It’s a bold move to write a sober history of a mostly
legendary war like the Trojan War, but Barry Strauss succeeds in doing just
that. The Trojan War is made up of two strands of narrative interwoven
throughout the book. One strand is a history of the practices of warfare in the
Late Bronze Age in both Anatolia and Mycenaean Greece.
Strauss pulls from recent archaeological discoveries, ancient records and
letters, and ancient poetry and literature in order to reconstruct the politics
and paraphernalia of war. I especially appreciated this aspect of the book. The
other strand of narrative that runs through the book is a retelling of the
Trojan War story, primarily that presented by Homer in the Iliad and
Odyssey, in light of the real methods of war at the time period. This was
also interesting in a “What could it have really been like?” sort of way.
The book is well written, fun, and easily accessible for any
reader. It has timelines, maps, a glossary and some great resources in the
back. I only have two quibbles with the book as a whole. First of all, he’s
interpreting the Iliad primarily from a military history perspective
rather than from a literary perspective. Because of this I think he
misinterprets many character points in the Iliad; I especially thing he
doesn’t “get” the character of Achilles as Homer presents him. The other
problem is that because he is intertwining the two threads (the historical
information and the imaginative “historical” reconstruction of the Iliad),
it would be easy for readers to make the mistake of considering Agamemnon,
Menelaus, Helen, Priam, et al as actual historical persons. There was a war at Troy
and the city was burnt sometime between 1250 and 1180ish BC, but Strauss is not
intending to say that the story of the Iliad is absolutely historically
true. The way he writes can give this impression at times, though.
Overall, I would highly recommend this book to any person
interested in classical literature or history. From teachers, to students, to
the merely curious, The Trojan War is an engaging and lively read.
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