The Rise of Athens

Not many years after this victory mysterious invaders put a violent end to the Mycenean civilization. It is uncertain who they were, but they ushered in a poorly understood period that modern scholars have called a Dark Age. Centuries of economic and social collapse followed. This meant that Homer was evoking a way of life only dimly remembered. The Iliad and the Odyssey are fictions, but in one crucial sense they embody an essential historical truth, in that they showed many generations of Greeks who they were and what values to live by.

Homer exercised an almost biblical authority. Here, in brief, is the story that he tells.

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The siege of Troy lasted for a decade, but the events in the Iliad cover only a period of fifty-four days in the ninth year and most of the action takes place within four full days. But this close shot captures the glory and the tragedy of slaughter that seems to have no end.

Warfare in Homer is, in essence, a succession of duels between princes and kings; they ride in chariots and throw spears at their opponents. The common people mill about in the background. Achilles, a handsome, lordly, and invincible fighter, occupies the heart of the story. He is by far the best soldier among the Greeks, but he has a terrible temper. He falls out with his commander-in-chief, King Agamemnon of Mycenae, over two pretty girls. The first is Chryseis, the daughter of a local priest dedicated to the archer god Apollo, in appearance a handsome youth eternally in his late teens. Captured by the Greeks on a raid, she is donated as human booty to Agamemnon. Her father complains to the god and pleads for redress.

Then a plague strikes the expeditionary force. The soldiers are crowded into huts on a beach not far from the city of Troy a few miles inland. Their ships are drawn up on the sand beside them. Many die. A soothsayer announces that the epidemic is the god’s punishment for Chryseis’s capture and advises that she be returned to her father at once.

The Hellenic universe was very different from our own. Homer’s men and women live simultaneously in what could be called parallel universes. In one of them things are as they seem. A plague is a plague. But in the second the gods are in charge. On this occasion Apollo comes down in fury on the camp. His arrows clanged in their quiver.

“His descent was like nightfall,” says the poet. “He sat down opposite the ships and shot an arrow, with a dreadful twang from his silver bow. He attacked the mules and the nimble dogs. Then he aimed sharp arrows at the men, and struck again and again. Day and night innumerable fires consumed the dead.”

So through one door of perception an event has a rational explanation, through another, supernatural. The Greeks believed that both are true at one and the same time.

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The chief deities in the Hellenic pantheon are a squabbling family of anthropomorphic immortals. They live in a palace on the peak of Mount Olympus in northern Greece. They enjoy tricks and practical jokes and their “unquenchable laughter” echoes around the mountaintops. Their loves and hates make an entertaining soap opera, but, as we have seen, they are not funny at all when they turn their attention to human beings.

Head of the family is Zeus, the Thunderer and Cloud Compeller—and a henpecked husband. His wife, Hera, is always plotting to obstruct his plans. Then there is the warrior Athena, protectress of Athens. She is the goddess of wisdom and patron of the arts and crafts. She calls her father “an obstinate old sinner, always interfering with my plans.” Both goddesses loathe the Trojans and work tirelessly for their downfall.

This is because they and the goddess of love, Aphrodite, competed long ago for a golden apple, which was to be awarded to the most beautiful of the three. A young Trojan prince, Paris, was the judge and he gave the prize to Aphrodite. If he chose her, she promised him the most beautiful woman in the world for his paramour.

Her name is Helen and, inconveniently, she is already spoken for. She is the wife of King Menelaus of Sparta in southern Greece. Paris pays her a visit and they elope to Troy. It is this offense that sets off the war.

These gods are not models of virtue and do not expect invariable virtue from their worshippers; rather, each of them stands for emotions or principles or skills that reflect and magnify those of human beings.