, and many figure in Hittite texts, so Homer's list of Troy's Anatolian partners is historically plausible. First come the Trojans or, more accurately, the Trojans and Dardanians, to refer respectively to the populations of the Trojan Plain and, to its south, the fertile middle valley of the Scamander River—Aeneas's country. Next come men from other places in the Troad, such as Abydos, Arisbe, and Zeleia. Then there are Anatolian regions beyond the Troad, namely Mysia and Phrygia due east; Paphlagonia on the Black Sea; Maeonia to the south, in the Hermus River valley; Caria, farther south, in the Maeander River valley; and Lycia, in the southwestern corner of Anatolia. The allied army might also have included Hittites, perhaps referred to by Homer as Halizones from Halube. So just as they had promised in the Alaksandu Treaty, the Hittites might have sent infantry and chariotry in Troy's moment of need—although surely not as many as Troy would have liked, given the Hittites' bigger problems closer to home.

Still, Troy had assembled a formidable alliance. Putting it together was no doubt a tribute to Priam's diplomacy and his purse, because all business between Bronze Age kings had to be greased with gifts. And they had to be top of the line. For example, in the 1300s
B.C.
the Amarna Letters are full of such gifts as gold and lapis lazuli jewelry, horses, chariots, pieces of silver, and women. Homer cites gold and silver cups or ingots, bronze tripods, embroidered robes, fine jewelry, weapons, armor, heirlooms, vintage wine, mules, horses, and beautiful women. And it was an ancient custom to repay each gift with another gift, to say nothing of the lavish entertainment that had to be offered to ambassadors. All these benefactions were usually given with elaborate courtesy, but sometimes the veil was dropped, and a king just had to pay up, and pay big. Priam might have remembered, bitterly, the Egyptians' claim that the Hittite king had stripped his kingdom of silver to pay the allied troops who fought at Qadesh (1274
B.C.
).

Leading Troy's allied army fell to Hector. On the eve of the Greeks' arrival, he probably mustered the men outside the city, perhaps at the hill of Baitieia, which Homer mentions as a place where the alliance drew up its troops. It was a multiethnic force, so varied in fact, that there was a cacophony of languages. As Homer puts it,

The groups camped separately and no doubt fought by national unit, as the Greeks did. Yet, in order to coordinate operations, Troy's commanders must have came up with a few shared words of command or some sort of lingua franca.

Each nation's army was organized by type of troops, size of units, and hierarchy of commanders, as was standard in the Bronze Age. Some details of military groupings survive in Hittite, Mesopotamian, and Linear B texts, but the clearest picture comes from Egypt. There, the army was divided into infantry units ranging from five-thousand-men divisions to ten-men squads. The basic tactical unit was a platoon of fifty men (five squads), in turn grouped into a company (five platoons) and a host (two or more companies). The chain of command ran down from the pharaoh to generals to combat officers to the ordinary men. Alongside infantry units were chariot units and elite soldiers, as well as, when needed, naval units, garrison commands, and foreign troops.