When was the last time you read The Iliad? Or The Trojan Women? How about The Orestes? No, this is not a quiz, nor will you be given a quiz. I admit, one would have to be an aficionado of the Trojan war epic to read the stories over again.
Okay, I’m busted.
How bad am I? I’ve gone and made myself a list of movies on the Trojan war. And, the movies that tell the stories that surround the Trojan war. It’s the stories that surround the war that interest me the most. The before, and after. I do this because the fiction I currently write, titled The Shepherd Girl, is about the Anatolians of that era, the people who suffered the fallout of the war with the Greeks.
War is a racket, and it always has been a racket. I’ve addressed that before, and I will keep on addressing it. People suffer something awful during a war, and yet, who has the ultimate power to stop war? People do. Not by demonstrating in the streets, but through refusal to participate. That is the only thing that can stop wars. That, and get a Buddhist attitude. Which means stop seeking revenge. But even the Buddha told his students to do what they must.
Right now all the chatter is about the possible WW3. And a nuclear war at that, which would be really ugly. Especially in the West; we are spoiled in the West because we have not had a war for a spell. In America, it is been over a 150 years since people died on our soil. America has gone to war in far away places. But too many times, we have not gone into those places with honest intentions. Saying the war in Iraq had something to do with our safety, and bringing democracy to a Near Eastern nation was a huge dish of lies. All we managed to do was bring suffering, and confusion. And more wars.
The issue with the Palestinian people and the nation of Israel is older than any of us. The present state of resentment stems from WW1, and its aftermath. Whenever empires fail, there is a price to pay for the vacuum they leave. Both the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires were smashed to pieces, with a victorious Britain, France and America left to reorganize things. The Zionists of England, during WW1, were able to persuade his majesty’s government to declare that they should have their old nation back. For the past two thousand years, a few Jews have lived in their ancient homeland. In the 19th century, Jews began to organize a return. They would buy land in the old country, and set up farms and business. This was a trickle until after the first world war, when the Balfour Declaration encouraged the Jews to return. The problem with that program was that Britain and France acted as if God himself had given them a mandate to promote this great migration. Except they forgot to tell the important people of the Near East countries, who had, along with Lawrence of Arabia, taken on the Ottomans so that they also could have autonomy over their patches of land.
Truly, the British and French set up this shit show. Well, the British empire would soon come apart at the seams, after WW2.
The trouble with war is that it makes for strange bedfellows. The British and French, for a 1000 years before WW1, fought each other. War after war. And now, in the 20th century, they decided to cooperate and what a mess they made. Because when you’re on the winning side, you get a piece of pie.
Back to those Trojans. There is a school of thought that thinks Homer was telling us more about the price people pay for war, than the war itself. He begins his story in the 10th year of the war, when everyone has had it, up to their eyeballs. The Greeks are now fighting among themselves. We get a picture of what has been going on since they landed on the plains of Troy. That they have been busy raiding the surrounding villages and farms. Hey, an army has to eat, and guys need someone to sleep with. Rape and pillage are a mainstay when an army invades. And, the pillage includes women. That’s where our story begins; with a fight over a woman. Not just any woman but the daughter of a high priest. The two combatants in this little tiff are Agamemnon and Achilles.
See how fun it is to be invaded? Ask the Ukrainians. Ask the Israelis.
What happens to women is rarely discussed when the subject is war. It’s always about what the guys are up to on the battlefield. Not what goes on in the tents. The winners in wars are the prostitutes. They, along with the arms dealers, get rich. But prostitutes are not always available.
After the situation between Achilles and Agamemnon gets straightened out, Achilles, who has been sitting out the war as payback, and, after Hector, the Trojan warrior and heir to the throne of Troy, after Hector kills Achilles’ best friend, Achilles gets back into the game by killing Hector. Thus the end of the war is near, as the Trojans are demoralized.
They too want this to be over. And they wish they had never set eyes on Helen.
