They say all's fair in love and war, and in this new season of Battlefields, we'll have
a look at how war and sex have intersected throughout history. Where sex has started
wars and ended them, what role it has played both on and off the battlefield, and the impact
that these two central elements of human existence have had on our culture. And we'll start off
with one of the oldest and most famous war stories of them all: The Trojan War.
I'm Indy Neidell, welcome to Battlefields.
The story of the Trojan War has been repeated from generation to generation for thousands
of years. We all know how it goes, right? After the Trojan Prince Paris made off with
Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world and wife of king Menelaus of Sparta, the kings
of Greece set sail for Troy and laid siege to it for ten years. In battle after battle,
great heroes beat each other to a bloody pulp, and even the gods themselves sometimes got
in on the action. Some guy called Achilles killed a bunch of people before being brought
down by arrow to the heel, and in the end the whole affair was won and lost over a simple
trick with a fake horse. Having burned Troy to the ground, the Greeks headed for home
again, with some of them taking much longer about it than others.
While there was a whole cycle of epic poems surrounding the Trojan War, the most famous
account by far is of course Homer's Iliad, which recounts a series of episodes over a
short time period towards the end of the war. Along with the Odyssey, it is one of the foundations
of western literature. While the topic of exactly when Homer lived, or whether he even
existed at all, is subject to debate, what is clear is that whoever wrote the Iliad did
not just make up the story. The narration expects the audience to be familiar with the
back-story, and many of the most famous episodes, including the death of Achilles, the Wooden
Horse, and the whole first nine years of the war, are at most alluded to, and do not appear
in the poem itself. The version we have now is likely the result of many years of oral
tradition.
The obvious question, therefore, and one that has plagued scholars for millennia, is how
much of it is actually true. There was a strong consensus throughout Antiquity and the Middle
Ages that it was. Even writers otherwise sceptical of Greek mythology thought that, with the
possible exception of instances of divine intervention, the essence of the story happened
largely as described, and heroes like Ajax and Hector were indeed historical figures.
But this changed during the age of Enlightenment, and by the 19th century, few serious scholars
treated the Trojan War as anything more than a fairy tale. Then along came amateur German
archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, who was convinced that the events of the Iliad were
real, and set off to find the remains of Troy. At a site called Hisarlik, in northwestern
Anatolia, he uncovered not one but nine settlements built on top of each other, ranging from 3000
BC right through to the Roman period. One of these settlements, dated to the late Bronze
Age, appeared to have been destroyed in a war at around the same time that ancient Greek
authors believed the Trojan War to have taken place. Schliemann triumphantly declared that
he had found the legendary city.
His destructive archaeological methods have been heavily criticised, and he did have a
tendency to associate artefacts and places he found with legendary figures like Agamemnon
[Show "Mask of Agamemnon"], Priam and Helen [Show "Jewels of Helen"], based on very little
evidence. Nevertheless, scholars over the last century have increasingly vindicated
his association of Hisarlik with Troy. Further evidence came with the discovery of ancient
Hittite texts mentioning a vassal city called Wilusa, which sounds similar to Ilion, Homer's
name for Troy, and several details mentioned in these texts are consistent with archaeological
discoveries at Hisarlik. These same texts also mention a war over the city with the
Ahhiyawa, who could easily be Homer's "Achaeans". While the topic is still controversial, many
modern scholars believe that the legend of Troy did indeed come from memories of a real
conflict, fought between Mycenaean Greeks and a Luwian kingdom in what is now Turkey,
during the chaotic period at the end of the Bronze Age.
Without more written evidence, the exact details of the conflict will likely remain hidden
from us. In any case, that it all began with the elopement of two lovers seems somewhat
doubtful. However, if we examine the story of the Trojan War not from the perspective
of military and political history, but rather from a cultural angle, then we find that it
reveals quite a lot, both about the society in which it was first told, as well as about
the later generations reading and interpreting it.
And here, sex plays a central role amidst the bloodshed, and not just as the cause of
the Trojan War. The plot of the Iliad actually begins with a quarrel over a woman, this time
between Achilles and Agamemnon. When Agamemnon is forced to return a Trojan concubine in
order to soothe the wrath of Apollo, he demands Achilles' own concubine Briseis in compensation.
Achilles complies, but furiously goes to his tent and refuses to fight for Agamemnon, which
makes the Greek side considerably weaker. Quite tellingly, Briseis' own opinion on the
matter is not considered especially relevant, and in general, the role of women in this
society is often that of a trophy for the heroes to fight or bargain over.
Also of great interest is the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus. The Iliad
does not mention any physical romance between the two, however, the bond between them is
so great, and Achilles reacts so strongly to Patroclus' death, that many readers have
thought it improbable that they were just good friends. Certainly, later Greek writers
like Plato saw them as lovers.
Unlike in modern Western culture, where love is ideally regarded as a committed, monogamous
bond between two equals and a gay relationship is fundamentally analogous to a straight one,
in Ancient Greece there were different categories of love, and it was always about hierarchy.
An adult man was expected to take a wife, but might also take a young male lover, who
would grant the older man sexual favours in exchange for mentorship. The younger partner
walked a fine line, since while it was considered the norm to agree to such a relationship in
the end, being seen as overly submissive was a mark of shame and effeminacy that a man
might carry for the rest of his life.
Sex plays a central role in other parts of the narrative as well: Upon his return home
from Troy, Agamemnon is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, before
they in turn are murdered by Agamemnon's children. Odysseus spends years returning home, being
tempted in turn by Circe, the Sirens, and Calypso along the way, and has to fight off
his wife's suitors when he gets back to Ithaca.
The Iliad was so influential that for millennia after it was written, many different nations
incorporated it into their national mythologies. Medieval writers like Snorri Sturluson and
Geoffrey of Monmouth imagined survivors from Troy escaping to Europe, where their superior
technology and culture meant they were revered as gods, founding later cultures like the
Britons and the Norsemen. The most famous of these stories, though, was that of the
hero Aeneas, a Trojan prince whom the Romans saw as the original ancestor of their people.
Virgil's epic the Aeneid describes how Rome's rivalry with the city of Carthage began when
Aeneas abandoned his lover Queen Dido, in order to travel onwards to Italy to fulfil
his destiny. Dido, who had been made to fall in love by Aeneas' mother Venus, cursed Aeneas
and all his descendants before killing herself in anguish. Once again, we have sex as a casus belli.
So what does this all tell us? Even if the actual history is elusive, do you think that
by having these elements so strongly interlinked, that these ancient poets were trying to tell
us something about the relationship between sex, warfare and power? Let us know in the
comments below.
And of course love and lust weren’t the only reason men would start a war, and if
you enjoyed this Battlefield of History be sure to check out our Battlefields Playlist
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