Trojan Dialogues: The Memoirs of Diomedes

By Lenny Cavallaro

TROJAN DIALOGUES presents a very unusual rendition of the Tale of Troy, as seen through the eyes of the Greek hero, Diomedes. The novel reconciles the different accounts conveyed in Homer's immortal ILIAD and other classical epics with the latest archaeological evidence. The author presents a somewhat more plausible interpretation of what may, indeed, have been historical events, along with highly imaginative explanations of the thousand ships, Greeks bearing gifts, Helen's elopement with Paris, Akhilles, sexual preferences, and--of course--the Trojan horse. We shall never know precisely what, if anything, transpired on the shores of Asia Minor during the Late Bronze Age, but TROJAN DIALOGUES brings us much closer to a realistic, though still highly romanticized, picture than any version of the tale yet composed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lenny Cavallaro
• Release date: Jun 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223560173

Lenny Cavallaro

Lenny Cavallaro is an accomplished musician, composer, and author. He earned his B.A. at the University of Connecticut and later earned his Doctor of Musical Arts (D.M.A.) degree from West Virginia University. He has served on the English and/or music faculties of several colleges in New England. A hapless woodpusher, he has nevertheless written about chess on numerous occasions and co-authored Superstition and Sabotage with Viktor Korchnoi. This is his first book for Russell Enterprises.

Book preview

DEDICATION:

To my daughter, Maya, and son, Jacob, with love.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

I should like to express my profound appreciation to those who have helped me complete this novel.  I must begin with my agent, Kenneth Atchity, who encouraged me in this venture and contributed the Foreword of the finished text.  The anonymous staff at several institutions—the Boston Public Library, Brandeis University Library, and Harvard University Library—granted me access to their stacks and assisted me with my research.  Finally, I must thank my family and friends, for permitting me to ramble endlessly about the Trojan War over the course of many years...

CONTENTS/ARGUMENTS

Foreword:  Fragments of correspondence, buried beneath Mt. Vesuvius, allude to a Paestum Iliad, which has given rise to this novel.

Author's Preface:  Different versions of the myths, historical validity, and attempts at realism.

Dramatis Personae:  Greeks (Akhaeans), Trojans, and Immortals who appear in this account.

Prologue:  How the tale of Troy was sung at the court of King Erymanthus.  That sovereign's reaction to the verse and the revelation of his true identity.

Book One  —  I Join Agamemnon:  How Palamedes visited Diomedes and convinced him to join Agamemnon before the 8th year of the raids.  Diomedes and Akhilles as children.  Agamemnon's plan to invade Egypt.

Book Two  —  From Aulis To Empire:  More on Agamemnon's great expedition.  The influence of Phineus.  The gathering of the generals.  The friendship between Diomedes and Akhilles.

Book Three  —  My Friendship With Odysseus; A Conversation With Helen; The Sacrifice Of Iphigenia:  The friendship between Diomedes and Odysseus.  The latter's antagonism towards Palamedes and Phineus.  A conversation between Diomedes and his cousin, Helen.  The oaths to Menelaus.  The delays in departure.  Child-sacrifice.

Book Four  —  Rout In Egypt; Disaster At Teuthrania; The Escape Of Helen; Our First Battle With The Trojans:  Late arrival in Egypt and its consequences.  The destruction of Antilochus' army.  How Agamemnon was lured into battle against Telepus, King of Mysia, and his Trojan allies.  How Diomedes rescued Akhilles from Hector.  Helen's unhappy marriage to Menelaus, and how she fled from him.

Book Five  —  We Steer For Troy:  How Palamedes exerted power.  How the Akhaeans decided to send a delegation to Troy.

Book Six  —  Negotiations; Disillusionment At Sea:  How Akhilles, Diomedes, and Odysseus were received at Troy.  The myth of Hephaestopolis.  How Palamedes disposed of Phineus.  The decision to invade Troy.

Book Seven  —  Of Madmen And Philosophers:  Winter preparations at Tenedos.  The second embassy to Troy.  Agamemnon's madness and blunders.  The strange philosophy of Odysseus.  How bards joined the army.

Book Eight  —  The Trojans Prepare For War; We Secure A Landing; Our First Battle On The Plains:  Trojan preparations and reinforcements.  Agamemnon's inept handling of the war.  The genius of Hector.  The first battle and its inauspicious results.

