The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction

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I just finished the Iliad as assigned reading for the “Online Great Books.” I was amazed at how enjoyable and accessible the Iliad was; it was quite the page-turner.

Naturally, I was drawn to investigate the history and backstory of the Iliad. So, I turned to the ever-reliable “A Very Short Introduction” series and the equally reliable Eric Cline. Professor Cline is the author of “1177: The Year Civilization Collapsed,” which is another great book for scratching the curiosity itch with respect to the question of why Civilization 1.0 collapsed at the end of the Bronze Age.

Cline delivers the goods with a review of the background of Home, his epics, the Troy cycle of epics, the surrounding cultures, the archeology identifying the site of Troy, and the archeological investigations of Troy.

OGB wants its students to read the text of a great book before they read commentary or supporting information, which I did. Nonetheless, I confess to missing some of the name-doubling. I got “Argive/Achean/Danan” and
“Troy/Ilios” and “Trojan/Darden,” but I missed the fact that Paris was also named Alexander. I thought that the naming conventions were more for poetry, but it turns out that it may have represented Greek and Hittite cognates for the same words. Thus, the Hittites mention “Wilusa” in their records, while the Greeks and Latins dropped the initial “W” and mention “Ilios.” Paris's other name - Alexander - may - underscore may - be attested to in Hittite records as a ruler of Troy in the 13th century BC.

On which point, it is stunning to think that archeologists have managed to uncover Hittite records, lost for nearly three-thousand years, that attest maybe to characters and events that figure in Homer.

As to Homer, there are as many questions about him as there are about Troy. Cline suggests that Homer lived in the 8th century BC and was writing about an event that happened four-hundred to five-hundred years before him. Homer gets some details about the Late Bronze Age (“LBA”) right but mixes in things that happened either long before the LBA or during the early Iron age. For example, he mostly gets the cities correct in the “List of Ships” from Book 2 of the Iliad despite the fact that many of those cities had disappeared hundreds of years before his time. (Parenthetically, if you have read that book, you should be impressed with the detail and length of information that was conveyed orally for hundreds of years.)

Cline points out that there were other poets writing in the Trojan epic cycle around the time of Homer. Most of these epics have disappeared, to be remembered only in references in other texts. Some of those other epics provide some background information, such as how Achilles came into the possession of Briseis, who figures prominently in his rage at the beginning of the Iliad.

Cline's prose is very accessible. He provides a lot of background that results in an appreciated “gosh-wow!” effect. This is a short book that can be consumed in one or two reading sessions. I was inclined to knock off a star because I wanted more, but that would be unfair. The book accomplished what it set out to accomplish by being a “very short introduction,” and is valuable for that purpose.