The image depicts Helen, and Paris, along with his dog, plus another woman. Take a good look at that dog. Big beast, isn’t he? That is a Kangal dog. Sheep herding is big in Turkey, and the Kangal dog is the oldest known breed of shepherds that we know about. The dog is also known as an Anatolian Shepherd. They do not herd, they protect. Kangals will take on wolves. And win the fight. In the story I’m working on, Paris has lived the life of a shepherd, until he gets caught up with the gods in their contest. This part of the story is about bad women. Beginning with the goddess, Eris, who causes the trouble to begin with. But it is Aphrodite who promises Paris the most beautiful woman in the world as his wife. All he has to do is vote for her as the Fairest One. This episode is known as the judgement of Paris.
Helen is not an Anatolian girl. She is the wife of Menelaus, the king of Sparta. To Aphrodite, that is not a problem.
Menelaus became the king because he married Helen, the daughter of the last king of Sparta. Her father had only daughters. The other daughter is Clytemnestra, who becomes the wife of Agamemnon.
We can guess that Helen may not be so crazy about Menelaus. And that Paris, spending all those years herding sheep and growing cattle, well, think of him as a sort of cowboy, with a tan and muscles. Plus he’s a poet. What’s not to like?
The idea that Paris abducted Helen is pure poppycock. The girl fell for this hunk. And knowing she couldn’t keep up the affair under her husband’s nose, they got out of Sparta and Paris took her home with him. They were lovebirds. And Priam, so full of guilt over his abandonment of Paris, looked the other way. Instead of taking care of business like a good ancient king would, he indulged. Even after ambassadors are sent to Ilium from Sparta and Mycenae.
This is rather like the days leading up to America’s entry into WW2, when the ambassadors from Japan are left to cool their heels whilst FDR twiddles his thumb. The Japanese had already shown themselves to be lusty warmongers in the Pacific, with their invasions of China and Korea. They were hell bent, much like China is today, on controlling the turf around them. No American, however, had runaway with a married Japanese princess. Japan just wanted a little oil.
Yes, history does repeat itself because everyone needs to have their day on the world stage. And, speaking of repetition, what is Iran, but Persia? A Persia that wants back into the game of world dominance. The civilized world is that old, that ancient empires are now being recycled under new names. The entire Near East is being recycled, as in here we go again with the inheritors of the god of Abraham, fighting among themselves. The god of Abraham is infamous for sending floods and meteors to take care of business when people are too rotten. I suggest he needs to give a repeat performance.
Ilium invited its own destruction. When a people’s leaders turn indulgent, that invites bad times. Not that those Mycenaeans and Spartans were better, morally. It was their turn to dominate. Historically, the Greeks began colonizing about the time Homer composed his stories ( 8th century BC). Indeed, what the Greeks really found as they headed out of the Mediterranean and turned north, is a city that had been around for at least 1200 years. A city that old is bound to be well settled in its culture. Its location is encouraging of trade with the Black Sea area. Plus this land of the Hittites is rich in agriculture and animal husbandry. So it was then, as it is today: Shepherds and flocks roam the hills and plains.
Homer, I suspect, as a blind poet, had a great deal of empathy for the human condition. And nothing is more devastating than war. Violence is a natural occurrence on this Earth. War is the way humans play out the plot of Cain and Abel, en masse. It is the dynamics of jealously played out in full, living color. The dynamics of the stories that Aeschylus and Euripides wrote, makes this as plain as day, that family issues can spill over into the big arena. Thus, I study private life, because that is where we find the motives for all the stuff that is going down.
The Shepherd Girl is about families and relationships. And what happens to those relationships, those entanglements, when a catastrophe hits. Some of those relationships are with the gods, and that too, is impactful. Think of Cassandra and her relationship with Apollo. Speaking of those gods, Homer brought the Zeus crowd into his story, and so do I. Except they are not supernatural beings. They are the 1% of the 5%. Like that bunch that meets in Davos every year. They toy with humanity because they can. They pick winners and losers. And when the war is over, and the people pick up and go home, or try to survive where their homes once stood, or, like Aeneas, find a new home, the gods bet bored and go in search of a new game to play somewhere else.
It is what built civilizations. For gods are not builders, but the destroyers that bring hard times, and those hard times motivate humans to rebuild.
The history of humanity is contained in those 9 layers of ancient Troy. In the ruins of Pompeii, archeologist dig out a ruin of a house. And on those walls the story of Troy is told in images. Like the one above. That tells us something.That the story of Troy is immortal.