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68 of 70 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Face That Launched a Thousand Books, September 24, 2006
This review is from: The Trojan War: A New History (Hardcover)
Over the years, I've read quite a few books and articles about the Trojan War, but this one really hits the mark. For one thing, Strauss doesn't dwell on the oft-repeated story of Heinrich Schliemann's discovery of the "Mound at Hisarlik," which most archaeologists now agree was the site of ancient Troy. Instead, Strauss dives straight into the narrative in the Iliad and related but lesser-known works, treating Homer's probably fictional heroes as real characters and using them to illuminate the nuances of Greek and Anatolian culture during the Bronze Age.
In this narrative, Troy is a prosperous client state of the Hittite Empire and the Greeks are the Vikings of the Mediterranean. The Trojan War may or may not have been about the abduction of a Spartan queen named Helen, but it could easily have been about Mycenaean raids to capture booty and Trojan women. And while today's reader is skeptical of the active participation of gods in battle, Strauss makes it clear that the gods of the Iliad were an integral part of the thinking of Bronze Age warriors, not just a poetic device.
To top it all off, Strauss is simply a good writer. There are other good books about the Trojan War (Rodney Castelden's recent "The Attack on Troy" and Michael Wood's classic "In Search of the Trojan War" come to mind), but Strauss does the best job of integrating the powerful narrative of the Homeric epic cycle with our current knowledge of the Bronze Age world. "The Trojan War" is a fast and compelling read.
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41 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Read - but Fact or Fiction?, January 1, 2007
This review is from: The Trojan War: A New History (Hardcover)
The Trojan War (circa 1200 BC) is a conflict shrouded in mists of myth, fragmented historical evidence and often-inconclusive archaeological clues. Most of our views on the war are shaped by Homer's heroic epics, not recorded history. In his book The Trojan War, Cornell University Professor Barry Strauss attempts to depict this conflict as a coherent historical narrative, accepting much of Homer as a starting point, but embellishing the tale with other neglected literary sources and all currently available archeological evidence. This is not a stuffy academic tome on Homer but rather, an attempt to depict Helen, Achilles, Hector, Agamemnon, Paris, etc as real historical characters and the author succeeds in this effort. On the one hand, this is a pleasing effort that brings life to our otherwise hagiographical image of these characters. On the other hand, the reader is constantly brought to wonder what the author has surmised and what he has simply invented whole cloth. Since we are not even sure of the existence of many of these characters - did Homer invent some of them? - it is disconcerting to see the author describing their appearance, thoughts and actions. Although this book provides wonderful insight into the Trojan War, I found myself torn whether I should consider it history or historical fiction; there is a huge gray area at the heart of this book.
The author's narrative is clean and strait forward, laid out in eleven chapters that begins with Helen's flight from Sparta with Paris to the fall of Troy. As a starting premise, the author accepts much of Homer's The Iliad as based upon real events, but he notes exaggerations and omissions that make certain sections suspect. Although the author can only guess at the dates - they fall within a 30-year period - readers will sense that the Professor Strauss has attempted to impose the historical structure of Thucydides upon the literary form of Homer. As the author notes, greed not jealousy was the cause of the war - "Helen was not the cause but merely the occasion of the war" and "Agamemnon rallied the Greeks to attack a gold mine." Readers will also note that the author attempts to be more balanced to the Trojan point of view than Homer permitted, although ultimately the author criticizes the Trojans for surrendering the strategic initiative to the Greeks.
One of the author's main hypotheses is that Troy was indeed sacked by the Greeks but there was no formal siege. Instead, the author maintains that the Greeks - frustrated by the seemingly impregnable walls of Troy - turned to small-scale attacks on the villages around Troy and her weaker allies. The author is hindered in testing this hypothesis by his limited understanding of military theory - referring to the period after the initial Greek attack on Troy failed as `low intensity conflict.' This was in fact a switch in Greek tactics from `counter-force' (i.e. destroy the Trojan Army) to `counter-value' (i.e. destroy the Trojan economy and alliance network), but the commitment of thousands of troops on these raids indicated that they were far from low-intensity. Nor does it help when the author fumbles military references from other eras, such as a comparison to "Ernst Rommel" (i.e. Erwin Rommel). The author also strongly criticizes the Trojans for not attempting to launch counteroffensives to take advantage of Greek mistakes, but the evidence for or against this is far too weak. Given our limited knowledge of the war and the Greek-centric nature of what sources are available, I don't believe that we have enough information to condemn the Trojan strategy as faulty. The author also tends to blame the Trojans when they did counterattack, accusing Hector of being vainglorious and reckless in seeking combat. This seems to be contradictory.
Nevertheless, the author's descriptions of Greek assaults upon the walls and furious fights upon the plains of Troy are thrilling to read. I just wish we had a better idea if they are based upon fact or this author's imagination. It is never really clear. When the author suspects that Homer exaggerates, he simply deletes or ignores those passages. This kind of `pick and choose approach' makes sense, but it also risks including some ideas that were false but sound reasonable while excluding true improbables. Would readers 3,000 years from now believe that the American Revolution was decided by an almost-unheard of French naval victory over the Royal Navy? The author does provide some nice maps and photographs of the terrain, as well as notes on sources. Overall, this book is a very good read and the author achieves at least partial success in laying out his hypotheses, although there are too many lingering doubts to call this a definitive work.
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36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting--But Very Speculative, November 3, 2006
This review is from: The Trojan War: A New History (Hardcover)
Barry Strauss examines the Trojan War in terms of what our contemporary knowledge might tell us in illuminating this sanguinary contest between Greeks and Trojans. The underlying conceit to this book is to assume that Homer's listing of actors is a useful starting point. Thus, he speaks of Paris, Helen, Achilles, Menelaus, Agamemnon, Odysseus, Ajax, Hector, Priam, and others as if they were actual historical figures. As Strauss notes (page 11), ". . .this book will refer to Homer's characters as real-life individuals. The reader should keep in mind that their existence is plausible but unproven." If the reader accept this, then the book is interesting reading. If not, then the book will be most unconvincing.
The volume uses historical information, archaeological findings, and texts (such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey) to create a narrative addressing what might have happened at Troy.
Issues addressed include the gathering of the Greek army and navy to attack Troy after Paris' abduction of Helen (Menelaus' wife), the amphibious landing of the Greek forces before the city of Troy, the network of alliances among both Greeks and Trojans, the tactics and strategy of warfare at this time in the Bronze Age, various scenarios as to how Troy was defeated, and so on.
This short book (189 pages of text) will not convince those who want concrete evidence. For those who are interested in a sense of what might have occurred at an historical Trojan War, there is much here to think about.
Useful features of the book, for those able to move beyond the premise, include some very nice maps at the start of the volume and photographs of the geography and artifacts of the era.
All in all, a thought provoking work. If the reader can accept the conceit, then this is a volume that gets one thinking about what might have been at 1180-1210 BC at Troy. If one does not accept that conceit, then this will likely be a frustrating work to confront.
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