The Rest Is History - 6. Troy

Episode Date: November 23, 2020

It’s been described as the most legendary story ever told. But did the Trojan War actually happen? And was it really fought over a beautiful woman? Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook discuss an enduring tale that still resonates to this day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Men are haunted by the vastness of eternity. And so we ask ourselves, will our actions echo across the centuries? It's a great question, worthy of an entire episode of The Rest Is History. But who said it? Napoleon? Abraham Lincoln? Winston Churchill? No, it was Sean Bean, playing Odysseus admittedly in the 2004 film Troy. Not the most obvious casting, I'd have thought. Anyway, Troy

is the subject of our discussion today. And with me is the Brixton Achilles, Tom Holland. And after last week's discussion of 1981, this is a bit of an away fixture for me and a home match for Tom. We're on your natural terrain, aren't we? Yes, we are. The fans are gathering in the stands. So the peg for this is the all-conquering Leviathan that is Stephen Fry has a new book out on Troy, which tells you everything you need to know about the fascination with it. But a personal peg for me is that I'm currently reading my son.

His bedtime reading is a children's version of the Iliad, which he is loving, actually. And I would add that I'm actually right in the middle of writing a sequel to The Trojan War, which is a history of ancient Greece for children in which the gods continue to play lead roles. So you still get Zeus and Athena and everything so coming to a bookshop uh next summer folks so stars are aligned the stars are

absolutely but um before we do that before we do that let's uh let's just read some um comments that we've had about uh previous shows and Jamie Kingston got in touch after last week's episode loving this podcast. That's very much the kind of feedback we like. It's already become a favourite of mine. Great. In this episode, I can't remember which one. Oh, this is 1981, of course.

Yeah, in this episode, we learn that Dominic hates weddings and royal weddings in particular, isn't it? I don't like weddings. Oh, full stop. Okay. Well, I'm just a bit of a misery, you know. Eeyore, somebody said on Twitter. Well, I'm just a bit of a misery, you know. Eeyore, as somebody said on Twitter. Yes, okay.

Not wrongly. We learn that Tom wasn't born with a cricket bat in his hand. Again, that's true. And Ian Botham is actually a Victorian. Is he a Victorian or is he more, I think he's more 18th century? Yes, I guess. Yes, probably. He's kind of britches rather than yes you know trousers

yes yeah and then he's he's also of course uh very 1980s which was the discussion of yeah last week's podcast uh so stewart scott said i'd take 1981 over 2020 at the drop of a hat i guess probably quite a lot of people would agree with that though perhaps not in Toxteth um or indeed in Brixton where I live um one of the principal characters of 1981 was of course a Margaret Thatcher uh who we described as highly divisive I mean I think that's that's kind of written into the that's the rule isn't it you can't mention yeah but Thatcher without saying highly divisive controversial prime minister um and uh this prompted an interesting question from someone who calls himself or herself or itself wrecked on Twitter. And he, she or it asks, can you name the last undivisive prime minister?

That's a good question. I mean, prime ministers are divisive by their own nature, aren't they? Yes, because to govern is to choose and to choose between two different camps but i suppose some so there are prime ministers who stock in trade is to be emollient aren't there david cameron let's say tony blair before iraq um was harold wilson that divisive was jim callaghan i'm not i'm not convinced they were really and none of the 50s prime ministers were particularly divisive i suppose what's distinctive about mrs s Thatcher is that being divisive was part of her self-image, that she rebelled in it, whereas most prime ministers tend not to.

Exactly. She thought if you were not being divisive, that showed you weren't, you weren't, you had no guts. You weren't in the arena. Tories talk about being one nation, conservatives, don't they? They do. And they always, and they don't they? They do. Which basically... And they always, and they bash Labour politicians. They say they're class warriors. They're fomenting class war and all this kind of thing. So they sort of, part of the Tory message is often to say

there is no division, actually, and we should all just be one happy family. And vote Tory. Yeah, sort of Stanley Baldwin. Yes, yeah. Okay, well, that's, I knew you'd have good answer for that. Anyway, let's, I think that's enough of modern history. Can we get to a far more interesting topic?

