The Trojan War: A New History

Written by Barry Strauss

Narrated by Jonathan Yen

The Trojan War is the most famous conflict in history, the subject of Homer's Iliad, one of the cornerstones of Western literature. Although many readers know that this literary masterwork is based on actual events, there is disagreement about how much of Homer's tale is true. Drawing on recent archeological research, historian and classicist Barry Strauss explains what really happened in Troy more than 3,000 years ago.

For many years it was thought that Troy was an insignificant place that never had a chance against the Greek warriors who laid siege and overwhelmed the city. In the old view, the conflict was decided by duels between champions on the plain of Troy. Today we know that Troy was indeed a large and prosperous city, just as Homer said. The Trojans themselves were not Greeks but vassals of the powerful Hittite Empire to the east in modern-day Turkey, and they probably spoke a Hittite-related language called Luwian. The Trojan War was most likely the culmination of a long feud over power, wealth, and honor in western Turkey and the offshore islands. The war itself was mainly a low-intensity conflict, a series of raids on neighboring towns and lands.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Feb 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9781977373441

Barry Strauss

Barry Strauss is a professor of history and classics at Cornell University, The Corliss Page Dean Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and a leading expert on ancient military history. He has written or edited several books, including The Battle of Salamis, The Trojan War, The Spartacus War, Masters of Command, The Death of Caesar, and Ten Caesars. Visit BarryStrauss.com.

Reviews for The Trojan War

[Dean Marais · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting book exploring the Trojan war via all existing texts and archeological evidence. Def written for history nerds over a general audience. I don't think the negative reviews are justified

[octavio o nunez · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Different perspective
Wonderful analysis on the Iliad and the characters narrated b Homer

[Chauncey Mabe · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Informative, but the author misunderstands The Iliad. He keeps trying to parse out which items of the epic may be “true” in a historical sense. I can tell you right now which parts are true, are factual: None of them. And the issue is beside the point. Epic poetry, religious stories, myths written—none of these were created with historical fact in mind. The ancients had no concept of fact like we do. They were much more interested in a good story that captured the heart of what was going on way back when. Strauss is readable though, and he does an excellent job of situating the fall of Troy by comparing the warfare to what was common in Asia Minor, especially among the Hittites, and in the Mediterranean. He puts archaeology to excellent use. So while to me the book has a major flaw—in terms of historical specificity and literary sophistication—it is nonetheless an enjoyable and in certain respects informative read

[waltzmn · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Arguments about whether the Trojan War actually happened may well predate Homer. Certainly they predate any existing copies of Homer, since Thucydides had trenchant comments on just what might or might not have happened.This book isn't one of those arguments; it accepts the Trojan War as real. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a history. It's more of a projection: Take the story of the Iliad and retell it, cutting out only those parts which are clearly impossible in the light of archaeology and modern science. The result is at least 75% Homer, no more than 25% observed facts. Was there a city of Ilium (Wilusa), i.e. Troy? Certainly. Was it badly damaged, very likely sacked, around the end of the Mycenaean era in Greece? Yes. Were the attackers Greeks? Very possibly. Were they led by a King of Mycenae? It would make sense, since Mycenae was a very great city. Was the king's name Agamemnon? It's possible. Did he have a supporter named Achilles? We can't absolutely rule it out. Did they have a quarrel about two women whose names we know, did it result in a Trojan attack on the ships, and did that lead ultimately to the death of the Trojan prince Hector....?Well, let's look at some realities. By all accounts, the Trojan epic and romance attributed to Homer (the Iliad is an epic; the Odyssey a romance) were composed about four hundred years after the event -- maybe more. So, for four hundred years, the story would have had to be preserved in folktales and oral epics -- the Greeks lost the skill to write after the Mycenaean era, and didn't regain it until they borrowed a new writing system hundreds of years later.But oral history is pretty predictable: it forgets complicated facts and boils everything down to stories of individuals. Take the story of the Battle of Otterburn in 1388; the Earl of Douglas, who was raiding Northumberland, won a battle against Henry "Hotspur" Percy. The ballad of Chevy Chase, which was picked up a few hundred years later, knows of the battle but throws out all the details and ends up telling us that Percy and Douglas actually fought hand to hand -- making a battle into a series of single combats just as the Iliad is a series of single combats. Or take the Song of Roland. We know that Roland was a real noble at the time of Charlemagne. But he was just some border lord who got himself killed. By the time of the Roland, he is the greatest knight of Christendom, who defeats an entire enemy army even as he's dying -- dying not, we note, because he was overwhelmed by his enemies but because he blew his horn so loudly that he damaged his skull. Enemies couldn't kill him; he had to do it himself.And this sort of distortion can happen quickly. There's a sea chanty, "Santy Anno," which described Santa Anna beating Zachary Taylor in the Mexican War, even though the reverse was true. That chanty was first collected less than a century after the Mexican War, in a time when written records were readily accessible.And we're supposed to accept the accuracy of a story transmitted orally for close to half a millennium with no written support whatsoever?This book is highly readable, even fascinating -- I breezed through it. But believable? Come on....

[pjskimin · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was not what I expected. I thought it would focus on archeological evidence as a support for the existence of Troy. Instead the author asks us to imagine what a real battle at Troy would have been like. He does this by comparing events in The Iliad with practices and events from other bronze age sources. It certainly provokes some interesting thoughts and is presented well. I found it to be most intriguing during the sections when the actual archeological evidence is being discussed. I only wish there had been more of an in-depth look at the physical evidence. Overall a good read and the author does a good job of describing what an actual bronze age battle at Troy would have looked like.

[hmessing_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

An interesting commentary on the Iliad, but not one that focuses on the text itself, but rather compares the story to what we now of Bronze Age Greece. A lot of discussion is devoted to the question of the historicity of the tale. It's a very light read, without much substance...but I don't think it really sheds much light on the subject.

[beezie_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Accessible, if a bit light. This is the perfect airport companion. 

[clifsven · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I found this book to be tedious. As far as I could tell there was no new "history" at all, merely a great deal of speculation on the author's part. And with very little to back up his opinion. He left a great deal of the social aspects of this story out - specifically those he obviously does not agree with. Merely dismissing any possible sexual relationship between the heroes with less than a half of a sentence does not qualify as scholarship.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Barry Strauss' account of the Bronze Age history of the Trojan war is delineated in The Trojan War: A New History. He writes a narrative drawing on recent archaeological data that he uses to explain the events at Troy more than 3,000 years ago based on current evidence. Ever since Heinrich Schliemann discovered the "gold of Troy" archaeologists and historians have been expanding our knowledge of this era at the beginning of Western history.This book puts the events of the age into perspective with insight on the relations between Troy and the Hittite Empire of Anatolia and its impact on the battles between the Achaean's, as the Greeks were known then, and the Trojans. He comments on the story as found in Homer's Iliad, pointing out those aspects of the epic poem that have some basis in that can be connected with the archaeological data. I found the book to be a useful adjunct to my current rereading of Homer's Iliad and would recommend it to anyone interested in ancient history.