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Article Excerpt
This paper poses the question of how later Greek writers and generals view the Trojan War, its causes, and, especially, whether the war was just or worthwhile. What makes this question meaningful is that it involves important issues, such as the place of the divine and human in bringing about war, the extent to which the relation between cause and the war as an effect is proportional, the role of private as opposed to public interest in going to war, one's responsibility for collective action and suffering, and leaders' and followers' different perspectives on the war and its causes. The paper examines how historians such as Herodotus and Thucydides, playwrights such as Aeschylus and Euripides, the Athenian essayist Isocrates, and the Spartan king Agesilaus and Alexander the Great regard and use the Trojan War.
In describing the city of Ilium (Troy), the geographer Strabo (d. after 21 C.E.) notes that the locals sacrifice to the Greek heroes Achilleus, Patrocles, Antilochus and Ajax, but not to Heracles, because, they say, he had sacked their city. This puzzles Strabo. Heracles captured Troy but did not destroy it, whereas the Greeks razed it. Hesitantly, Strabo speculates that the reason is that the Greeks fought a just war, whereas Heracles waged an unjust one--quoting Homer--"for the sack of Laomedon's horses" (Il. 5.642; Strabo 13.1.32), alluding to the story that Heracles sacked Troy after its king, Laomedon, had broken his promise to reward him with his horses for saving Laomedon's daughter from a sea monster. Although the geographer subsequently confesses ignorance about the reason for the Trojans' discrimination against Heracles, his explanation is illuminating. To prove Heracles' guilt, he cites Homer out of context, lifting a verse from a speech by Heracles' son, who, in fact, approves of his father's Trojan exploit. (1) Such use or abuse of Homer is hardly uncommon, but here it illustrates the difficulties people have encountered in finding justifications in Homer for the wars against Troy. Indeed, Strabo fails to cite Homer in support of his view that the (second) Trojan War was a just one. Perhaps he regarded the commonly held justifications of the war, namely, the abduction of Helen and Paris' misconduct, as sufficient. Just as likely however, he was aware that Homer seldom addresses the issue of the moral justification of the Trojan War.
The question this paper asks is: How did later Greek writers and generals view the Trojan War, its causes, and its moral justification? The usual story of the war's origins is familiar, of course: the beauty contest among Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite; Aphrodite's bestowal of the beautiful Helen on Paris as a reward for his judgment in her favor; his carrying off of Helen and of Menelaus' possessions to Troy; and the oaths of Tyndareus that obliged Helen's former suitors to help Menelaus retrieve her and punish her abductor.
I shall not discuss the history of these traditions here, however, or the story of Helen in Egypt and her phantom (eidolon), or the extent of her guilt. This has been amply done by both ancient and modern commentators. Rather than joining that ancient blame game, I seek to find out how the Greeks addressed the question of whether the war was just or worthwhile.
What makes this question meaningful is that it involves important issues, such as the place of the divine and human in bringing about war, the extent to which the relation between cause and the war as an effect is proportional, the role of private as opposed to public interest in going to war, one's responsibility for collective action and suffering, and leaders' and followers' different perspectives on the war and its causes.
Homer is of little help as regards the main interest of this paper. The epics identify humans or gods as the causes of the Trojan War and may even blame them for it, but they do not volunteer an opinion about whether or not it was a just war. Thus we find on the list of culprits Paris, who stole Menelaus' wife and property; Helen, whose behavior was shameful; and even Hera, who sought to exact revenge for losing the beauty contest. (2) Yet if there is a justification of the war in these assertions, it is only implicit. The poet's reticence probably has to do with his and his audience's greater interest in the military conflict and its heroes, rather than in the moral basis of the war and the respective merits of the Greek and Trojan causes.
Curiously, the closest we come to an attempt to place the war and its heavy losses on a sound moral ground is not in Homer but in the cyclical epic called the Cypria (fr. 1), in which we are told that there were too many people burdening the good earth, so that wise and merciful Zeus decided to solve this demographic problem by causing many men to die in the Trojan War. (3) The merit of this explanation is that it relieves humans of responsibility for the war and gives the divine a worthy and rational motive for causing it. 1 suspect that behind this account stands unhappiness with the traditional rationale advanced for the war, which failed to justify it adequately. (4)
The first author known to have struggled with the justness of the war is Herodotus, and the perspectives he offers are not particularly flattering to the Greeks, which is perhaps the reason why he carefully ascribed them to his Persian and Egyptian sources." (5) At the beginning of his Histories, Herodotus deals with the...
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