Namely, the Bronze Age. Great, yes. So, looking at the publicity for Stephen Fry's new book, there's one line in particular, enter the world of Troy and the most legendary story ever told. Well, is it the most legendary story ever told? I suppose it is, Tom O'Lan. That's quite a claim, isn't it? But tell us, okay, so for the modernists among us, tell us in no more than about 40 words, the entire story of the Trojan War. Okay, the world's most beautiful woman, the daughter of Zeus, Helen, is abducted by a

Trojan prince called Paris to the city of Troy. All the Greeks have sworn an oath that if Helen gets stolen by anyone, they will go and get her back. So the heroes of Greece are kind of duty bound to sail to Troy. They camp in front of the walls of Troy for 10 years. Terrible and heroic deeds are done. Great heroes fight, great heroes die. At the end, the only way that the Greeks can get into Troy is to play a trick. They build a huge wooden horse. They leave it, supposedly, as an offering to Poseidon, the god of the sea. In fact, the Greeks have hidden their best warriors inside the belly of the horse. The Trojans rather stupidly take the horse inside Troy. The Greeks come out, they burn Troy, they all go home. Great. Wow, Tom, you're

very good at these little summaries, I think. If the history doesn't work out, you can always... So this is the question,'t it did it actually happen and give us a year pin yourself down to a year or at least a century well greek historians gave various dates and they would range by our dating system for kind of um 1250 to 1150 bc um so yeah that's it that that's the end of the bronze Age. And the huge question is, when the Greeks wrote about the Trojan War, and I suppose specifically Homer, who's the great poet, who everybody else who writes about the Trojan War stands in his shadow, were they drawing on authentic memories of something that actually happened?

And there have been various opinions about that over the course of time. The Greeks and the Romans were fairly convinced that it had happened. They gave various accounts of it, various versions of it. There was no kind of definitive version, although Homer was kind of as close to as definitive as they got. By the 18th, by the beginning of the 19th century, people were coming to assume that it was a fairy tale, that it had no roots in fact at all. And then the German businessman turned archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann famously decided that he was going to prove it had happened. And using Homer, he went to what's now kind of the north of Turkey.

Yeah, so where are we? Let me interrupt you, Tom. Where are we exactly? Is this a sort of roundabout Gallipoli? Am I right? Yeah, so it's by Gallipoli. So you think of the Aegean separating Greece and what's now Turkey. You think of the narrow strip of water

that separates Europe from Asia and leads into the Black Sea. Troy commands the entrance to those straits. So you can see that it's strategically significant. Schumann goes there, he digs it up, supposedly. I mean, and when we say dig it up, I mean, he really digs it up. He digs a massive great trench and demolishes vast swathes of the archaeology and discovers what he claims to have been Homer's Troy. And I guess

the consensus of archaeologists now would be that this is the site, it's a hill called Hisilic, that this probably was Troy. And we know that this is where the Greeks and the Romans thought the battle had been fought, because in the wake of Alexander's conquest, a town grows up there, which is a kind of homage to the original Troy. Well, they definitely thought it happened, didn't they? Because I've just been writing a children's book about Alexander the Great, and there's a great moment in it when they pitch up the Macedonians, they're invading Persia, and Alexander makes a special trip to Troy to what he thinks is the tomb of Achilles. And he does what we all do when we visit the graves of our ancestors. He takes all his clothes off, anoints himself in oil, and then runs round and round.

Yeah, it's classic behaviour on a Turkish trip. We've all done it. Yeah. Yeah. And before that, when, so Alexander says that he is invading Asia to get revenge for the Persians who had invaded Greece back in 490 and 480 BC. And that had been led by Xerxes, the king of Persia. And Xerxes, when he led his invasion, he went to the site of Troy and paid his respects to the heroes. I mean, this was kind of good PR. Yeah. And this sense that the Trojan War is a kind of decisive moment in an ongoing war between East and West, between Asia and Europe,

