The Kosmos
Society is welcome again Jeffrey Rusten of Cornell University, Department
of Classics, for a CHS
Online Open House on Thucydides on Early Greece and the Trojan War. The event will be streamed live on Thursday,
January 11, at 11 a.m. EST, and will be recorded. You can view the event on the CHS YouTube channel.
For the Open House Professor Rusten invites us to think about and
discuss the following questions:
· How
does Thucydides approach the Iliad and think it has historical value?
· Is
his analysis flawed in any way?
· Is
it anachronistic?
· Is
it in any way modern or “scientific”?
I would remind the reader that the Ancient Greeks
thought of The Iliad as history. It was used in court cases. Thucydides seems to step back and forth
across the line of it being fiction or not.
Some of his analysis conforms to similar discussions and his style and
analysis is very similar to what I have seen modern scholars do. He also makes the mistake occasionally of
judging bronze age warriors and their civilization by “modern” standards. Specifics
below.
(1.1.2) “And (the Peloponnesian War) was in fact the largest mobilization by
Greeks as well as a considerable number of non-Greeks, extending over virtually
the entire population. (1.1.3) Preceding ones, including those of the more
distant past, although impossible to determine clearly after so much time, were
probably not important either as wars or anything else.” Weren’t the Persian Wars
(499 – 449 BC) before the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC)?
1.2.5) “Attica
on the other hand, because of its barrenness remained free from factions since
the most distant past, and had a stable, unchanging population.” Didn’t Athenians brag of being the only
autochthonic population in Greece?
(1.3.1) “I think
Greece’s past weakness is demonstrated especially by the fact that, prior to
the Trojan War, Greece probably did not unite in any common venture.” Theban Wars?
(1.8.1) “The
island populations were pirates as well, evidently Carians and Phoenicians,
because these had settled most of the islands. There is proof: when Delos was
purified by the Athenians during this war and all the graves of the dead on the
island were removed, more than half were revealed to be Carians” Interesting, have to learn more about the
Carians.
1.9.1) “Agamemnon
collected his expedition not so much as the leader of suitors constrained by
oaths to Tyndareus in my opinion, but as the preeminently powerful man in
Greece at that time;” I thought that
was what everyone thought.
(1.10.4) “He has
written that out of 1200 ships those of the Boeotians had 120 men each, those
of Philoctetes 50. In my opinion, he is showing the largest and smallest crews,
since there is no mention in the Catalogue
of Ships of the size of any other ships…(1.10.5) If one contemplates an
average between the largest and the small ships it becomes clear that those who
went were not many,” 1200 x
(120+50/2) = 102,000. Hundred thousand
plus fighting men seems like “many”.
(1.11.1) “The
reason was not so much a lack of manpower as a lack of money. Because of
inadequate provisioning they not only led too small a force to live off the
land while fighting, but even when they had won a victory after landing
(because otherwise they would not have built the fortification for their camp) they
obviously were unable to use their full fighting strength, but took up farming
in the Chersonnese and piracy…” Well
this is all wrong. Piracy is mentioned off-handedly throughout the epic and I don’t’
recall anything about farming. Plus they
were only three days from home. “T.’s statement is a famous problem for
scholars, since In Iliad 7.382-482
this fortification was built only in the tenth year of the war, as the result
not of a victory but a military setback. “
(1.11.2) “they
would easily have taken the city by winning an open battle … or else by
blockading it with a siege they could have conquered Troy with even less time
and trouble.” Well there is a little
armchair quarterbacking about the open battle strategy. As to the blockade idea, this is an example of the present judging the past
by current standards, because it appears from the text of The
Iliad that siege-craft hadn’t been invented yet or that the Greeks had no
experience with it.
