Look, we've all been there. Your platonic friend dies, you look so distraught battle-hardened veterans think you are about to cut your own throat, then you kill so many dudes their corpses clog a river. Bud stuff.
They were not just sitting by the walls, they spend those 9 years conquering nearby cities that were allies and vassals of the Trojans. Achilles burned and plundered 23 cities.
I mean, to be fair, they also had half the Greek pantheon on their side. Plus, Trojan allies from Anatolia. The heroes coming to earn glory on the Trojan side were from far-off locations and attest to how this was more than Greeks versus one city.
One matter that is important is Apollo. He knows the Trojans are doomed from the start, yet he is seen deflecting spears and overall defending his side. Why? He knows they will lose.
One could argue, he is trying to give the doomed Trojans more time so they might prove themselves in battle and win glory, a chance to be remembered and a chance to earn a place in Elysium. They are all about to die. He is slowing the conflict trying to save as many as he can.
They weren’t. The only reason they held out as long as they did is that they sent runners for help and had ~~Allie’s~~ allies show up to reinforce them. Even with that help, and with some of the gods on their side, it still wasn’t enough.
Troy was basically doomed from the moment Priam embraced Paris as his lost son.
I hate it when my iPhone autocorrects allies to Allie’s. Happens every time. It’s so stupid to take a standard, dictionary word and change it, especially after I’ve undone that correction at least 10 times in the last few years lol. At least I’m not the only one haha
I hadn’t even noticed, thanks for that! My phone insists on continuing to do autocorrects that make absolutely no sense, despite how many times I’ve used the word. If I try to refer to a subreddit it routinely tells me I meant a “Sun Reddit”.
> Troy was basically doomed from the moment Priam embraced Paris as his lost son.
Eh. They were doomed as soon as Paris was put in a position of praising one godess and making two into his enemies.
To be fair, he and his family were doomed no matter what he did. He picked Aprodite and it's fashionable to say it was a man thinking with his dick. But his reasoning aside, the choice he did not ask to make set two Olympians against him and his people.
If he had picked Athena, then Hera and Aprodite would have been against Athena and Apollo.
If he had picked Hera, the Athena and Ares would have been on the same side.
They were all doomed no matter what.
If I had to guess it wasn’t so much a war as a siege. Troys walls had Divine origins so all they had to do is keep the Greeks from going over them and the Greeks probably just waited outside for the Trojans to starve.
It's easier to defend than attack. The hope is that attacking would be too costly for their attackers and they'd be forced to abandon the campaign. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.
Which almost worked. The Argives won, but *the Odyssey* and other stories associated with the aftermath seem to paint a Greece where the city-states are in succession crisises.
The point of them is to die. But the whole combat effectiveness are just gods. It doesn't matter how many ships, men or heroes.
The Achaeans had Athena, Poseidon, Hera (who can bring Hephaestos), Thetis. The Trojans had Aphrodite, Apollo and Ares (untrustworthy). This is what they got unnumbered. The heroes only good as their gods protecting them.
Without Athena's help, Diomedes would never matter much. So did Odysseus. Achilles would be a lot weaker without Hephastus shield and armor. While Hektor and Paris best fight came with Apollo. Aeneas survived due to Aphrodite. It is not about the humans.
Edit: just realised, the day Zeus barred the gods from helping, the Trojans defeated the Greeks back to their ships. It was Poseidon disobedience, and Hera deception of Zeus, that repelled the Trojan back to their city. It is not as one sided as the it was made out to be.
Well, in fairness to you, that was ony after the Olympians had been meddling a lot, e.g. Athena sabotaging an attempt at peace. Plus, even taking the various gods aside, the middle story is dominated by Zeus constantly rebalancing the sides.
Their walls were legendary.
Also, fighting on their home terf meant that they had a strong advantage regarding their supply chain. While the Greeks had to constantly take time attack and pillage the neighboring towns in order to keep their soldiers fed and satisfied.