is very much a theme that the Greeks pick up on. And it's elaborated by Herodotus, who is the first great historian. Translated by me, folks, again, rush out and buy. Oh, very good plug. Yeah, just getting that, slipping that one in. Quality plug. So Herodotus rationalises the abduction of Helen as basically being something not very important. And his take is that the Greeks massively overreact. I mean, Herodotus basically says,

we've all stolen a princess or two. I mean, it's ridiculous to overreact. So it's almost like a bit sort of a false flag operation or something. I think Herodotus, you know, he begins his history. So this is the first passage of prose of any work of history ever written. And it's about how people in Asia and people in Greece are constantly stealing each other's princesses. And he really thought this happened. Yeah, he thinks it happened. He thinks it happened. And also, interestingly, Thucydides, who is the next great historian who follows after Herodotus, who's famously sceptical.

He also thinks it happens, but he provides the kind of rationalist perspective on it. And he says that he doesn't think that it was about Helen at all he thinks that it was about um it was about uh wealth and that Agamemnon who is the um the the the leading king the king of Mycenae the richest city uh and who was kind of commander-in-chief at Troy that he was so powerful that he could get all the various Greek kings together and lead a common expedition. And Thucydides thinks this is all about kind of controlling trade routes and stuff. Oh my God, he's a Marxist. He thinks it's all about the search for profit. He's a kind of very, his perspective is very much that of a strategist, someone who doesn't have much place for fantastical tales of abducted princesses. And I guess that that's probably the perspective that many modern

historians would have as well, that this is a war that's happening in the context of great power politics and attempts to control trade routes and things like that. It's not about beautiful princesses being abducted. Of course. So the temptation is to see it as Europe versus Asia, isn't it? But my sense is that that would be completely wrong, because isn't this just generally the Greek-speaking world? Isn't Troy... I mean, what would Troy have been? Would it have been a Greek-speaking city, a Hittite city? So the Hittites are the people in Anatolia, aren't they? Right. I mean, what is it? Yeah, so the Hittites are a key part of trying to understand

what the actual Trojan War might have been. And the Hittites rule an empire across what's now Turkey, Anatolia. And at the beginning of the 20th century, a kind of cache of royal correspondence was found. And so over the course of the 20th century, a kind of cache of royal correspondence was found. And so over the course of the 20th century, these have been deciphered. And there are a couple of letters that cast potential light on the Trojan War. So one of them mentions a town called Wilusa. And sounds just like Troy.

Well, but another name for Troy was Ilium. So you can see that there's potentially a kind of bleed there from Wilusa, perhaps, to Ilium. And what's also interesting is that the king of Wilusa is a man called Alexandu. And an alternative name for Paris, the prince who abducts Helen, is Alexander. So, you know, maybe there's a mesh there.

And the other letter is a letter addressed to the king of a land called Akiwawa. Gosh, you said that very nicely. My Hittite is fluent. And Akiwawa sounds, sounds again a bit like Akea and Achaeans is what Homer writing in perhaps the second half of the 8th century BC calls the Greeks so perhaps the Achaeans the Akeoi which Homer is using is a trace element of Akiwawa but the the key thing about this is that nobody really would care about this very obscure kind of bronze age diplomacy war whatever were it not for the fact that homer had written this amazing poetry yeah and that that poetry has then kind of descended down through the century so

your your son you know you're reading it to your son yeah what. What is it about the Trojan War? Presumably, I mean, he's not interested in, you know, trade routes through the Hellespont. No, he loves the Hittites. He's really into the Hittites. No, you're right. I think it's the, what is it? That's a very good question.

I think, I mean, obviously with the Iliad, it's the personalities, isn't it? And it's the slightly unexpected, I mean, to a modern sensibility, it's a very unexpected story. So Achilles, the great hero, spends half the time sulking in his tent and refusing to come out. There's a sort of incongruity. There's this odd disconnect between the sort of heroic status of the characters. And often they're quite to modernise Weasley behaviour, which I think is intriguing. Yeah, I mean, also, I mean, an interesting thing about it is that if you look at the Iliad, which is Homer's account of the Trojan War, there's not actually very much

about the Trojan War there. It's a very short space of time. So lots of the most famous things, like the Trojan horse, the Trojan horse is not in the Iliad. like the trojan horse the trojan horse isn't in the it's not in the iliad and the trojan horse is a great story isn't it i mean the trojan horse is this i mean clearly this sort of uh this you know this this mythic sort of this dissection of of hubris this moment of great craftiness this sort of plot by the greeks this sort of heist effectively that comes off well you i mean it always seemed to me a ridiculous plot. You're Trojans. You've been suffering a war, a siege for 10 years. The Greeks go, and there's a huge, great horse. You're going to have a bit of suspicion, aren't you?

