The War At Troy

by Lindsay Clarke

  Quickly he turned away. Her ankles jerked and quivered for a time. Then they were still, and above the boom of the surf, and a momentary sagging of the wind, rose the low moan of an army looking as if for the first time on death.

  The Wrath of Achilles

  Point by point, the wind shifted. The fleet put to sea, and as the laden ships coasted along the straits of Euboea, every man aboard was gloomily aware that if the sacrifice of Iphigeneia had been the first death of the last phase of the war, there would soon be countless others.

  They found the garrison on Tenedos weakened and half-starved, but it had held out. With his bridgehead still secure, Agamemnon knew the time had now come to plan a final assault on Troy but after years of stalemate he was uncertain how to approach it. Even before the warlords had sailed from Aulis there had been unsettling disagreement on the matter and the argument revolved around the neutrality of the Dardanians.

  For some years Agamemnon had been persuaded by those who insisted that the decision of King Anchises to stay out of the war must work to the Argives’ advantage. As leaders of this party, Menelaus and Odysseus argued that the task of taking the city would be made far more difficult if the Dardanians were provoked into bringing their forces to its defence. Palamedes disagreed. The city would fall faster, he insisted, if Agamemnon opened a second front by attacking it from the south across the Dardanian lands. Achilles, Ajax and Diomedes tended to support this aggressive policy, while Nestor and Idomeneus hovered uncertainly between the two positions. But after the failure of his first frontal assault on Troy, Agamemnon was worried that a further ambitious move might precipitate disaster. So the debate had been carried by the more cautious counsellors and Agamemnon’s main effort had been concentrated on keeping the Trojans confined to the city while the Argives weakened their allies around them.

  But now the main force was back on Tenedos, the tenth year of the snake had begun, and the argument was renewed with increased urgency.

  Still Agamemnon vacillated. These days the Lion of Mycenae was like a man usurped by his own ghost, with only his stubborn will to drive him where once there had been ambition and fire. The truth was that the ghost of his daughter hung like a curse over his every thought. Yes, the wind had shifted with her death, and the fleet had sailed, but Agamemnon was left unnerved by guilt. And once Achilles had learned how his proud name had been used to lure Iphigeneia to her death in Aulis, his contempt for Agamemnon became an inveterate hatred. By the end of that terrible day Agamemnon knew that he had gained the undying hostility both of the wife on whom he had come to rely at home and of his army’s best-loved champion.

  Achilles had played almost no part in the councils of war since then, so Palamedes remained the main spokesman for an incursion on Dardanian lands. But Agamemnon had grown increasingly mistrustful of the Prince of Euboea. It had been Palamedes who had told the others about the sacrilegious death of the hart. It had been Palamedes who argued most obdurately for the sacrifice of Iphigeneia. It had been Palamedes who had thought up the means to bring her to Aulis. It was even Palamedes’ name that had been murmured most often, when the host thought of looking for another leader. Of all his generals, therefore, it was Palamedes whom Agamemnon most loathed and feared, and his was the counsel that the High King least wished to hear.

  One morning, after yet another inconclusive argument, Palamedes left the king’s tent angry and frustrated, and sought out Achilles to complain about Agamemnon’s dithering. Already frustrated and bored with inaction, Achilles called Patroclus and Phoenix into a brief council of his own, then ordered his Myrmidons to board ship. They crossed the strait to the mainland where they beached the ships under guard and advanced into the mountain pastures of the Dardanians. By the end of the day they had cut down the herdsmen, driven off a large herd of cattle, and stormed the royal settlement of Lyrnessus.

  Taken by surprise, Aeneas tried to mount a force to repel the invaders, but his warriors were no match for the battle-hardened Myrmidons. The Dardanians were quickly routed, Aeneas and Anchises were lucky to escape with their lives, Lyrnessus was left in flames, and Achilles’ storm-troopers returned in triumph to Tenedos with the cattle, women and other booty they had taken.

