The Trojan War (16 page)

Men on each side proceeded to try to slaughter each other by thrusting with a lance or throwing a javelin. When a man went down his comrades tried to drag his corpse back to safety, but the enemy would contest that. Stripping an enemy's corpse gave a man both loot and bragging rights. So a kill was usually followed by knots of men tussling ferociously over the corpse and its armor. Because of encounters like this, however tightly packed the unit had been when it reached the enemy, it could not have stayed that way.

Duels were probably not unusual on the Bronze Age battlefield. But surely they were not nearly as prominent as they are in Homer. Bronze Age battle poetry exaggerates heroic individualism and downplays group effort. Homer's emphasis on duels between heroes is more likely to reflect Bronze Age literary style than actual Bronze Age warfare.

At this point in the encounter, the Trojans gave ground, but they did not flee the field. As was typical, they regrouped for another stand. Meanwhile, the Greeks were not pressing their advantage. In fact, here and there they were slackening: Homer has the goddess Athena buck them up, just as he has Apollo—the war-god Iyarri, no doubt—put some backbone in the Trojans. With the two armies relatively evenly matched, the battle followed a rhythm, with each side taking turns in gaining ground on the other.

But with the Greeks still holding a slight advantage, Homer's attention now shifts to their champion Diomedes. Efficient killer that he was, Diomedes could have accomplished little without the help of his men, but the poet leaves them in the background. First Diomedes defeats, on foot, two noble Trojan brothers in their chariot, killing one and so terrifying the other that he leaves behind both chariot and his brother's corpse. Then Diomedes goes on to slaughter twelve named warriors, including Pandarus, whose arrow started the battle. He nearly kills Aeneas, the Trojans' best warrior after Hector, and he wounds the gods Aphrodite and Ares. He makes most of his kills with lance and javelin, but he also takes out his sword and slashes a man's shoulder off. Apparently, Diomedes is one of the men lucky enough to have a Naue II sword. His squire and charioteer, Sthenelus, followed behind. It was his job to haul away the booty as well as to be ready to give Diomedes a ride to the next target.

Diomedes would have won more booty by taking Pandarus alive and ransoming him. But his comrades had no cause to complain about Diomedes, whose vigorous leadership caused the Trojans to retreat back to the Scamander River. And the Greek offensive inflicted terrible casualties on the allies. Whether the Greeks had purposely targeted them or not, their plight was enough to cause Sarpedon, commander of the key allied division from Lycia, to send a message to Hector: rally the Trojan troops or face a big problem.

Hector responded quickly. He stepped down from his chariot and exhorted the Trojans on foot. They roared their enthusiasm and turned back to give battle. Meanwhile, the Greeks were remobilized by their leaders in turn and they fought fearlessly. But the Trojans steadily pushed them back.

Aeneas then makes a miraculous return to the field. Diomedes had hit him on the hip joint with a huge rock, which tore Aeneas's tendons and broke his socket. But the gods whisked him off to Troy, cured him, and arranged for his wondrous comeback—a case of heroic exaggeration at its finest. In real life, Aeneas would probably have gone into shock. A less serious fracture would not have presented a problem to Bronze Age physicians, because they could set bones so that a fracture healed perfectly.

Directed by Diomedes, the Greeks rediscovered their fighting spirit. They broke through the Trojan ranks and began driving them back toward Troy. But once again, Hector saved the day by rallying the troops. The Greeks pulled back. It was an opportunity for Hector to take the advice of his brother Helenus, Troy's best seer, and dart back into the city where he could have Queen Hecuba organize a special women's appeal to the goddess whom Homer calls Athena. Whether she was worshipped at Troy—ancient peoples often borrowed each other's gods—or whether Athena was actually an Eastern goddess, a prayer to a goddess for military success was not unusual in Anatolia. Hittite King Tudhaliya IV (1237–1209
B.C.
), for example, prayed to the Sun-Goddess of Arinna for victory against an unnamed enemy, possibly the Assyrians. We can assume that Troy had a protector goddess even if she cannot be identified.

This religious mission, in the heat of combat, speaks volumes about the nature of this battle. Either Hector was superstitious himself or he knew that his men were. The story demonstrates the awareness that battle would be intermittent. It also underlines the reality that even the doughtiest champion needed to take a break from time to time.