Are you? I mean, you know, there's actually a wooden horse at the site of ancient Troy. So the Turkish authorities have built a wooden horse and it sits there outside their site. It doesn't look great, to be honest. It's not terribly impressive. How many do you think it would fit in? Seven? I don't know, ten? That would be enough, wouldn't it? But they just needed to open the gates, right?

They don't need to storm the whole city. Don't they just get in and open the gates? Isn't that how it works? Yeah, they open the gates, but there are enough of them to start the slaughtering and the pillaging. I mean, you wouldn't do that with seven people, would you? No, you need more than that. It's got to be quite a big horse.

Listen, let's take some questions, because questions about the Trojan War have a very, very long pedigree. The Emperor Tiberius, when he was retired on Capri, used to hold the equivalent of a pub quiz um for his about the trojan war yeah but and he would ask some kind of difficult questions like um uh so achilles the great hero when he was a boy uh was disguised as a girl and tiberius would say um what what name did achilles have as a girl and odysseus the uh the cunning hero who um comes up with the idea of the trojan War, he has a very, very long voyage back home.

And he sails past sinister creatures called the Sirens who sing beautifully and then devour the sailors who are lured to their island. And Tiberius wanted to know what the song was that the Sirens sung. And he would expect people to know this would they know it well he would and um there was one of his guests who cheated and um got hold of the questions before they were asked so what do you think tiberius did to him threw him off the rock had him killed don't don't cheat if you go to a pub quiz run by a seizure anyway let's come back to at the questions that we've been asked um but tom i think we should take a break first um okay well listen before we take the break i'm going to read you carl johans or johans question and we can have a you can have a ponder because i'm going to put you we have to answer this what war or event he asks comes closest to being of similar significance to the modern west

as troy was to the gree Good question. Let's have a break. launched our members club if you want ad-free listening bonus episodes and early access to live tickets head to the rest is entertainment.com that's the rest is entertainment.com welcome back everybody to the rest is history so just before the break uh tom asked me carl johan's question which is what war comes close to being of similar significance to the modern West as Troy was to the Greeks? So it seems to me, Tom, that the obvious answer to that is, I mean, the blatantly obvious answer is World War II. I mean, World War II is the event that sort of lingers in the Western psyche as the ultimate symbol of man's humanity to man. It's the ultimate morality tale. We structure the way we think about the world around the evil of the Nazis,

the heroism of standing up to them, the dangers of appeasement, all that kind of stuff. Don't you think that the Second World War is basically our Trojan War, our mythic story? I think on the level of myth, but I think there's also a seasoning of the First World War because the thing about the Trojan War is that it's pointless.

So if you think of the seasoning of the First World War, because the thing about the Trojan War is that it's pointless. So if you think of the myth of the First World War is that it's, you know, what was it all for? It was all fought in vain. People slaughtering each other in mud. Mud, blood and poppycock. That's pretty much what the Trojan War is. I mean, it's ruinous and it's destructive and nothing really comes of it. But hold on, the Greeks didn't think about it that way, didn't they? Didn't they find it heroic and inspiring? I mean, when Alexander runs around the tomb of Achilles

naked, he's not thinking, you know, he's not thinking, oh, this was a complete waste of time and this is the sort of Douglas Haig of the Bronze Age. Well, Achilles becomes a great hero because he chooses a short life and eternal fame over a long life and obscurity. So he's like Rupert Brooke or something. Yeah, but in the sequel, The Odyssey, we meet the ghost of Achilles in the underworld and he says it's terrible. Oh, really? You know, I made a terrible mistake.