Book Nine  —  We Gain The Lower City; Palamedes' Final Coup; The Triumph And Spoils Of Akhilles:  Stalemate and marching games.  The third embassy to Troy.  Helen's pregnancy.  Another battle on the plains.  How Palamedes took control of the army from Agamemnon.  How Odysseus dealt with Palamedes.  The battle in the south, and how Akhilles slew Kyknus.  Of subsequent raids, and how Akhilles took Chryseis. 

Book Ten  —  Of The Quarrel Between Akhilles And Agamemnon:  Further stalemate on the fields.  The jealousy of Patroklus.  The curse of Chryses, and the subsequent plague.  How Akhilles was forced to surrender Chryseis.  How he refused to fight further and plotted treason.

Book Eleven  —  Major Battles On The Plain; The Truces; We Send For Reinforcements; The Birth Of Astyanax:  More bloodshed.  The continuing madness of Agamemnon.  How Hector sought to end the war quickly.  How Menelaus challenged Paris.  The birth of Hector's son.

Book Twelve  —  The Arrival Of Reinforcements; How Menelaus And Paris Fought; The Birth and Naming Ceremonies Of Helen's Twins:  The duel between Helen's two husbands, and how it was interrupted.  Of Helen's twin sons, and how they were named.

Book Thirteen  —  The Resumption Of Battle; My Own Great Deeds:  How a drunken Menelaus reignited the war.  How Diomedes led the Akhaeans to their first victory, slaying Pandarus, wounding Aeneas, and driving off a giant later said to have been Ares, God of War.  How Diomedes and Glaucus exchanged gifts and fought no more.

Book Fourteen  —  Negotiations; The Conflict Renewed; The Fight Between Ajax And Hector:  How the Trojan embassy came to the Greek camp, and how Agamemnon dealt with them.  Resumption of stalling tactics.  How Agamemnon sacked the lower city.  How Hector and Ajax fought.

Book Fifteen  —  The Trojans Prevail; An Embassy To Akhilles; Night Raids:  How the Trojans gained the advantage yet again.  Efforts to make peace with Akhilles.  Akhilles' passions and madness.  How Diomedes and Odysseus slew King Rhesus and captured his horses.

Book Sixteen  —  The Trojans Attack; I Injure Hector; The Tide Turns Against Us; The Death Of Patroklus:  How Agamemnon blundered yet again.  How first Diomedes, and later Ajax injured Hector.  The wounding of Diomedes and other generals.  How the Trojans surged towards the Akhaean camp, but were driven back by Patroklus.  How Hector slew Patroklus.  The grief and madness of Akhilles.

Book Seventeen  —  Trojan Strategy; The Injuries Of Hector; Our Strategy; The Vengeance Of Akhilles:  How Ajax devised a strategy to defeat the Trojans.  How Akhilles slew the wounded Hector.  Akhilles' great cruelty thereafter.

Book Eighteen  —  The Truce; Funeral Games For Patroklus; How Akhilles Surrendered Hector's Body:  Akhilles' monstrous conduct.  How Agamemnon and Akhilles deserted the sea.  More human sacrifice, and another marriage proposal. 

Book Nineteen  —  We Battle Egyptians And Amazons; The Will And Death Of Akhilles:  The first effort at siege.  How the Egyptians, under Memnon, burned Akhaean ships and joined the Amazons in relief of Troy.  How Diomedes drew up the strategy for the conclusive victory.  Akhilles' greatest triumphs, his conquests of Memnon and Penthesilea, his death and last will.

Book Twenty  —  Akhilles' Legacy; The Death Of Ajax; Our Assault Upon The Walls; The Death Of Paris:  The quarrel between Odysseus and Diomedes.  How Ajax, Neoptolemus and Odysseus quarreled over Akhilles' armor and command.  How Odysseus prevailed.  The suicide of Ajax, son of Telamon.  The assault upon the walls and its consequences.  The death of Paris.

Book Twenty-One  —  The Embassy From Helen; The Defection Of Helenus; Winter Plans; A Visit From Akhilles:  How the Trojans sought terms of surrender, and what came of them.  How Helenus defected from Troy.  How the siege continued through the winter.  The loneliness of Diomedes, and his discussion with the ghost of Akhilles.