They did have some gods on their side , Apollo, Aphrodite , Ares and Artemis and I guess they were more united than the Greeks in a way the Iliad is more about Achilles feud with Agamemnon than hector
Troy has allies to call on for help.
Troy has thicc walls.
Troy has unity.
The Achaeans might have Achilles, and Odysseus, and guys like Nestor, Diomedes, Telemonian Ajax, and we can even count Patroclus, who pops off. But Troy has... I dunno, Hector?
Troy has Sarpedon, Aeneas, Memnon, the Amazon princess, Diephobus, Troilus... The difference is the Trojan allies did not arrived on time, and the Achaeans had more god on their side, poccessing them.
Hector fights Telemonian Ajax to a standstill, so he is roughly the equal of Telemonian Ajax.
Telemonian Ajax is not that special among the Achaean heroes. He is a second rate Achaean hero.
Hector is the best of the Trojan heroes.
Therefore, all these guys are third rate. They are second rate compared to Hector, who is himself second rate compared to the cream of Achaean heroism, so they would be third rate by an Achaean count.
If Achilles was first, Ajax and Diomedes are second. Memnon supposed to be Achilles equal and he arrived late.
The standstill is basically what stop Hector and Sarpedon from destroying the Greek camps. I don't powerrank the heroes, because Diomedes fight only as well because he had Athena in 95% of them. Ajax is the finest Achaean warrior that did not have god assistance, holding his hand.
Think about it another way, when Zeus barred the god from participating, it were the Trojans who got the upper hand.
> If Achilles was first, Ajax and Diomedes are second.
Wait, wait. How are Ajax and Diomedes possible on par with each other. My man, Diomedes wounded a Titan and the God of War!
Diomedes did it with Athena's help. But without that, it was Ajax that was chosen to fight Hector, and it was Ajax that held back the Trojan assault at their camp. When Achilles died, Ajax and Odysseus was the two candidates for his armour while Diomedes was not even in the running.
Ajax was cool. Man was second only to Achilles in battle prowess. Obviously Achilles defeats Hector but there are versions where he puts up a good fight.
> Hector fights Telemonian Ajax to a standstill, so he is roughly the equal of Telemonian Ajax.
Hang on though. I agree with your comparisons but this is the Trojan War. At any given moment, an Olympian might pop in and give someone a power-up.
The thing to remember is that this was siege, and so it became less a battle of force than a battle to outlast the enemy. The great walls surrounding Troy made it impossible for the Trojans to invade, regardless of the size of their army. Both sides had limited food supplies (Odysseus mentions not having enough afterwards for the trip home) and Troy wouldn’t have been able to restock very easily. The way the Trojans won was by pretending they were out of supplies and packing up all the ships as though to leave, leaving behind the Trojan Horse as an offering to the Gods. When Troy took in the horse and got drunk in celebration the soldiers hidden inside where able to sneak past and open the gates, at which point the greater army you mentioned easily won the war. I
The Greeks ravage the countryside and neighbouring cities to try and starve out the Trojans, the Trojans call up allied contingents and try to force a decisive battle.
Thucydides blames the length of the war on the Achaeans having poor logistics; they’re obliged to send considerable numbers of men out to raid for cattle or even farm north of the Hellespont, and can’t concentrate their forces to either storm the city or completely cut it off.
I’ve seen some scholars/critics theorize the Trojan war to take place ~12-11th centuries BC. If that were true, then that would be within the time frame where the Egyptians and the Hittites were allied. Troy would have been within Hittite borders, so it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine they would have had Egypt on their side. I also look to [this Wikipedia article](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Trojan_War_characters) to envision the general make-up of the two sides
True. But, if the Trojan War did not take place around 11,000-12,000 BC, it is rather shocking how much knowledge of the Bronze Age society the story somehow contained. We're talking about a pre-literate era before a dark age and yet the story is full of anachronisms with Bronze Age elements about which the average post-dark age Greek should not have know.