I'd much rather be a kind of slave working the land than be a king in the underworld. Oh, really? Yeah, and I think, you know, and if you look at the Greek tragedians, the Athenian tragedians, and Aeschylus, one of them said that, you know, basically Greek tragedy absolutely a kind of riff on the idea of the trojan war as being kind of agonizingly pointless and i think i think that you know if you so if you fuse the first world war with the second world war the mix of that would give you something approximating it now the producer has been pestering me with questions while you've

been talking, not that he wasn't listening to you, Tom, but he's just been texting me with questions about Helen of Troy. Was this just a fight about a beautiful woman? Tell us about the woman, all this kind of stuff. So yes, that's interesting, isn't it? That it's all about a woman. I mean, there aren't many real wars that are either generated by women or that have women at their sort of absolute centre as this does? Well, I think, again, to go back to Herodotus, the history begins with an account of different people raping each other, raping each other's women. And I think there is a kind of, to a disturbing degree, there is a sense that the history of war is also the history of rape. So to that extent, there is a kind of, you know, a dark truth to the story of Helen's abduction. But, you know, in the kind of the more romantic sense of it, we do actually have a very good

question from Julian Lennox, who says, speaking of Helen, who are other historically beautiful people, specifically people whose beauty had historical significance, as in it changed the course of history. So, you know, do we have, are there women whose beauty was such that it changed the course of history? What do you think?

I think that's a great question. He actually said people, Tommy, he didn't say women. Yeah, he did. I'm being sexist there. You've revealed your own shocking, that's the male gaze in action. this is a terrible moment i think your cancellation is surely only moments away um so i don't it's an interesting one is it women or is it sexiness

because sexiness obviously does matter and the example i always think of is amberlynn oh good yes so the funny thing about amberlynn is she's not conventionally attractive people at the time like all these sort of ambassadors at the Tudor court would write back and they would say, oh, she's sallow-faced, she's sort of vulpine, you know, she's not attractive. She had 11 fingers, didn't she? But she... There's this claim about the finger as well.

I think we should probably, yeah, gloss over that. Was that the key? Yeah, maybe it was. Maybe she was able to put these extra fingers to very potent use. Who knows? Don't know. So Anne Boleyn has this hold over Henry VIII, clearly, and he's obsessed with her.

And had it not been for that, by the fact that she was interested in the kind of new evangelical ideas the new kind of ideas critical of catholic church it is perfectly plausible that england you know there would have been a protestant movement but the king would have fought it off and that england would remain a catholic country as france did so you could you can say with somebody like anne boleyn one, one individual's sexual allure does hold the key to a massive structural cultural change. So she's the face that launched a thousand monasteries being dissolved.

A thousand Bibles. A thousand Bibles. What about Cleopatra? Cleopatra's not very... Well, yes. I mean, Cleopatra is, of course, is always presumed to have been incredibly beautiful. But not beautiful, right? Well, if you look at her coins, she doesn't look particularly beautiful. And I think that sex wasn't necessarily

what she was offering the men she slept with. Because basically we only know that she slept with two men, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. And both of those men happened to be the most powerful men in the Mediterranean at the time. So I think we can, and even when Antony dies, Cleopatra then makes a pitch at Octavian, who will, the future Augustus. So if Melania Trump moves on to Joe Biden, we'll know that she wasn't interested in Donald for his looks. Yes, I think that that would be a reasonable presumption.

But of course, in the way that Cleopatra is portrayed as a kind of fatal seductress, there is something there of Helen, the idea that the love of a beautiful woman can be destructive for heroes and indeed for cities. So yeah, that's absolutely part of it. Now, do we have, we have lots more questions, don't we? Give me another question.

What about Josh Harold Wilson? I wonder if there's any relation. But Josh Harold Wilson says, is film a useful tool for exploring history or does it do more damage than good? Well, that's very topical with The Crown, isn't it? So the film of Troy, you've seen the film of Troy, their Brad Pitt film?

It's the worst film about the ancient world ever made. That's a big claim. Worse than Cleopatra? Cleopatra's great. It's very long, though. Very boring, as I remember. No, no, no. Troy is the worst film ever made because it gets rid of the gods.