Book Twenty-Two  —  The Sack Of Troy:  How Odysseus and Diomedes were reconciled.  The former's ingenious schemes.  How Epeius, Sinon, and Thersites helped Odysseus.  How the Trojan allies betrayed the city.  The bestial conduct of the triumphant invaders.  How Diomedes wounded Neoptolemus, freed Andromache, and released the horses of Akhilles.

Book Twenty-Three  —  Return To Tiryns; Cruel Vengeance; Exile:  The extraordinary cruelty and depravity of Aegiale.  How Diomedes survived prison and escaped.  The fall of Mycenae and Pylos.  How Diomedes led a ship to the west.

Book Twenty-four  —  King Daunus Of Apulia; My Last Battle; Ariadne And The Two-Headed God:  How Diomedes came to serve Daunus, King of Apulia.  His attraction to Ariadne.  The cult of Janus.  Diomedes' final battle; marriage to Ariadne.  Afterwards.

Notes

Foreword

In several books of Homer’s Iliad, especially Books V and VI, the hero, Diomedes, seems to usurp the epic’s primary focus on Akhilles and Hector.  He is fearless, protected by Athene herself, and succeeds in wounding Aphrodite and Ares.  Homeric separatists, who believe the Homeric epics were stitched together by various hands from various sources, have pointed to these books as suspicious—and as evidence that in other sources Diomedes was the primary Greek hero at the fall of Troy.  In Vieste, on the eastern Italian central coast, Diomedes has long been worshipped as a founding hero, and as a progenitor of the modern Italian peoples.

Trojan Dialogues:  The Memoirs of Diomedes is an epic in prose, reconstructed from fragments of correspondence discovered in the ruins of Herculaneum by Giuseppi Rizzardi, Professor Emeritus of the Universita di Marigliano.  Professor Rizzardi translated the fragments from the Latin into Italian.  Subsequently, Luigi Degani translated them into English.

In a beautiful twist of irony, Professor Rizzardi’s archaeological find unearthed evidence of the exciting and provocative discovery by a first-century Roman bearing the illustrious name Tiberius Fabius—about whom, unfortunately, we know next to nothing.  Tiberius, presumably a scholar of some note, had apparently, through nefarious means, acquired a Greek manuscript from Paestum—it had been found somewhere near the Temple of Athene-Minerva.  This text, though quite disappointing in its literary quality (according to the two Roman correspondents), presented a fascinating rendition of the Trojan War from the viewpoint of Diomedes.

Tiberius Fabius intended to publish the Greek text in translation, feeling his Latin poetry would surely improve upon the original.  Before releasing his opus, however, he sought the critical views of his good friend and mentor, Gnaius Calpernicus, of Pompeii.

Calpernicus generously provided Tiberius with line by line commentary, from the remains of which we can more or less surmise the content of the lost Greek epic, despite considerable damage to some of the scrolls and the likelihood of additional, as yet undiscovered, correspondence between the two Romans.

A chronological reference on one of the scrolls foretells the outcome of this literary venture.  Calpernicus alluded to the death of Vespasian and the ascension of Titus.  (In fact, Calpernicus, whose views were clearly echoed by other Romans, could not desist from some nasty comments about Titus’ mistress, of whom he hoped to have heard the last!)  History records that Mount Vesuvius erupted some sixty-two days into the reign of Titus on August 24, 79 AD.

Because of the eruption, the fates of the original Greek poetry, the Latin translation by Tiberius Fabius of Herculaneum, and the copies of both texts sent to Gnaius Calpernicus of Pompeii were sealed—literally, by volcanic ash, lava, and mud.  Certainly, the discovery of any of these will be welcomed with immense enthusiasm.

What, then, did this Greek text, this Paestum Iliad, actually convey?  Evidently, it offered a rendition of the Trojan War quite different from any yet told.  Certain details, about which Gnaius Calpernicus conveyed his opinions—and not always kindly—are outlined below.  These have given rise to the prose text created by Lenny Cavallaro.

• For seven years, the Mycenaean king of kings, Agamemnon, and a small band of his followers had gone off on raids each spring after planting and returned each autumn before harvest.  On the eighth year, Diomedes joined them, at the behest of Palamedes. 

• A priest of Apollo foresaw a great victory for Agamemnon—one that would make him and his followers famous for all time. 