Homer reports how thirsty warriors were after battle. Mesopotamian war poetry called for mind over matter: a soldier needs strength, vigor, and speed; he has to make his mind command his body.

Hector returned to the field with his brother Paris in tow, which gave the Trojans a second wind. Soon it became clear that, far from wanting to continue to fight, Hector sought a graceful way of calling it off. Homer says that Apollo had changed Hector's mind, but the Trojan had good reason to have reached his conclusion without any help from the gods. He needed a respite; he needed time to meet with his commanders and hammer out a fresh plan, as well as to rest the men and to brief them anew. For Hector had received a key piece of intelligence:

The best and most honorable way to achieve his goal was for Hector to issue a challenge. Single combat at this point served several purposes. It was a chivalrous way of ending a long day of fighting that had bloodied both sides without a clear outcome. It would strengthen the Trojans' standing in their allies' eyes by showing Hector's courage. And it would earn Hector political capital in the debate that lay ahead. Before taking his army back to war Hector would have to deal with an urgent issue of morale. As an assembly that very night would show, the nation's will to fight was at question.

Hector was careful not to put as much at stake in this latest duel. When Menelaus fought Paris, Helen and the Spartan treasures were on the line. Hector offered only an honorable funeral for the loser. But he did not have to offer much because the Greeks were equally glad to leave the field.

Ajax won the lottery among the eager Greek champions and he faced Hector with swords. By now it was night. The two champions fought an inconclusive duel. The judges declared a draw, the combatants accepted, and the two made a gallant exchange of gifts. The weary men in each army withdrew.

The long day of battle had rebuilt the morale of the Greeks. Menelaus disgraced Paris, Ajax beat back Hector's challenge, while notable kills were scored by Agamemnon; Idomeneus; Odysseus; the Thessalian leader, Eurypylus; Idomeneus's second-in-command, Meriones; and Antilochus son of Nestor, who teamed up with Menelaus (apparently recovered from his wound in record time). And who could forget Diomedes' bloody rampage through the Trojan ranks? Yet Nestor knew the price of success:

The Greek dead included many prominent men, most notably Tlepolemus son of Heracles, leader of the Rhodian troops.

Meanwhile, the Trojans and their allies held a stormy assembly outside Priam's palace on the citadel. Antenor proposed the return of Helen and the Spartan treasures. After the day's bloodshed, he would have had plenty of supporters. Antenor was speaking from the heart, and he reminded his audience that they had broken an oath today. By shooting Menelaus after having sworn to resolve the war through a duel of champions, Pandarus had put the Trojans in the wrong. No good could come from this.

Paris responded vigorously by saying the gods must have made Antenor mad. But then he more or less admitted his own failure in the duel with Menelaus that day by offering a major concession: he would give back the Spartan treasures and even add a little extra from his own riches. But Paris refused to return Helen. Then Priam rose to support Paris's plan. He was not optimistic about Greek agreement, and he warned the men to expect no more than a cease-fire for burying the dead. The assembly approved Paris's offer: return of the Spartan treasure and then some, but Helen would stay where she was.

The men dispersed, the soldiers returned to their units. They took their evening meal by companies. After the battle they were exhausted, but they may have had to settle for sleeping in shifts because the watch had to be maintained at all times.

At dawn, the Trojan herald Idaeus delivered the assembly's message to the Greeks. He found the chiefs gathered around Agamemnon's ship. At first, his words were greeted with silence. Then Diomedes spoke for the whole leadership:

Idaeus returned and reported the defiant rebuff. But the Greeks had at least agreed to a temporary cessation of hostilities.

The Trojans wasted no time sending out cremation parties. One detail went into the hills to gather wood for the pyres while another walked the battlefield to pick up the fallen. Since anything of value had probably already been stripped, the bodies had to be identified by their faces, on which the process of disfiguration would have already begun, since they had been left out overnight on the hot, damp plain. Whenever they found remains that they recognized, the Trojans washed off the dried blood and lifted the corpse onto a cart. They shed tears but otherwise displayed no emotion, because Priam had forbidden lamenting. This might say something about the shaky state of Trojan morale or it might reveal Priam's determination that the Trojans not show weakness to the enemy.

