In Barry Strauss’ The Trojan War: A New History, Strauss takes the subject of the Trojan War—a subject that has written about and exhausted to death—and puts his own spin on the war. Strauss provides different interpretations about the war, while also providing his own arguments on the matter. What Strauss tries to do with his book is write a new history about the Trojan War, where he wants to draw in scholars and readers who enjoy the subject. I believe Strauss’ main point in his book—that differentiates it from all the rest of the books and articles that cover the Trojan War—to be the fact that he believes that Helen was the whole point behind the war itself.
For Strauss, Helen was not just a cog in the wheel that allowed the war machine to get a move on over political tension—Helen was the wheel herself, what allowed the war machine to even move at all. In the opening of Strauss’ book he says that, “The Bronze Age was an era that preferred to put things in personal terms rather than in political abstractions” (17). This is a huge contrast to debates that would happen today regarding war where “justice, security, or any of the other issues that would be part of a war debate today,” are instead redirected to focus on “family and friendship, crime and punishment” by the Trojan War participants (17). Saying these things is how Strauss progresses his argument in his book.
Being a historian, Strauss recognizes the fact that his job is to bring back to life recorded facts with his own artistic retouches, in an effort to explain his viewpoint and make the information more digestible. A historian has to be able to engage people he talks to, or people who read his work, in terms of the story of the history on hand. I believe Strauss’ first chapter in his book to accomplish this task, as it was a chapter that grabbed my attention making me want to keep reading. Despite this feeling, I also feel that in the initial pages of the book Strauss might have taken too much creative liberty in his work.
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My concern with Strauss’ book from the initial pages is prevalent all the way to the conclusion—this being that from chapter to chapter one has to be able to discern where historical fact ends and where Strauss begins to take creative liberty. Right in the first paragraph of the book, Strauss introduces the audience to Helen; a person I believe the main character of his book, and who the war revolves around upon. “Helen is dressed,’ says Strauss, “in a flowing, woolen gown… in black, taupe, and crimson stripes… The…sleeves leave exposed the pearl skin of her lower arms….” (13). Strauss makes Helen out to be such an astounding figure where he imagines the way her hair is done, noting the “oil of iris and carnation” that make up her “delicate perfume,” even going as far to say that, “Love runs after her like puppies” (13). Such picturesque and seductive details are used to describe Helen—making it easy for me to generate a mental image of her.
While all these explicit and vivid details serve to make Strauss’ book more captivating and easier to read, I do find myself asking which facts are and are not true. How can someone like Strauss really know what Helen looked like? Strauss writes as if he knew Helen personally, as if here were next to Helen to know every detail about her physical appearance. I can see that Strauss has a way with words that lends credence to his great writing style—making what he says believable. Despite this, I still find myself having to sift through what is fiction and nonfiction.
It is interesting to note that while Strauss’ depiction of Helen is said with certainty, his depiction of others characters within the story tends to be more iffy. For example, on page 14 Strauss says that “Paris and Menelaus are probably each wearing a linen tunic.” Upon first glance this sentence blends in with his other depiction of characters, but upon closer inspection the word “probably” makes it seem to me as if the scene Strauss is describing is different from the one he envisions. Strauss also uses other similar words to “probably” when talking about characters other than Helen, making him no longer seem like a fly on the wall that knows everything about who he is depicting—contrasted by his describing of Helen.
When describing Helen, Strauss uses Homer as his number one source—helping to blur the line between fiction and nonfiction. It then becomes a bit harder to question what is true and what is not with Strauss’ illustrations: “…Helen was passionate, intelligent, and manipulative,” says Strauss in a summary of Homer’s exposition of Helen. Straus continues on with saying that, “Helen was nobody’s plaything and although she was young… she was not without experience,” all of this said on page 16. The way that Strauss paints a picture about Helen makes it seem as if the man writes for a website like TMZ (gossiping) as opposed to being a factual historian. Still though, Strauss is just like any of us when it comes to what Homer says—it is best to take a lot of what Homer says with a grain of salt—especially after reading Strauss’ belief that Homer made the Trojan War out to be nothing more than “a case of wife-stealing” (17). Strauss does manage to reaffirm his and Homer’s clout by saying that, “…Homer is not mistaken but merely authentic” (17).
This is where I go back into reiterating the point Strauss had made about the Trojan War really being a blood feud, rather than a feud caused from strife due to a political affair. Just as the title of Strauss book says “new” in it, Strauss plan was to defend his new interpretation of this aspect belonging to the Trojan War. Strauss managed to brush aside the scepticism I had of Homer’s story of the Trojan War by creating his own case in masterfully defending his explanation as to why the Trojan War happened by reimagining what Homer had written down about the war. Strauss is nothing short of captivating with the way he drew me into continuing on reading his book by making history a visual, vivid, and active scene as opposed to a dry and barren recitation of dates, people, places, and things.
Even with all of this creative liberty taken—Strauss does find facts to insert into his work in order to help provide evidence and validate his claims about the motives behind the Trojan War. Strauss frequently makes call backs to the discovery of archeologists, to the point that many times in his book he professes that “Archaeology confirms Homer’s description” (105). For example, in one of Strauss’ many call backs to the discoveries of archeologists, he explains what he believes the meaning behind a “bronze disk… each side of which is incised with writing….” (22). Strauss goes into meticulous and methodical detail about the features of the bronze disk, while swiftly concluding that “In short, the seal testifies to a degree of freedom and equality for women” (23). Here is where I believe to there to be one of various examples where the evidence that Strauss attempts to collect is handed to us by him on a silver platter, and yet, I find the explanation of said evidence to be lacking. Not enough of a convincing argument has been made for me that is properly able to solidify the the significance of the correlation between the object and event. I myself feel the need to be fed with more facts and evidence from other sources that can help to further ascertain Homer’s and Strauss’ affirmations.