• Diomedes, whose kingdom had been beset with civil war, had been unable to participate in earlier raids.  Now, he eagerly joined Agamemnon’s greatly augmented forces. 

• Helen, a distant relative of Diomedes, was brought along, in part because of a prophecy.

• The Myceneans’ main target was Egypt, not Troy.

• On the return home from its abortive excursion, the army was defeated at Teuthrania by combined Mysian and Trojan forces.  Just before the battle, Helen joined Prince Paris of Troy.

• The Myceneans sent an embassy to Troy; then decided to winter at Tenedos, rather than return home. 

• The war with Troy began on the ninth year of Agamemnon’s raids.  Toward the end of that campaign, Akhilles slew the injured Hector, but was killed himself by a poisoned arrow a short while later.  Palamedes had by this time been murdered by Odysseus, who ultimately assumed command of the army.

• The Trojan Horse referred to a figure sketched into the Skaen Gate, through which point treacherous mercenaries betrayed the city to Odysseus, enabling the Mycenaens to prevail early in the tenth year of Agamemnon’s campaigns.

• Diomedes, who had lost most of his men, returned to Tiryns with but two ships.  Upon arrival, he was imprisoned by his wife, who also slaughtered his concubine and children.  He escaped during an earthquake and fled to Italy with other Trojan War veterans.

• In the service of King Daunus of Apulia, Diomedes won a great victory and secured the hand of Princess Ariadne. 

• Twenty years later, the aging Diomedes heard a minstrel sing the Tale of Troy.  That performance prompted him to offer his own version, which, he admitted, people would not enjoy as much.

Dr. Cavallaro has added extensively to these sketchy details.  He has paid keen attention to the latest archaeological findings, and drawn liberally from many other versions of the story.  He alludes, in his Preface, to the Diomedia, an epic that may or may not have existed, but which featured Diomedes as the focal hero.  Obviously, the Diomedia is lost to us, as is the Paestum Iliad, for the time being at least.  In the absence of either of these texts, we must welcome Trojan Dialogues as a significant addition to accounts of the Trojan War, a revolutionary way of revisiting the conflict, and doubtless the most extensive treatment of the hero Diomedes currently accessible.

Kenneth Atchity, Ph.D.

Los Angeles, 1997

Author’s Preface

I have been hooked on Homer for many years, and no less fascinated by accounts of the Trojan War.  That epic conflict, whether partly historical or totally mythological, has captured the imagination of listeners and readers for well over two thousand, five hundred years.  Many versions of the story have come forth already, and more variations will doubtless evolve in the centuries ahead. 

Above and beyond great literature, the tale of Homer together with those of other bards and dramatists presumably conveys something we hesitantly call history.  It seems reasonable for us to believe that somewhat over three thousand years ago, a war was probably fought between Mycenean Greeks and Trojans.  Moreover, after more than a century of archaeological digs; after some staggering blunders, some remarkably insightful deductions, and a few changes of opinion, a consensus appears to be forming as to the location and dates of this conflict. 

A city of considerable wealth prospered at the very time that the Myceneans reached the apex of their power.  This community, unearthed beneath the mound at Hisarlik in Turkey, has been identified as Troy VI, the sixth phase of habitation at the site.  It now appears the most likely candidate to have been Homer’s Troy.  The citadel itself was only approximately two hundred yards by one hundred and forty in dimension.  Not more than a thousand people are likely to have lived there, although several times that number may have occupied the outlying plains.  The most popularly proposed date of the city’s destruction—around 1260 or 1250 BC—corresponds comfortably with a peak period for the aggressive, militaristic marauders from Mycenae, who doubtless went on many raids all over the Aegean at that time.

A great deal of evidence suggests an earthquake wrought substantial damage, if not outright devastation, upon Troy VI.  Nevertheless, there is also some indication of man-made damage as well.  Thus, we remain within the probable and permissible parameters of both myth and history.  As Michael Wood observes in his 1985 book, In Search of the Trojan War, Poseidon, the god of the sea—also called the earth-shaker, as god of earthquakes—was sometimes worshipped in the form of a horse.  Here, then, we may have the equine Trojan responsible for the sack of the city.  (Even as a child, I found it difficult to believe the Troy that endured ten years of siege so heroically could have fallen for such a simplistic ruse as a wooden horse with soldiers inside!)

