Troy, Pitt, and What I Mean By "Understand"

This essay will most likely be the first in a series about the Iliad and Odyssey that I hope to turn into a separate curriculum, one that covers the poems, ancient historians and the way they looked at history, and Nietsche.

I really didn't like the movie Troy.

As an ancient history major, that was to be expected - it's rare that a popular version of an old story is liked by those that know the story well. But I didn't dislike it because I'd studied ancient history. As a matter of fact, I thought it was a good movie, given its limitations. But what the filmmakers set out to do was impossible - you can't make such a well-known story plausible to a modern audience in the short space of two hours unless you change key elements of the story (the key elements being, unfortunately, the elements that most resist changing). And the reasons why this is impossible go a long way towards explaining the mindset of a good historian.

Read on, and you'll see why. So let's start at the beginning.

If you haven't seen the movie, the plot is simple - Paris, Younger Prince of Troy, sweeps Helen, wife of Menelaus, mighty king across the sea, off her beautiful feet. This angers Menelaus, who runs to his bigger and more powerful brother Agamemnon, who has always wanted to raid Troy and have it for his own. Using the infidelity as an excuse, he launches a mighty army against Troy, one that includes Achilles, the strongest and best warrior around. Agamemnon insults Achilles by taking away Briseus, a captured Trojan woman who decides that Achilles isn't all that bad after kissing him. Achilles refuses to fight until his cousin Patroclus is killed, at which point Achilles thinks it best to fight again. He kills Hector, Older Prince of Troy, and refuses to give the body back to Priam, King of Troy, until the king sneaks into the enemy camp and demands the body back himself. A mere two weeks later the Greeks (the invaders, not the Trojans), in a stroke of genius, place their best warriors in a giant wooden horse. The Trojans, in a stroke of pure blind idiocy, take the horse inside the city without a second thought. That night, the warriors emerge, open the gates to the city, and everyone is slaughtered. In the process, Achilles gets hit in the ankle with an arrow shot by none other than Paris, Younger Prince of Troy. Paris keeps Helen. Agamemnon is killed.

The story flows very well until the end. Everything up to the Trojan Horse is plausible enough, but once the horse arrives on the scene, the movie begins to fall apart. It takes all of forty seconds for the Trojan King and his advisors to declare that bringing a giant wooden horse into the city is a good idea. Other ideas, like "give the horse a good inspection," "are you sure this isn't some kind of trap?" or "why in the world are we out here on the battlefield without any soldiers to guard us?" don't seem to surface in anyone's mind but Paris'.

"Well," Priam might later say, "that horse was bad news. But bringing it into the city...well, it seemed like a good idea at the time."

The movie has hit a wall. It is impossible to make the Trojan Horse even remotely plausible unless other elements of the story of the Trojan War are told. These elements, however, didn't make it into the film, either because they weren't well-known or because they were nearly impossible to tell in the space of just two hours. In short, the movie Troy was trying to do two things at once - it was trying to make the story plausible to a modern audience, and it was trying to include all the events of the Trojan War that most people were familiar with. And when the movie arrives at the Trojan Horse, it cannot possibly do both, and which point it resolves the paradox by rushing through the rest of the movie as fast as possible.

The movie tries to accomplish something that most historians have to do at some point - make a period of history plausible and/or interesting by turning it into a story. Troy, of course, isn't history, but the problem is the same. The only way to make the taking of a giant wooden horse inside a city seem like "a good idea at the time" is to tell more of the story - the role of the gods, why Achilles was really angry, the way men thought and acted, and a host of other things that can't be told in a two-hour time frame. Quite frankly, it'd probably take days to fully explain - motivations were so different in the ancient world that the easiest way to tell a good story based in history is to make the characters act as if they were pulled from the 21st century. Then the story can seem plausible, because at least we understand the characters. But the story quickly fails when 21st century characters have to do things that only ancient characters would even think of doing.

("Ma! Come quick! The guvermint done sent us a big ticking box! They wants to make peace! Let's bring it inside!")

Proper understanding of periods of history is one of the most difficult problems that historians face (the Trojan War isn't history, of course, but the problem is the same). It's more than understanding people's actions from a 21st century standpoint - a good historian has to understand his subjects from the period of time in which they live. And sometimes the explanations for people's actions way, way back when are so strange to us that we can do no more than just accept the fact that people long dead thought a certain way. It doesn't make sense to us; maybe it never will. But it did to them, and understanding that, and a willingness to work within that constraint, is necessary for doing good history.

With that in mind, read on to see what Troy would have looked like had the director instructed the actors to behave as if they lived according to standards of ancient morality and ancient values.

Religion, Curses, and Four-Letter Words II

The First Half of This Essay is Located Here

Zeus, the most powerful god of them all in the Greek pantheon, is the patron god of travelers. That meant that you faced Zeus' wrath if you did not protect a traveler who asked for lodging. And it went way beyond merely giving a room and a meal. The host was obliged to send off the traveler with gifts, and the traveler was expected to give gifts in return. For a brief period, the traveler was family, and was to be protected as such.

