Troy
Sam has become very interested in Greek mythology, and the Trojan War in particular. I’m thrilled that he’s interested in history. It’s better than computer games and beach volleyball on TV. Of course, he’s much more interested in the story itself and not in the larger meaning or moral of the tale, but that’s still not bad for 7 years old.
It’s a morality tale, but it’s a twisted morality. The goddesses are all petty, jealous, vindictive bitches, Paris is a slimeball, Helen is a whore, Menelaus is a tyrant who is perfectly willing to risk his men’s lives to get his little hot teenie piece of poontang back, Achilles is a prima donna, and so on. When all is blackest, when a heroe’s life is in danger, up jumps one of the gods and changes the game, like in Pokemon.
There are a few things I find really interesting about the Trojan War. First, up until 1870, when Heinrich Schliemann unearthed the ruins of the ancient city, everybody thought it was just a legend. Of course, in actual ancient Greece, say 300-400 B.C., people still believed it was a real event. So, views of history can change over time, especially when written records are rare and literacy is uncommon, but it is strange to find cynicism creeping in to replace believe, faith, and it is equally strange to see the cynicism proved wrong.
So, it really happened, somewhere between 1800 and 1900 B.C., almost 4,000 years ago. Probably the 1st war we know about in any detail at all.
I’m not really convinced by the whole horse story. Just the scale of the project makes me wonder about it. Of course, wooden constructs large enough to hold a sizable, armed troop of men was within the technological capabilities of the ancients. They built them all the time. They were called ships.
The Trojans were a land based people, good with horses and chariots. The metaphor of giant wooden horses with men inside them would have seemed logical to them. Also, it seems that the war, in a way, marks the ascendancy of sea power over land power. The Greeks relived this against the Persians many years later.
So, that’s my theory about the horse. It was a metaphor for ships.
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