This theory, which is so widely accepted today, has eclipsed and supplanted another likely candidate only within the past three decades.  Well into the 1970s, it was generally believed that the next city, Blegen’s Troy VIIa, was the prime choice.  The inhabitants of this ill-fated community obviously built from the rubble of Troy VI.  The relative absence of Mycenean pottery and other artifacts within this level suggests that this may have been a relatively poor city.  Far more dramatic is the apparent shantytown that took root within the citadel.  Tiny little dwellings, some scarcely a hundred and twenty square feet, huddled in the gangway between the great walls and the first of the interior terraces.  Most of the hovels were built directly onto the great wall itself, which served as a back for these buildings.  Add the presence of storage jars sunk into the ground; some evidence of what may have been a public bakery or—as Blegen envisioned it—a soup kitchen to the clear suggestions that the walls had suddenly been obliged to offer shelter to a much larger population than was originally intended; and  add, too, the irrefutable evidence of man-made destruction—fire, damaged skulls, an arrowhead in the street—and clearly this was a city destroyed after a siege.  Might this not have been the Homeric Troy—less prosperous than Homer describes, but clearly a city sacked?

While there are still some Troy VIIa adherents, many scholars were dissuaded by the presence of a few pieces of Mycenean pottery that appear to date from the 12th century—perhaps around 1180 BC.  Since much, though not all, of the Mycenean civilization had crumbled by that time, a major overseas military operation would have been quite unlikely.  In fact, Pylos, the kingdom of Nestor, had already been destroyed by 1200 BC, so we can scarcely expect that community to have taken any prominent role in the Trojan invasion whatsoever!  And thus, within the past three decades, a majority of scholars have once again accepted Troy VI—Troy of the earthquake that may well have occurred before, amidst, or even after a siege—as the most likely candidate.  Indeed, the novelist Marion Zimmer Bradley clearly indicates Troy VI in her recent work, The Firebrand.

I am not prepared to challenge the scholarship of archaeologists and historians far more accomplished and knowledgeable than I.  However, I have been utterly frustrated by the absence of shanties or, for that matter, any signs of siege in Troy VI.  The citadel by itself could not have resisted an invader for very long; there must have been an outlying community as well.  Archaeologists have found no evidence of secondary outer walls—nor do any of the epic poets suggest them—so we must assume that in a time of invasion, many townspeople would have sought safety within the citadel, and required some sort of temporary shelter.

No less intriguing are two other hints:  (i) The Egyptian Pharaoh, Merneptah, recorded an invasion by Libyans and numerous Sea Peoples—including some Aqaiwasha-people—around 1210 BC or so; and (ii) Odysseus, in the Odyssey, conjures details of a brief stop in Egypt, during which his soldiers perform some minor raiding before they are routed.  Both the bard and the pharaoh described the capture of invaders, who were put to labor (and/or, later drafted as mercenaries).  For decades, scholars have believed the Akhaean (Aqaiwasha?) Greeks were among the peoples from the sea.  Is it not possible—since Homer tells us of two nearly contemporary events—that the ill-fated Egyptian raids actually came before, not after, the sack of Troy?  If so, is it impossible that the few pieces of the later Mycenean pottery—far fewer than are found in the next level, Troy VIIb, which obviously did trade with the deteriorating Greek mainland—simply got there by some accident, geological or otherwise?  If these premises can be granted, perhaps we can place the destruction of Troy VIIa back very late in the 13th century, during what was certainly the last gasp of Mycenean greatness before the decay that left many communities in ashes, and others staggering through decline and eclipse in the 12th century. 

The choice of Troy VIIa, built above the ruins of what must have been an earthquake-ravaged metropolis, fits well with my thematic approach, which doubts the credibility of accounts of military action.  Almost all of the battle figures of that era seem to provide perversely inaccurate data, both numerical and descriptive.  Whether one reads Egyptian, Hittite, or other documents, the common factor is that triumphs are highly exaggerated.  The losing armies, it is claimed, leave behind thousands upon thousands of casualties, when in reality, nowhere near those numbers could ever have taken the field in the first place. 