Given that banditry and piracy were, in the world of the Homeric poems, not only common but reputable professions, it's not hard to see why there was needed a code of friendship for travelers. No law existed but the strength of any particular ruler over his domain. Inside that domain, anyone was subject to whatever the ruler wished, simply because he was powerful enough to do as he willed in an area he could control. outside of that domain, and the traveler had better be exceptionally strong, or have a lot of money for bribes.

In short, the system might have been explained something like this: Zeus is the strongest being there is, and therefore, anything and everything is under his control. His domain extends everywhere. Individual kings (more like tribal leaders in the Homeric poems) are like little Zeuses in their own domains. And theoretically, a ruler could be ruthless and brutally murder any traveler and take his stuff. That, however, would be contrary to Zeus' rules, and no one wants to be on Zeus' bad side.

There it is, and very simple. Travelers are friends. And, given that the moral code of the ancient world was simply "help your friends and harm your enemies," you must always help a traveler.

It's easy to look at this system and assume that the rationale for it lies in "do unto others what you would have them do unto you." And perhaps some rulers did make that connection, but we probably should not. The results of the ancient moral code and the Christian moral code produce, in this case, the same result. It doesn't mean that we should assume that the ancients were thinking like Christians.

Zeus, in other words, isn't a wonderful counselor. So why would he care about the well-being of travelers? And the answer is this: the travelers cut a deal with the god. It probably went something like this: "you protect me, and I will spread your sacrifices everywhere I go."

In short, "you scratch my back, I'll kill a bull for you." And this is probably the likelier origin of ancient religion.

Recall the mindset of the Homeric heroes ("hero" is, in this case, anyone strong enough to make his or her will a reality, despite opposition from weaker people) didn't include concepts like "culpability" or "intent." They wished, and they did. They wanted, and they took. They willed, and their will became real. Their actions were no more questioned, even if cruel, than the actions of an eagle eating a fieldmouse. The eagle eats the mouse because it is in the eagle's nature to do such things; the eagle is stronger. And the pirate takes from the coast town for the same reason.

What, then, do you do when you encounter someone stronger than you? You submit, or you cut a deal.

In the beginning of the Iliad, the hero Achilles is insulted in a serious way by the leader of the anti-Trojan forces. Achilles is about to kill the leader (Agamemnon), but desists when a goddess persuades him otherwise. The goddes cannot stop Achilles from killing Agamemnon, because Achilles is freakishly strong. So she cuts a deal - "you don't kill him, and I'll humiliate him and prove you the stronger man." And Achilles accepts.

One thing should be covered before making the tiny leap from deals with humans to deals with gods - given that once someone intended to do something, he or she would in all likelihood do it, it's easy to see why the spoken word held such weight, especially a curse. By cursing someone, you were condemning him to a certain fate - "ad maximam malam crucem" is a Roman curse and one of my personal favorites, meaning, quite literally, "go crucify yourself." In a world where a stronger man could exert his will on a weaker man, it isn't hard to imagine how much weight the curse of the stronger man would have. Once a hero had proclaimed his intention to kill or hurt someone, it was as good as done. A curse, therefore, was not a probability, it was a certainty, because the curser certainly wasn't going to waste his time thinking about whether or not he should do as he wanted. And he was probably stronger than you, and so you were doomed. A few hundred years of this, and one would still be deathly afraid of curses.

A curse, after all, was simply a nasty oath, and oaths, like anything spoken, held great power and could not be broken. It was an oath that supposedly made all the Greek kings go after Helen - they had sworn to protect her marriage. It certainly wasn't her beauty - not even the most beautiful woman in the world could convince an army to come after her by beauty alone, and the heroes in the Homeric poems have no qualms about stating that outright.

But back to deals - if there was any way in which a weaker man was more powerful than a strong man - richer, greater dominion, better lineage, etc. - then the weaker man had a way out of the fate that the strong man planned for him...assuming, of course, that the strong man accepted. And religion in the Homeric poems is little more than a complicated, but deathly serious, tradition of rules for making deals with the gods.

So long as sacrifices continued, certain things could be expected - winter wouldn't last forever, disease wouldn't be devastating, and people could live. In short, ancient religion wasn't a mechanism to explain the world around them, it was a mechanism for preventing the world around them from eating them alive. Man could deal with angry forces in the universe just like he dealt with stronger men - cutting deals, and keeping his end of the bargain.

More to come.

Religion, Curses, and Four-Letter Words

Disclaimer, so read this first: This essay is one of many that explains how early religion most likely developed, and stops at the Enlightenment, Nietsche, and a few other places along the way. It is by no means complete. I start with the Enlightenment and Nietsche, yet the document(s) and book(s) I cite are not in front of me, nor am I bothering to look up page numbers or consult with someone more knowledgeable to make sure my details are correct. I will; just not now. Expect details to change, but the overall thesis will stay.

So here we go:

The common explanation for the origin of religion, the explanation given in most introductory textbooks, goes something like this:

Early religion evolved as man's response to the world around him, to explain that very world. Man was better able to deal with Nature's uncertainties - rain, famine, flood, etc. - if he understood these events in terms of an anthropomorphic deity's actions.

