39 pages • 1 hour read
Barry StraussThe Trojan War: A New History
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Assault on the Walls”
Odysseus, the son of Laertes, is a master of deception. He and Menelaus ride in two chariots as part of a Greek delegation to the Trojan city. Menelaus is furious at Paris’s double offence, which is against the laws of marriage and hospitality. They approach the home of Antenor, bearing gifts. Antenor does not want to lose his sons in war, so supports the Greeks’ demand that Helen and the Spartan treasures be returned. The fiery Trojan Antimachus is of the opposing opinion, having been bribed by Paris. Despite threats, the two important delegates are not murdered but safely restored to the Greek encampment. Returning Helen would be admitting to a mistake and could instigate a coup. Once appeased, the Greeks might also ask for more. Instead, Troy prepares for war.
According to Homer, Poseidon aids the Greeks in the ninth year of the Trojan War. Hector finds himself taunted by the Greeks for always fighting near the protective bastion of Troy. The Greeks cannot besiege the city because they are outnumbered. Hector’s wife, Andromache, notes that on three occasions, the Greeks nearly take the Trojan walls, led by two Greek generals (both called Ajax). One Ajax is a cousin of Achilles, the other notoriously rapes Cassandra in the Epic Cycle. Homer also has the Greek leader Diomedes wound the gods Ares and Aphrodite in battle. In the Iliad, the Greeks build ramparts of their own, not dissimilar from Troy’s.
Chapter 4 Analysis
A Bronze Age civil war in Troy forced the exile of King Walmu, so it is no wonder that Homer’s Priam feels he is on shaky ground. The gods played a pivotal role in decision-making in the Bronze Age, so Homer’s inclusion of them is also accurate. For instance, Rameses II proclaims that the God Amun set him on in his poem about the battle of Quadesh (1274 BCE). Soldiers needed to believe they had the patronage of the gods.
The Trojans occupied a defensive position throughout the war. Fighting in this way allowed them to retain the support of the allies, on which they relied. According to Thucydides, Greek hunting parties had to be sent throughout the Dardanelles as supplies dwindled at the Trojan camp. Hittite generals in c.1700 BCE had stormed cities by night, just as Homer’s Greeks do. Figure-eight shields, like the one Idomeneus wields in Homer, were antiquated, but still in use in the 1300s and possibly also during the Trojan War.
Battering rams and siege towers were also common contemporary weapons. Troy had two rings of walls one mile apart from one another. Troy’s citadel, Pergamos, rose 100 feet above the plain and stretched a half-acre across, fed by an underground spring. Walls thirty-three-feet-high and sixteen feet deep protected this stronghold.