  When Achilles presented himself before Agamemnon’s tent to bring the High King his rightful share of the spoils, the common soldiers were already cheering their champion as though he had won a major victory. Agamemnon was left with no choice but to congratulate the insolent young hero on his success and grant him his wish to keep for himself a beautiful young woman called Briseis whom he had taken captive.

  Only subsequently, in conversation with Odysseus, did the High King admit that the unlicensed raid had given fresh impetus to the war. The Dardanians would fight alongside the Trojans now, but the road to Troy could be cut open across their lands.

  Within days Agamemnon launched a major assault. He posted his archers and slingers to keep the enemy at bay while his main force landed, and throughout the day there was some fierce fighting, but by dusk the Argive ships were safely beached in three rows along the shore of the bay. Fresh troops were brought up to guard them, and on the next day a stockade was raised for their defence.

  As he watched his army pitch camp, Agamemnon thought to himself that things had gone well -- better than he had feared, for he seemed ever more dogged by a truculent pessimism with every fresh decision he had to take. Palamedes and Achilles urged him to drive on at once towards Troy, but the landing had been costly and he was reluctant to push his luck. Also winter would be on them soon, so Agamemnon gave the order to dig in.

  With memories of blizzards etched into their skins, the Argive soldiers hunkered down for a further test of their endurance. Troy, the city they had come to take, was now under siege.

  If it was not the harshest winter they had endured, the snow-laden wind driving across the Trojan plain was bitter enough to leave the Argives feeling envious and resentful whenever they looked on the tiled roofs of the beleaguered city. The walls themselves seemed unassailable, and it was clear to everyone that the next act of the war must be played out on the open ground of the Scamander plain between the city and the ships, where stood the great barrow-mound of Priam’s grandfather King Ilus. Either the Argives would overwhelm the Trojans there and besiege the city, or they would be driven back on their ships and see their fleet burned. That catastrophe must be prevented at all costs, so the men were set to work digging a defensive ditch around the camp, and fortifying its mound with a stronger palisade. It was guarded by wooden towers and furnished with gates through which the chariots would advance to battle.

  Inside that perimeter an improvised city of huts and tents grew up, where archers practised at the butts and foot-soldiers were put through their battle-drill. But as the winter hardened and the wind bore down on them, stinging their faces with rain, hail and snow, and chilling their bones to the marrow, men brooded on old feuds and grudges. Quarrels and fights were frequent around the camp-fires and some of them ended in death. Nor was there much warmth among the leadership, which was held together only by a common -- if sullen and obstinate -- sense of purpose.

  Agamemnon and Menelaus kept close company together, often morose and frequently drunk. Sometimes they dined more cheerfully with their old friends, Nestor, Odysseus, Ajax and Diomedes, but Idomeneus was happier among his fellow Cretans. Achilles, meanwhile, kept himself apart with Patroclus and his Myrmidon comrades, and during those harsh winter nights he became ever more tenderly attached to his beautiful young captive Briseis. She was the first woman to whom he had made love in all the long years since he had left Skyros, and though she had been afraid of him at first, the Dardanian girl eventually responded to his shy, surprisingly gentle approaches. Only when he was sure that he had her consent did Achilles take her to his bed, and soon they began to feel safe in each other’s arms. Even Patroclus, who was no stranger to his friend’s capacity for love, was surprised by the tender way he made a lover of his captive. Indeed
, he was relieved to see how the too often embattled spirit of Achilles took comfort as well as pleasure from her increasingly affectionate embrace.

  In these circumstances, Palamedes found himself ever more isolated. Though each preserved a malevolent respect for the others intelligence, he and Odysseus had detested each other for a long time. At many difficult council meetings, their colleagues had looked on with bewildered awe as the two men clashed intellects with the same animus that most men reserved for less subtle weaponry. Only rarely did it seem they might come to blows, but that point was reached around midwinter when the supplies of corn in the camp ran short, and Odysseus’ ships returned empty after a failed foraging expedition along the coast of Thrace. Morale was already low, and it took a steep plunge when he reported that the harvest had been poor and the Thracian granaries had yielded nothing.