In fact, Homer’s thousand ships (actually 1,186, if one counts them!) represent a force of more than forty-five thousand men—truly a prodigious output for a Mycenean alliance with very insecure northern borders, frequent civil strife, and a population base of at most perhaps four hundred fifty thousand.  My premise is that what later evolved as the epic poetry we know today began as the effort by societies in decline to recall, with both nostalgia and hyperbole, the exploits of an earlier era, all the while glorifying the concept of war itself.  What emerged was perhaps a late Bronze Age production of Rambo, complete to the detail that these heroes easily hurled stones four men of today could not possibly lift ... 

Precisely when these stories were first spawned is anyone’s guess, but such a tabulation as the "Catalogue of Ships" (Book II) was clearly constructed well before Homer’s day, possibly in the 11th Century BC.

The various literary works, probably drawing as well from yet more ancient myths and composed no earlier than the 8th Century BC, provide us with names, numbers, personalities, and—above all—a cause for the Trojan War.  From an artistic standpoint, we have been blessed with works that have delighted us for millennia.  Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey (if, in fact, attributable to the same Homer); the tragedies of Aeschylus and Euripides; medieval romances; and even 20th century drama all draw upon this heritage.

As historical evidence, alas, the Homeric tales are somewhat dubious, despite archaeological confirmation of certain key components.  In addition to the reservations about the size of the Mycenean army and the verisimilitude of the Trojan horse trick, one might even wonder how Menelaus would have welcomed Helen ten years and two husbands after their separation; or how Helen herself could have escaped the wrath of at least a fair number of Trojans prior to that time.

It is definitely not my intent to belittle the immortal epics.  On the contrary, it is precisely the greatness of these myths that so lends them to the re-creation of their stories.  Thanks to both the scrolls acquired by Tiberius Fabius and the correspondence unearthed by Dr Rizzardi, we are now free to seek a different, somewhat more plausible rendition.  I devoutly hope that what emerges will entertain the reader as much as his/her first prose translation of the Iliad, for this is the same great tale, though told differently.  Various notes at the conclusion of the book offer additional commentary on my version.  Here, I shall address certain historical and literary difficulties. 

Homer’s first epic deals primarily with the wrath of Akhilles, punctuated by only a handful of incidents in the same setting. The action is compressed into just seven of thirty days, beginning nine years after the start of hostilities and ending before the eventual sack of Ilium. The bard gives us some additional information in his Odyssey, though even with this we are left with huge gaps.

Hesiod makes some mention of the Trojan conflict as well; doubtless most of his commentary vanished over the centuries.  There is, moreover, The Epic Cycle, a set of lost works all roughly contemporary with Homer and Hesiod.  For knowledge of these, we are dependent upon the summary by Proclus in the 2nd Century AD, which was preserved by the Byzantine scholar, Photius, in the 9th Century.  These six tales are The Aethiopis and The Sack of Ilium, by Arktinus (8th Century BC); The Kypria, of Stasinus (same era); Nostoi, or "The Returns," of Hegias (likewise 8th Century BC); The Little Iliad, ascribed to Lesches (who probably lived a century later); and The Telegonia, ascribed to Eugammon (6th Century BC?).  Adding Homer to this list, we have a somewhat unwieldy number of sources, and readily spot numerous discrepancies within their texts.  We might then add to the above the account of Dictys of Crete, which was presumably written by a Greek veteran of the war.  Until recently, the only extant copy was in Latin, but a Greek manuscript fragment written on papyrus has been located; it apparently dates from the 1st Century AD, though it might in turn be a copy of a much earlier prose version.  Finally, there is the "Paestum Iliad," the Roman translation of the Greek scrolls by Tiberius Flavius.  Many of the key details of this narrative derive from that rendition. 

I still believe, however, that it is a non-existent, possibly only speculative epic that proves the most inspirational.  Scholars have long noted the focal attention given to Diomedes at the beginning of the tale (Books V and VI), even though he fades rather rapidly thereafter.  Diomedes is, in some ways, the noblest hero of them all, as he does not seem to suffer from the pride that leads both Hector and Akhilles to their fates.  Some have postulated that Homer himself may well have drawn upon an earlier text, which has been dubbed, The Diomedia—where the ship catalogue perhaps first appeared.  In fact, it is not too great a leap of faith to assume the text that prompted the correspondence between Tiberius Flavius and Gnaius Calpernicus may have been inspired by a Diomedia still preserved in oral tradition during the 5th or 6th Centuries BC!  Claiming kinship to this hypothetical epic and drawing upon details provided by the Latin writers, I have decided to offer a view of the conflict, seen through the eyes of Diomedes.  As an historical account, the resulting tale is one 21st Century readers can accept, I hope, with some ease. 