At the day's end, two sets of pyres were lit at opposite ends of the Trojan Plain. The Trojans returned to town, the Greeks to their ships. Early the next morning, just before the first light of dawn, a battalion of specially picked Greek troops went back to the pyre to heap up a burial mound around it. This work was more than a gesture of respect, for the men immediately built their camp's palisade and trench alongside. If they were taking advantage of the armistice they were surely stretching its spirit, but they might have figured that the enemy's exhaustion guaranteed their safety. According to Homer, the entire defensive work was completed in one day. This would have been a tall order. It is probably more realistic to imagine that the Greeks had already fortified their camp, and now they were strengthening its lines.

In either case, Trojan scouts would surely have seen what the Greeks were now up to. That night, while both armies feasted, Hector and his high command would have time to contemplate yet another change in the balance of power and to make new plans. They might have been forgiven for thinking that they faced a whole new war.

K
ings of the Bronze Age dreamed many dreams, none greater than the hope of undying glory. Only the gods could grant such a wish, and the gods would not be forced. But they did appreciate gifts, so the prudent monarch would cap off his reign with a suitable offering of thanks—an imposing monument, perhaps with an inscription expressing gratitude to heaven for success, long life, prosperity, children, and, of course, victory. Victory was the seed of immortality, and victory was granted by the gods in many ways, from the delivery of a king's enemies into his hands to their destruction beneath his feet. But no victory was sweeter than one that reversed imminent defeat. With the gods' help, he would force the enemy chiefs to stop their boasting.

So Hector might have dreamed that night as the funeral pyres blazed on the Trojan Plain. The Greeks had lost some of their best men and had retreated behind weak walls. If the Trojan prince led his armies out now, they might ride a tide of flames to the Greek ships. Hector might have imagined that long after he had replaced Priam on the throne, and in turn been replaced by his own son Astyanax, he would be remembered by the poets as the king who had saved Troy.

So, when the sun rose the next morning, Hector was on fire. He was at the head of an army that charged out the gates of the city, some on foot and some in chariots, all hungry for a fight. The Greeks had little choice but to leave their camp and meet the Trojans on the plain.

For several hours the battle was evenly balanced, but shortly after noon, in the unforgiving brightness of a sky that stretched from Mount Ida to Samothrace, the tide turned in Troy's favor. The Greeks began to run. Diomedes, however, had the courage to turn his chariot toward the enemy and to hurl a javelin that killed Hector's charioteer.

But the gods were on Troy's side. Homer envisions Zeus himself on Gargaros, the highest peak of Mount Ida, looking down on the battle from the gusty summit. The god thundered against the Greeks, then struck the ground in front of Diomedes' horses with a lightning bolt. Not even the courageous son of Tydeus could resist divine displeasure, so he too turned and fled. The Hittite King Murshilish II had likewise been helped by a divine lightning bolt around 1316
B.C.
in his battle against Arzawa, about two hundred miles south of Troy. And a Babylonian prayer to the god of the thunderstorm, found preserved in the Hittite capital of Hattusha, shudders at the god's intervention in combat.

Hector now indulged in one of the oldest traditions of Bronze Age warfare. When they weren't spinning tales about the greatness of the man they had defeated, Bronze Age commanders would demean the enemy as a dog, as the “son of a nobody” or as someone whom the gods should turn into a woman. As Diomedes retreated, Hector shouted after him:

Then Hector turned to his own troops:

Feminization was a threat readily brandished by a Bronze Age commander. Assyrian King Tukulti-Ninurta (1244–1208
B.C.
), for example, menaced any man who desecrated his new temple to Ishtar with the curse that “his manhood dwindle away.”

Homer does not state exactly where the battle had begun, but by now it had moved far away from Troy. Hector had found a new charioteer and his men surged across the Scamander River and pushed the Greeks all the way back to their camp, a distance across the plain of about two miles from the walls of the city. They had the Greeks penned in behind their ditch and palisade.

Suddenly, inspired by Hera and wrapped in a purple cloak, Agamemnon rallied his men. Purple was the royal color of the Late Bronze Age; the color of the wool, for example, in which Ugarit paid its tribute to the Hittite king and queen. Purple-clad Agamemnon stood on Odysseus's flagship, at the center of the camp, and shouted loudly enough to be heard from one end of the ships to another—from the flank guarded by Ajax's vessels to the ships of Achilles at the other flank (not that
he
was listening).