And therefore it gets rid of everything that makes Homer interesting because without the gods it becomes quite dull and more than that what they're trying to do with Troy is to make it historically grounded and the whole point is that that whatever you may think about the kind of the the the tiny acorn of fact that gives rise to the great oak of of the trojan myth it didn't happen it didn't happen as homer portrays it there was no there was no helen there was no trojan horse so it's all myth so the very attempt to try and portray it as it did is is a spectacular waste of energy and effort it's it's truly terrible but does it do any uh any harm i don't think so i don't think it does any damage probably well i suppose you can argue it do any harm? I don't think so. I don't think it does any damage. Probably, well, I suppose you can argue

that films as propaganda do harm, don't they? I mean, they enter into the collective imagination of people and if what they are promoting is, you know, difference, hatred, all this sort of stuff. Well, an interesting counterpoint would be 300, which is also a film about ancient Greece and tells the story of the Spartans at Thermopylae. Yeah.

And that, I think, is a brilliant portrayal of the ancient world because it very accurately portrays the Spartans as proto-Nazis, as proto-fascists, which is basically what they were. The Spartans were a huge inspiration to the Nazis. And one of the things that's unsettling about 300 is that it doesn't serve up the kind of morality that we expect. The strong are strong, the weak are weak, and the weak are contemptible for being weak. And it's very unsettling, but I think also very, very accurate. But there's a reason, you know, 300 has become very popular with the kind of more right-wing fringes for that reason so uh it could be argued that that's done damage um that is interesting isn't it let's talk a bit about since you've

we've got on to 300 and all this stuff about how we see the trojan war how modern societies have seen the trojan so something that's always fascinated me is the fact that um jeffrey of monmouth and sort of medieval you, English and Welsh writers were fascinated by this idea that we are descended from the Trojans. There was a fellow called Brutus who was related to Aeneas who supposedly founded Rome and that Brutus basically sails across the sea with a load of Trojan refugees and founds Britannia, which is named after him. And he separates his kingdom into three parts, England, Scotland and Wales, which he gives to his three sons. And he founds a city called New Troy, which becomes London and all this sort of

stuff. What's all that about? And the question that puzzles me is why would you empathise with the Trojans who are losers rather than the Greeks who are the winners? Because the Trojans are ultimately the winners because Aeneas who you mentioned who is the son of Aphrodite, cousin of the princes of Troy, he escapes Troy, supposedly he comes to Italy and his descendants found Rome. So the Romans identify themselves with the Trojans. So if you identify yourself with the Trojans, you're also identifying yourself with the Romans. So why did the Romans do it though? Why did the Romans, is it because the Greeks were their rivals

and they needed a sort of alternative origin story? They couldn't just take a Greek origin story. Because the Trojan War and Homer, you know, Homer is the prestige poet and you want a bit of it. And if you can identify yourself with that story, then you're kind of joining in with it. And also, it provides a rationale for the Romans to go and conquer Greece. Right. Because they can say that they're taking vengeance for the Trojans. And that's something that Mehmed II, the Ottoman who captures Constantinople, he makes great play with this as well.

He's saying that he is ruling as the heir of the Trojans, that by capturing Constantinople, he's taking vengeance for the sack of Troy. And do any modern Turks think this? I don't think so. Erdogan, he's the heir of Achilles, or the heir of, sorry, the heir of Hector. Mehmed II, his mother was Greek, so he was kind of plugged into that culture. think it's the era of achilles i think i mean sorry the era of hector um remember the second

his mother was greek so he he was kind of plugged into that culture he was he was aware of it i mean obviously it's much more of a a european thing but in the in the wake of the the collapse of of the roman empire in early medieval europe it's a way for um people as they start to get a sense of their own identity they look around and and by plugging yourself into um greek mythology roman history um you're giving yourself a kind of real sense of prestige and to say that you're descended from the trojans i mean that you know kind of multiplies it and the great thing about um about britannia and brutus coming to britain is that um britain was supposedly a land of giants. And I saw in the paper today that Boris Johnson was saying that he's now committed to having a

cabinet of giants. So Brutus supposedly fights two giants called Gorg and Magog. And it would be great to see them in the cabinet. Yeah, in place of Gavin Williamson or somebody. You don't think he's a Trojan figure? I think Gorg as Secretary of State for Education would be a lot more fun. But it's a funny thing, isn't it, how this question about who you empathise with. So when I was reading it to my son the other night, I said, who do you want to win?