  ‘Either that,’ Palamedes sneered, ‘or this is another example of Odysseus’ lack of enthusiasm for the war. Perhaps he would rather be at home, filling his belly and pleasuring his wife, than fulfilling his duties here?’

  Had Odysseus been wearing a sword at that moment he would have run the man through. As it was, he leapt across the ground, closed his hands round the Euboean’s throat and would have strangled him there and then if Diomedes and Ajax had not managed to break his grip and pull him away. Agamemnon was shouting at both men to get control of themselves, while the others looked on in dismay.

  ‘If you think there’s corn to be found,’ Odysseus shouted, ‘I defy you to go and get it. Otherwise keep your weasel mouth shut in the presence of better men.’

  ‘Somebody is going to have to find it,’ said Agamemnon, pulling his cloak closer about him, ‘or we shall soon be starved out. Palamedes, I suggest you take up his challenge.’

  Palamedes stalked out of the council tent, fingering his throat.

  Before putting to sea, he went to pray at the temple of Apollo in Thymbra, a sacred site outside Troy which was recognized as neutral ground and where those seeking to worship the god from either side of the lines could enter without harassment. This was not the first time Palamedes had gone there and his devotions seemed to have found favour, for three days later his ships returned to the camp, low in the water with the weight of grain they carried.

  Once again, as the hungry soldiers set to work, grinding the wheat and lighting their ovens, Palamedes was a name that commanded popular acclaim. But Odysseus was left suspicious that the Euboean should have succeeded so easily where he had failed. He decided to share his suspicions with the king.

  What happened after that remains, I concede, a doubtful affair. The facts, such as I have been able to garner them, were as follows. Some time after Palamedes had returned with the grain, a Trojan spy was found outside the camp with an arrow through his heart. A brisk search of the body turned up a note in his wallet signed by King Priam, agreeing to the price demanded by Palamedes for betraying the Greek camp. A time was appointed for payment at the temple of Apollo.

  Palamedes was immediately arrested and brought before the council. When he heard the charge against him, he furiously denied it and claimed that he was the victim of a foul calumny.

  Odysseus calmly suggested that the matter could easily be settled one way or the other. Let the king send a trusted man to the temple of Apollo of Thymbra, claiming to be there at the behest of Palamedes. If he returned laden with Trojan treasure the case would be proven.

  And that, despite Palamedes’ outraged insistence on his innocence, was what transpired. The bags full of Trojan coinage were displayed before the troops. Publicly denounced as a traitor, Palamedes was stoned to death by the whole army. But his last words left many of them convinced that Agamemnon and Odysseus had indeed colluded against him. ‘Truth, I mourn for you,’ he cried in the moments before the stones were cast, ‘for you have predeceased me.’

  Odysseus would never speak of the matter except in cursory and dismissive terms. The Prince of Euboea was a traitor, he declared, and met a traitor’s end. And that, on the surface at least, appears to have been the case. But King Nauplius of Euboea, the grieving father of Palamedes, would never believe it, and he found a devious way of taking his revenge on those whom he was convinced had traduced his son. He visited their wives and told them that their husbands intended to replace them with their favourite concubines on their return.

  If truth is, as men say, the first casualty of war, one thing remains beyond all doubt however: the war at Troy may have been a bloody feast of masculine violence, but again and again the quarrels broke out over an abducted woman. In violent times the scale of a king’s standing is ratified not merely by his wealth and power but also by the quality of the women he rapes. Thus Hesione is abducted by Telamon, and the long quarrel between Troy and Argos begins. Clytaemnestra is wrenched from her beloved husband Tantalus, and Mycenae gains a calculating queen. Helen is carried off first by Theseus, then by Paris, and the world goes to war. During the course of that war, Briseis is plundered from her home by Achilles, and then -- as if to demonstrate that he too is still a formidable male animal -- Agamemnon launches a raid on the small settlement of Thebe and takes captive Chryseis, the daughter of Apollo’s priest in that town. And it was the seizing of this girl that led to a quarrel which eventually threatened disaster on the whole Argive host.