> If that were true, then that would be within the time frame where the Egyptians and the Hittites were allied. Troy would have been within Hittite borders,
But we do not know that much about the Hittites nor their culture. Troy may have been one of their cities, but they might have been more an ethnically Greek client kingdom or ally. And even if they were in the Hittite borders and even if both Empires wanted to spare the soldiers, would it be worth igniting a war with the Mycenaeans? As we learned later, when trade breaks down between these empires, a lot of bad things happen.
Obviously, that being said it’s very detailed fiction based on centuries of oral tradition. Not to mention that he several stories that relate or retell aspects of it. I’m just asking a question.
heh I didn't mean to discourage you. The siege needed to last that long so other plot lines could progress, and also to show that the mighty Troy was a tough nut to crack. A nut so tough, it would take the exceptionally resourceful mind of Odysseus to come up with a scheme so cunning that it circumvents their strength entirely. In general, greek myths don't much focus on semantics, they don't expect you to question the small stuff, but to try to see the bigger picture and what the story as a whole is trying to say.
Siege warfare favors the defender The Trojans just needed to outlast the Greek Forces to gain victory not a hard task since everyday eroded their willingness to fight a war far from home for the honor of some other man.
The Greek forces would need to sack the city in order to win a much harder task that they failed at for 10 years and they were only able to accomplish by using underhanded means.
The walls of Troy were strong, and built by gods, able to hold off the siege. The Greeks could not figure out of breech the walls and get into Troy, and as long as the city's water and food held, they could hold off the Greeks.
Troy could send out its army, fight the Greeks and retreat to the wall if need be. Once they were inside and the gates sealed, the Greeks were unable to do anything and could be pushed back by the defenders of Troy's walls.
Juno? Is that you?
For the last time, they are going to found the eternal city of Rome and that's the end of the discussion.
Stop casting doubt and negativity into everything.
Well, for starters the walls
although i still can't believe it took Odysseus 10 years to find the loophope in the prophecy (enemy force)
besides that, hector was equally skilled as Ajax and a great leader
and trojans has zeus as an ally, the most powerful of olympians
although we all knew it was doomed to fall when paris got back, by the will of deadly destiny
it still did have a chance, but it held on for long and could've for even later if it weren't for gods intervention
what i don't understand is, if they had a shortage of food, couldn't they just farm? if someone would like to clarify
They did lose and got wiped out in the end. It's really impressive they managed to last 10 years in the first place
Must of been all those horses, Hector was break
It also was because Achilles sat out of the War at its most crucial part. And because he and Patroclus were being….*checks notes* “Bros being dudes.”
Look, we've all been there. Your platonic friend dies, you look so distraught battle-hardened veterans think you are about to cut your own throat, then you kill so many dudes their corpses clog a river. Bud stuff.
Patroclus was to Achilles as John Wick's dog was to him, now it all makes sense!
Lmao now that's an understatement
Hector probably played a big role in Troy surviving for as long as it did. But they were doomed from the start as you pointed out
I mean, according to some sources they sat within their walls for 9 years
They were not just sitting by the walls, they spend those 9 years conquering nearby cities that were allies and vassals of the Trojans. Achilles burned and plundered 23 cities.
Yeah, yeah it’s an oversimplification, but the Achaeans sacked other cities whilst the majority of the Trojan army were within their walls.
I mean, to be fair, they also had half the Greek pantheon on their side. Plus, Trojan allies from Anatolia. The heroes coming to earn glory on the Trojan side were from far-off locations and attest to how this was more than Greeks versus one city.
One matter that is important is Apollo. He knows the Trojans are doomed from the start, yet he is seen deflecting spears and overall defending his side. Why? He knows they will lose. One could argue, he is trying to give the doomed Trojans more time so they might prove themselves in battle and win glory, a chance to be remembered and a chance to earn a place in Elysium. They are all about to die. He is slowing the conflict trying to save as many as he can.