He knows the Trojans lose, because kind of everybody seems to just know that they lose. And he said, Oh, well, I really like the Trojans. I like Hector, I know it doesn't end well for him. But and I said, that's funny, because I liked Hector when I was, you know, eight, I he was, and I wonder whether we think differently than our predecessors might have done, because we are programmed, this is, you know, this is a gift to you with your Christianity, whether we are programmed to cheer for the underdog. We know the Trojans lose. So we kind of, you know, we think they're the good guys. And the Greeks who behave so badly, squabbling about slave girls and crying and behaving in this sort of ludicrous,

sort of whingy, snowflakey way. Who empathises with them now? Well, Achilles is the great hero. He is, you could say, hungry like the wolf. Very good talk, Thomas. So we pledge that we get a new romantic lyric in every week and they're back at the net there, I like to think. Oh, did the talent in the TV work up that one? and then back of the net there. Oh, I did a talent of a TV. Well, I've got that one. So Achilles is the great hero.

And he's a great hero because he's basically the best at killing people. And that does seem frightening to us, I think. I mean, Achilles is a frightening figure. But you're right. You mentioned Alexander. Alexander completely models himself on Achilles. And Alexander kills a lot of people as well. And I think you're right. I think it is essentially... He's got a view to a kill, Tom. He's got a view

to a kill. I think that our sensibilities are incredibly Christian now. And so we are kind of programmed to identify with those who suffer, those who are the victims, those who become the slaves rather than those who do the slaving. But the initial consumers of the Iliad, the people who listen to the poets tell and retell these stories, they presumably wouldn't have thought that. They'd have just thought these people are losers, therefore, you know, they got what was coming to them. Some did, but some didn't. So again, this is a massive theme in Greek tragedy, is the suffering of the losers. And in a way, one of the bleakest works of literature ever written is Euripides' Trojan Women, which he's writing against the backdrop of the Peloponnesian War, the great war between Athens and Sparta, which will actually end with the defeat of Athens. But the Athenians are sacking a lot of cities as the Trojans do. And Euripides gives this portrayal of the queens and the princesses of Troy being rounded up after the sack of the city, about to be led off into slavery. And it's a devastating portrait of what it means to be a victim in a war. And the power of it is precisely that there is no real kind of

redemptive quality to it. The key thing that you get from Christianity is the idea that there is a redemptive quality in suffering. So if you counterpoint the sack of Troy in Greek myth to the sack of Jerusalem in the Old Testament, it's terrible. It's devastating. But the conviction that the Jews hold to is that ultimately it's expressive of God's power. And so therefore it is, you know, there is a purpose to it. What you get in Euripides is absolutely bled of any sense of that. This is just, you you know terrible stuff happens yeah and so and so it was that kind of euripidean take was resurrected an awful lot during the um uh the the gulf war and the aftermath so it was almost

impossible to go to a theater and not see a greek tragedy in which um the greeks were the you know the coalition forces and yeah well as is traditional um we end the podcast with a 10-minute lecture from tom about uh christianity's um how it's changed the modern world and how everybody should go about his book which i'm sure you already have um i think we've pretty much run out of time tom um but i think there's enough in this for us to come back to troy and the trojan War later on in the series, depending on how long the series runs, because there's tons of questions that we actually didn't get to. And I am so sorry to all those people, but we will get to your question one day, possibly.

So we'll be back next week with more meanderings down the lanes of history. Please subscribe, rate and review, but obviously only if you like us. It does make all the difference. And please do get in touch with us on Twitter. We are at TheRestHistory, so no is. Or you can also use at Holland underscore Tom or at DC Sandbrook. And that's it. Goodbye for now. Thanks for listening.

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