  The quarrel began when Chryses, the father of the abducted girl presented himself at the gate of the Argive camp bearing the sacred chaplet of a priest of Apollo and carrying his golden staff. The dignified old man was admitted to the assembly ground under divine protection and made an eloquent plea before Agamemnon that, out of due reverence for the divine will of Apollo, the High King should allow him to ransom his daughter.

  The priest’s appeal was so moving, and the ransom he offered so generous, that the general feeling in the assembly was that his wishes should be respected. But Agamemnon had been drinking heavily for days and a thick head had left him in a truculent mood. He told Chryses bluntly that Chryseis was the captive of his spear, won fairly in battle. He claimed to have taken to the girl and, far from letting her go, he had every intention of carrying her home to Mycenae and settling her among his palace women. ‘So be off with you, old man,’ he growled, ‘and stay clear of my camp. If you bother me again you’ll find that your staff and chaplet give you scant protection.’

  Chryses looked up into the High King’s sullen face and saw that there could be no reasoning with him. Conceding nothing in dignity, he nodded, drew in his breath and walked out among the silent soldiery without a word.

  Within days pestilence struck the camp. It began among the dogs and mules first, but soon spread among the men from tent to tent. As more and more men fell sick and died, and the mingled smells of putrefaction and burning flesh drifted across the camp by both day and night, the morale of the army began to fail.

  On the tenth day of the plague, Achilles exercised his right to demand an assembly. Standing before the host with the sacred sceptre in his hand, he argued that Sminthian Apollo, the bringer of pestilence, must have been offended by a broken vow or by some failure to observe his rites. He insisted that omens should be taken to see what could be done to placate the angry god before the Argive host was so depleted by sickness that it would be forced to give up the war and sail home.

  A murmur of assent rose from the gathering. Calchas stepped forward, saying that he had already taken the omens but was prepared to divulge his findings only if Achilles solemnly vowed to protect him from the anger they might arouse. When Achilles swore that the soothsayer need have no fear of retribution, Calchas declared that there was no question of broken vows or neglected rites. The wrath of Apollo was the direct result of Agamemnon’s refusal to allow the Trojan priest to ransom his daughter. Chryses had invoked the aid of the god in his cause. The god had listened. The pestilence would not be lifted until Chryseis was returned to her father without payment of any ransom.

  Immediately Agamemnon leapt to his feet, his eyes red with menace
as he scented collusion against him. He turned his fury on Calchas first. ‘Every time you open your mouth you bring some evil down on my head. Can’t you ever prophesy good fortune for me? I’ve come to rue the day that brought you to my side.’ He would have raged on but he raised his eyes from the priest’s face in that moment and saw the gathered host glowering at him. ‘If I refused a ransom for that girl,’ he shouted, ‘it wasn’t to defy the god but because I’ve grown fond of her. That’s why I want to keep her. It would grieve my heart to let her go.’

  The wind gusting across the plain caught his words and scattered them. In not one of the hundreds of faces around him could he find any sign of sympathy. He was left feeling like a drunkard grumbling in the street.

  ‘But when a god is against a man what can he do?’ he shouted into the wind. ‘If releasing her is the only way to end this pestilence, then of course she must go. She’ll be returned to her father at once. And I’ll forgo the ransom.’

  He took in the grim nodding of heads. He had given them what they wanted because fate had left him with no option, and he hated them all for it. Why was it that every way he turned, it seemed he must be the loser? And how many such defeats could his leadership sustain? There must be some way of turning this thing round, of emerging from it with a degree of self- respect. Then his eyes fell on Achilles and he saw the contempt in that insolent young face.

  The host was shifting and about to disperse when Agamemnon spoke again.

  ‘But it can’t be right that your leader has to give up his prize when lesser men are allowed to keep theirs. If I’m going to surrender Chryseis on behalf of you all, then I should be given some other woman in compensation for my loss.’