As for a legitimately valid cause of the war, my explanation is probably as good as any.  Let us take a brief look at certain other hypotheses, after first concluding—as does Herodotus himself—that the theft of Helen by Paris seems hopelessly far-fetched.

Some, citing Troy’s location, have suggested the Trojans may have exacted heavy tolls on trading vessels using the straits—an idea Bradley utilized in The Firebrand.  But it is uncertain  there was much trade at all between the Aegean and the Propontis, and Greek ships would not by then have attempted to reach the Black Sea.  Moreover, both geography and history raise some arguments against this notion.

In order to have been able to enforce any such toll on sea traffic, the Trojans would have required a powerful navy; clearly their great strength in horses would have given them little advantage in the waters of the Hellespont (today called the Dardanelles).  However, we see no evidence of Troy as a naval power comparable to other such cities of the time. 

It is not unlikely that at the time of the conflict there was a Bay of Troy, right at the entrance of the Hellespont.  With a mouth perhaps one and one-half miles wide, this would have opened to approximately three miles of shallow waters and provided a safe haven from the tricky winds and counter-currents of the straits.  Silt from the Scamander River has long since filled such a bay, so that what we call Troy is today over three miles south of the straits, and certainly lacks a bay or any similar geographical feature.  Given the location of Troy—scarcely one mile east from the end of the bay—it is at least conceivable that the city may have been a trading stop, where both sea-faring merchants and land caravans unloaded their wares and stocked up on foreign goods.  If this were the case, it would have been only natural that a state so situated should have realized some commission or profit from the transactions it hosted.  It is unlikely, too, that traders would have objected too strenuously in view of the services provided. 

Yet even here, we dwell with highly dubious conjecture.  There is certainly no proof that Troy engaged in any trade beyond the exchange of its own products for goods its citizens enjoyed.

Hittite mention of a campaign for influence in Asia Minor between Ahhijawa (our Akhaeans?) and the powerful Arzawans is also suggestive.  Some suspect that the historical Troy, perhaps allied to Arzawa, may simply have been a casualty, caught in the middle of this struggle for hegemony between greater powers.  While some Hittite sources refer to actual armed conflict between Arzawa and the Greeks, it probably occurred well south of Troy, and thus it is that William A McDonald therefore felt such documentation was at best far from conclusive (cf., Progress Into the Past:  The Rediscovery of Mycenean Civilization).   

A supplemental note:  from an historical perspective, Hittite archives do provide some of the most exciting, if as yet unreliable, evidence.  Hittite tablets have been found describing the following:  considerable correspondence between their kings and the great-kings of a power called Ahhijawa; some diplomatic exchanges involving a King Alaksandus of Wilusa; some uneasiness when the Great-King of Ahhijawa himself led an expedition into Anatolia (Asia Minor); a place in north-west Anatolia called Taru(u)isa; considerable disturbance over an attack on Wilusa—and other such familiar-sounding names and events. 

Alaksandus is quite close to Alexandros, the other name given to Paris; Wilusa suggests Wilios or perhaps Ilios, another name for Troy; Homer mentions Agamemnon’s retreat from Teuthrania; Taruisa and Troas (Troy) are not far apart linguistically—and neither, too, are the aforementioned Ahhijawa and our Akhaeans.  Perhaps a weakening Hittite Empire watched nervously as aggressive Akhaeans attacked an area loosely allied to Hatti and presumably within the Hittite sphere of diplomatic influence? 

Alas, these arguments are also very shaky.  There is absolutely no evidence in Homer, and almost none from artifacts, to suggest that Troy actually had anything to do with the Hittites, so Mycenean designs on Ilium could not have reflected a broader geopolitical conflict.

Unable to find any suitable cause for the war from any of the above, I now merely embellish upon history and Homer in a scheme concerning the egomaniacal madness of Agamemnon—and in proposing that Greek raiders, first repulsed at two sites (including the shameful retreat after battle with Telepus, King of Mysia) simply felt compelled to try another. 

As noted earlier, many places in the Aegean were surely destroyed by the Myceneans, and Thermi, a town in Lesbos, is known to have been sacked around 1250 BC—perhaps by Akhilles, although I shall leave him with far more modest conquests in this tale. 