Roused to action, the Greek champions counterattacked. Teucer's arrows killed ten Trojans, including both a son of Priam and Hector's second charioteer. But the one man whom Teucer could not manage to hit was Hector. He was moving, Teucer complained, like a rabid dog, not knowing where to bite next, as a Mesopotamian saying had it—dogs were the favorite animal for insults in Bronze Age invective. Having found another new charioteer, Hector leaped to the ground and took off with a loud yell after Teucer, throwing a stone that nearly killed him. The Greeks began to fall back once again, to take cover behind their fortifications. Hector's men might have pressed their advantage all the way to the ships but night was now falling. Cursing their luck, they had to give up.

But they were not prepared to fall back tamely behind the city walls. For the first time during the war, they pitched their camp on the Trojan Plain, in an open space free of the bodies of the fallen. By camping on the west bank of the Scamander River, the Trojan army took a calculated risk, but it kept the pressure on the Greeks. Homer calls the place “the bridges of war.” The Trojan Plain was marshy, especially in its northern end, and “bridges” possibly refers to an area of solid ground for chariots to cross.

The army was deployed in a line stretching northwest to southeast, which protected the city and covered any retreat. The northern end was anchored by the Carians of Anatolia and the Paeonians of Macedonia, while the Lycians secured the southern tip. In between were various other Anatolian contingents as well as the Trojans and their near neighbors. And a new detachment of Thracians under King Rhesus had just arrived.

The Trojans were busy in the dark. Some companies of men were delegated to feed the horses, others to go back to town to bring sheep, cattle, bread, and wine for the soldiers' meal—more or less the same food served by Syrian towns to Egyptian soldiers in the 1300s
B.C.
Other companies of Trojans went into the hills to gather firewood. The Trojans would keep their fires burning all night long in order to be able to see any attempt by the enemy to load their ships and sail away. Meanwhile, Hector wasn't taking any chances on the home front, and he put into effect a few simple measures of deception. He sent heralds around the street to order out boys and old men onto the walls and women to light the town with a fire in every house. No doubt he also ordered a herald to be ready to sound the alarm in case of sudden attack.

After sacrificing bulls to the gods and feeding barley to the horses, the Trojans themselves chowed down, a company of fifty men at each fire. Then, away from the city for the first time in years, they fell asleep under the stars. The Greeks, meanwhile, were in a panic.

Agamemnon had ordered a teary-eyed abandonment of the expedition. Diomedes responded with a reckless pledge to stand, conquer, or die, and the men cheered. Nestor came to the rescue with a levelheaded plan: post sentries along the wall and call the chiefs to a council of war. The stakes couldn't have been higher. As Nestor said:

The Greeks now placed seven hundred spearmen between the wall and the trench, in seven companies of one hundred men each, one of which was led by Nestor's son Thrasymedes. They were sentinels, playing a role well attested in Hittite and other Bronze Age armies. The top commanders gathered in Agamemnon's hut, where the best imported Thracian wine was on offer, along with superb food. This was only the first of many sumptuous spreads for the heroes that night. Even one dinner would be out of place in a modern staff conference, and the whole thing might be a case of epic exaggeration. Or maybe not, since in the Bronze Age Near East, hospitality was standard at
any
gathering under another man's roof. Besides, in the Aegean, then as now, meals were as much a social as a nutritional occasion, and there would have been no need to gorge at any one meal.

Nestor spoke frankly. They were ruined, he said, unless they got Achilles and the Myrmidons back, and that would happen only if Agamemnon returned Briseis to Achilles. Nestor might have saved his words because Agamemnon had already reached the same conclusion. He claimed the gods had blinded him when he offended Achilles. Now that he had his wits about him once more, he would make amends not merely by returning the young woman (untouched by him), but by adding gifts worthy of a king whose property was as wide as the sea: seven women captured when Achilles took Lesbos, seven tripods, ten talents of gold, twenty cauldrons, and twelve prizewinning horses. On top of that, Agamemnon offered to Achilles the lion's share of booty from Troy, including gold, bronze, and the twenty most beautiful women besides Helen, as well as marriage back in Greece to one of Agamemnon's daughters, with a huge dowry, plus a kingdom made up of seven prosperous cities in the western Peloponnese.