In short, every time early man doesn't understand something, he makes up an explanation and is then satisfied with it.

The ironic thing about this explanation is how little it explains, or how well it explains its own emergence. The explanation itself has its origins in post-Enlightenment thought. Enlightenment historians, Edward Gibbon included, had their faults. They were excellent at gathering data, a result of the careful scientific mindset of their time. They had a propensity, however, to write off human behaviors they could not understand, usually ascribing them motives that were more understandable. Thus did the Crusades become about money and land rather than piety. The idea that marching off to a city to visit a shrine, knowing full and well that Muslim armies will have to be fought and killed along the way for it to be successful, yet continuing anyway - the idea that this behavior is pious still strikes us as absurd, even now. And thus do we, and so did the older historians, look for other explanations.

The fact is, however, that "piety" was precisely the reason for the Crusades. Nor does it do anyone any good to defend or attack the Crusaders for their reasoning, however inferior we may think it is. Bottom line, it doesn't matter how wrong we think the Crusaders were - they themselves did not think they were wrong, and that is what we must come to grips with if we can have a proper historical understanding of any period in history. "These people at this time thought this, and it was self-evident to them. They did not question it." That's the beginning and end of that story. We can trace the evolution of their thought, and even begin to understand how we might believe the same things as they did were we to be born in the same time. But if we cannot at some point accept that "this is how people thought, and it does no good to question why, because it simply is so," then we will stop doing history and start doing philosophy. Or propaganda, in worse cases.

Bringing us back to the Enlightenment: the textbook explanation for religion is that it explained things, just like that very theory of religion explained religion to those who could not understand it, nor their predecessors who practiced it. That in itself is the truly ironic element of the explanation.

But it isn't correct. Below is what I think is a much better explanation for early religion, told from the standpoint of an agnostic. The assumption is this: assuming gods and deities do not exist, what is a likely explanation for the origin of belief in them?

Ironically enough, to understand this explanation, we have to start with Nietsche.

Most people know Nietsche as the "god is dead" guy. Those who have had to study him know that he was first and foremost a Classicist and Hellenist, not a Philosopher. He knew Greek, and Latin, and ultimately went mad thinking himself the sort of man that he found all over in the Iliad and Odyssey, a hero whose will was so powerful that it enabled him to do whatever he pleased. And though Nietsche ended up praising what was, for all practical purposes, a sociopath, he was right when it came to the Iliad and Odyssey.

Whatever else may be said about the man and his madness, he was usually dead-on when it came to ancient myth. Anyone familiar with the Iliad and Odyssey, however, might find it hard to picture the characters as sociopaths. So a little explanation is in order:

We define a sociopath as someone who has no moral sensibility whatsoever, and does whatever happens to be on his or her mind. Writing a letter and gutting someone have the same moral weight. The characters in the Homeric poems are slightly different. It is not that they have no moral sensibility - there is a very strict moral code in the Homeric poems. It is simply that the moral code of the Homeric poems doesn't inclide ideas like "restraint" and "culpability," ideas that are central to the moral code we follow.

A brief example to illustrate the difference: if I were walking down the street and heard someone insult me, I might feel like punching the dim-witted fool. But I don't. I wanted to, but restrained myself, and walked away. That, in our world, is a moral victory.

Here's how it happens in the ancient world: I am walking down the road. I am insulted. I cut the man's head off.

Note that in the second example there isn't even a thought process inserted between hearing the insult and cutting the man's head off. One action follows the other like the night follows the day - inevitable, and inalterable.

Nietsche himself gave the best example: if we were to see an eagle swing low and capture a fieldmouse as prey, and eat it before us, we wouldn't think to question the eagle's morals. We would simply say, "it is in an eagle's nature to eat weaker animals." That's be the end of the discussion. And in the same way, it is in the strong man's nature to do as he wills - not doing as he pleases, like someone ruled by his desires, but doing as he wills, like a god.

(At this point some of you might protest that there's no significant difference between someone doing as he desires and doing as he wills. To which I say, "perhaps. But the Homeric poems suggest that the author thought there was a difference, if he thought about it at all. And we have to accept that.")

The Homeric poems bear out Nietsche's thesis extremely, extremely well. There is little mention of anything called "culpability" or "restraint." People simply do things, and the stronger people do more things and prevail against many more people. Those in battle who are celebrated are the strong ones, not the ones fighting for this or that particular side. And the only moral weakness mentioned is weakness itself.

- Athena is angry with Odysseus when he displays weakness in brutally killing off all the suitors.

- Odysseus attacks and pillages a seaside village on his return home. No one listening to his story even bats an eye, as if such activities are entirely normal. The gods certainly don't mind.

- A warrior attacks a god in the Trojan War. The other gods laugh at someone so gutsy, and feel proud of him.

I can go on. The point is, in the Homeric poems, men have not yet learned how to restrain themselves, nor would it even occur to them to do so. Their actions are the result of their will, which, being as egomaniacal as wills usually are, exerts itself on the outside world as much as possible, occaisonally over-extending and killing itself.

So what does this have to do with religion and its formation?

Next essay, please.