As for the wealth of Troy, I am happiest with the explanations offered by Denys L Page (History and the Homeric Iliad).  Given the isolation of Troy (too far to the north-west for the Hittites), given the abundant food (the fertile plain and sea), and given a strong ruling house, Troy was blessed first and foremost with stability—a factor not to be undervalued.  The city most likely prospered on the trade of its horses—and also of its textiles and yarn spun from the wool its goats and sheep provided.  And, since Troy VI certainly bought many Mycenean products, it seems likely that Troy was a friendly trading partner, in no danger of an attack from Greece.  The plight of Troy VIIa may have been somewhat different, as we shall see.

And now let us return to the plot.  Could Mycenean Greece, given the limitations of its population and the additional factors cited above, have sent off an armada of more than eleven hundred ships and still left its own borders secure?  Quite unlikely.  Did gods and goddesses actively engage in the combat?  Those of us with 21st Century religious convictions will express skepticism.  Must we adhere rigidly to the Homeric version when the bard himself covers so little of the tale and deliberately neglects certain characters (for example, Palamedes)?  The answer is, no. 

On the literary front, we first note the steady shift of sympathies away from the heroic Greeks and towards the steadfast Trojans.  The medievalists seemed almost to vilify the Greeks—for but one example, Hector, is invariably slain through either treachery or ambush, even in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. 

In selecting my distortions of the plot, I began with the Herculaneum scrolls and thereafter drew liberally upon some of the details in Dictys.  For the sheer brutality of the war, I noted how, in the latter’s account, Polydorus, son of Priam, had fallen into Greek hands, and when the Trojans refused to capitulate, the vengeful invaders stoned the prince to death in front of the walls of Troy.  On the pathological vengeance of Akhilles, I observed first that Hector was slain in ambush; whereupon the later abuse to his body drew this terse understatement:  Akhilles was being driven to bestial acts.  Akhilles’ character is made less glorious by the expanded role of Ajax as well as by the diminished and tarnished triumphs over Hector, Penthesilea, and Memnon.  Of course, my own plot differs from many of the other details in Dictys, but there is certainly some overall thematic similarity. 

While I leave Hector with but one son, the ill-fated Astyanax (Dictys gives him another), I was intrigued by mention of the three children of Helen and Paris.  Given the barbarity of Menelaus, according to Dictys, one can but wonder how gently the Spartan king—whom I do not treat kindly—would have dealt with the fruits of his wife’s adultery. 

For example:  [Menelaus] tortured him [Deiphobus—Helen’s third husband, after the death of Paris] to death, brutally cutting him to pieces, lopping off ears and arms, and nose and so forth.

Dictys conveniently disposed of the children when the roof of their home collapsed, as does Bradley in her novel; I, however, choose a more deliberate sequence.  (The Herculaneum scrolls do not allude to these children—though some scrolls are badly damaged.)

The character of Odysseus has its ups and downs here as well.  Many have long wondered whether the same Homer who composed the Iliad also sang the Odyssey, for Odysseus is never quite the hero in the first work that he becomes in the second.  Dictys and others give him an active hand in the deaths of Palamedes and Ajax—a character stain echoed in this present novel as well.  On the other hand, the reinterpreted Trojan horse is in some ways an even greater credit to Odysseus’ imagination.

Finally, a note on chronology.  Dictys suggests the Greeks needed five years to equip the expedition, and that they didn’t actually reach Troy until the start of the sixth year.  He is not alone in mentioning truces, particularly during the winter, though I feel he is somewhat far adrift in presenting the Temple of Apollo as apparently neutral territory.  The idea of ten years of incessant warfare is a trifle difficult to fathom.  The sequence chronicled in the scrolls discovered in Paestum by Tiberius Flavius had the war begin in the ninth year of Agamemnon’s campaigns and conclude early in the tenth, and I have employed the same time-frame for this novel.

Dramatis Personae

Agamemnon—Lord of Mycenae, the most powerful Akhaean, (i. e., Greek) city.  Also considered the Great King of the Akhaeans, and the commander-in-chief of the invading forces.  Agamemnon and his brother, Menelaus, were the sons of Atreus.  Thus, throughout the novel, Agamemnon may be referred to as Lord