It was palm-greasing diplomacy at its finest. Nestor was impressed. Protocol demanded that an ambassador bring the news to Achilles, and the old politician had a three-man team in mind: Ajax, Odysseus, and Phoenix. Ajax was the Greeks' greatest warrior after Achilles, while Odysseus was the Greeks' canniest diplomat. Phoenix was a lesser soul, but he came from the household of Achilles' father Peleus, where he had tutored the young prince. If anyone could pull at Achilles' heartstrings, it was Phoenix.

Although he welcomed the nighttime ambassadors with all the hospitality that a hut in the field allowed, with wine and meat and seats on couches covered with purple throws, Achilles did not budge an inch. They warned him that Hector planned to burn the ships and kill the Greeks come morning, and they emphasized Agamemnon's enormous generosity. But Achilles wasn't interested. The insult had been too great to forgive. Besides, talk of loot from Troy was just empty words, since Zeus clearly now had decided for the enemy. The Greeks would never take the city. So, if they looked out to sea in the first, gray light of morning, they would see Achilles and all his men sailing home.

The ambassadors tried to reason with the great warrior but the best they could get from him was this: a promise to fight if Hector was foolish enough to attack his huts and ships and the Myrmidons. Otherwise, Achilles would do nothing to help save the camp. Despondently, they trudged back to Agamemnon's hut and relayed the bad news. After a long silence, Diomedes called on them all to eat and drink (again) and to get some rest so that, at dawn, they could fight to save their ships.

The wine helped most of them to sleep. But Agamemnon and Menelaus were kept awake by worry. The supreme warlord was stunned by the sight of so many Trojan fires on the plain. The sound of pipes and whistles rose above the general din. The two sons of Atreus decided that a scouting mission might save the army. They hurried off in separate directions to rouse the commanders, beginning with Nestor.

Agamemnon and a small party then checked that the guards had not dozed off before calling a council of war. Agamemnon needed to instill a sense of urgency in his fellow commanders, who had been awakened from sleep and who did not understand that the army was, as Nestor put it, poised on “a razor's edge.” Having galvanized them, Agamemnon needed one or more volunteers for an assignment richer in danger than in glory.

This would be no heroic battlefield performance before a crowd. The mission was to discover the enemy's battle plans, either by capturing a Trojan straggler or by sneaking around and eavesdropping. The stars had shifted westward in the sky, marking the passage of two of the three “watches” into which the ancients divided the night. The men would have to move fast to enjoy the cover of darkness.

Diomedes volunteered and requested Odysseus as a partner. They were so pressed for time that they borrowed their arms and armor from other men who had come better prepared. Both men took swords, while Odysseus also grabbed a bow and Diomedes a shield. Diomedes wore a plain leather helmet, Odysseus an elaborate, antique, and expensive boar's-tusk helmet. As they made their way toward the enemy lines in the black night, they had to step over corpses, abandoned weapons, and pools of blood.

Unbeknownst to them, the Trojans were organizing a scouting party of their own. But what was serious business for the Greeks was almost comedy for the Trojans. Instead of receiving the service of an Aeneas or Paris, Hector had to settle for the son of a herald, who, like Thersites, was rich but ignoble. Dolon—the name is derived from the Greek
dolos,
trick—was the only boy among his father Eumedes' six children. Although he was outfitted for spying, wearing a wolf skin and carrying a javelin and a curved bow slung from his shoulders, the material of his cap was weasel, which strikes a comic note. When Hector promised the spy a reward of a chariot and two horses from the Greek spoils, Dolon made him swear an oath as a guarantee—as if the commander's word wasn't his bond. Then Dolon claimed the horses and chariots of none other than the great Achilles. When the Greeks ran into Dolon just beyond the Trojan lines, they thought at first that he was a scavenger, stripping the corpses. The one thing in Dolon's favor was his speed, which almost allowed him to escape Diomedes.

Men stripped corpses for many reasons, not all of them reprehensible. Some wanted trophies but others had a practical need for arms and armor. They sought spare parts, extra, better, or new pieces of equipment. Some soldiers might have come to Troy without any weapons at all, advised by their commanders that they would have to pick them up from the battlefield. And then, of course, there were profiteers who stripped corpses out of pure greed.