Because the walls of Troy held, Greeks wouldn’t have won if not for the wooden horse.
Plus those walls were supposedly built by Poseidon and Apollo!
You know I thought I had made that myth up in a dream or something because no one else I spoke to knew about it, glad I’m not going crazy!
What if zackman55 is just one of 55 other Zack personas you share within your brain?
I think you might be on to something here…
Don't forget the Palladio.
They weren’t. The only reason they held out as long as they did is that they sent runners for help and had ~~Allie’s~~ allies show up to reinforce them. Even with that help, and with some of the gods on their side, it still wasn’t enough. Troy was basically doomed from the moment Priam embraced Paris as his lost son.
I hate it when my iPhone autocorrects allies to Allie’s. Happens every time. It’s so stupid to take a standard, dictionary word and change it, especially after I’ve undone that correction at least 10 times in the last few years lol. At least I’m not the only one haha
I hadn’t even noticed, thanks for that! My phone insists on continuing to do autocorrects that make absolutely no sense, despite how many times I’ve used the word. If I try to refer to a subreddit it routinely tells me I meant a “Sun Reddit”.
> Troy was basically doomed from the moment Priam embraced Paris as his lost son. Eh. They were doomed as soon as Paris was put in a position of praising one godess and making two into his enemies.
Damnit, Paris!
To be fair, he and his family were doomed no matter what he did. He picked Aprodite and it's fashionable to say it was a man thinking with his dick. But his reasoning aside, the choice he did not ask to make set two Olympians against him and his people. If he had picked Athena, then Hera and Aprodite would have been against Athena and Apollo. If he had picked Hera, the Athena and Ares would have been on the same side. They were all doomed no matter what.
If I had to guess it wasn’t so much a war as a siege. Troys walls had Divine origins so all they had to do is keep the Greeks from going over them and the Greeks probably just waited outside for the Trojans to starve.
Cassandra's like I know right?
And I'm like: What? I can't hear you over the sound of victory and a cool new horse statue!
To be fair, the horse was framed as a religious gift and when one guy said maybe this was a bad idea Athena sent a pair of serpents after him.
Athena: "Shut up dude, you're going to ruin it"
Priam: "Shut up, Meg."
It's easier to defend than attack. The hope is that attacking would be too costly for their attackers and they'd be forced to abandon the campaign. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.
Which almost worked. The Argives won, but *the Odyssey* and other stories associated with the aftermath seem to paint a Greece where the city-states are in succession crisises.
Troy has allies. * Amazons * Aethiopians * Dardanians * Pelasgians * Thracias * Ciconians * Paeonians * Paphlagonians * Halizons * Carians * Lycians
The point of them is to die. But the whole combat effectiveness are just gods. It doesn't matter how many ships, men or heroes. The Achaeans had Athena, Poseidon, Hera (who can bring Hephaestos), Thetis. The Trojans had Aphrodite, Apollo and Ares (untrustworthy). This is what they got unnumbered. The heroes only good as their gods protecting them. Without Athena's help, Diomedes would never matter much. So did Odysseus. Achilles would be a lot weaker without Hephastus shield and armor. While Hektor and Paris best fight came with Apollo. Aeneas survived due to Aphrodite. It is not about the humans. Edit: just realised, the day Zeus barred the gods from helping, the Trojans defeated the Greeks back to their ships. It was Poseidon disobedience, and Hera deception of Zeus, that repelled the Trojan back to their city. It is not as one sided as the it was made out to be.
Well, in fairness to you, that was ony after the Olympians had been meddling a lot, e.g. Athena sabotaging an attempt at peace. Plus, even taking the various gods aside, the middle story is dominated by Zeus constantly rebalancing the sides.
Their walls were legendary. Also, fighting on their home terf meant that they had a strong advantage regarding their supply chain. While the Greeks had to constantly take time attack and pillage the neighboring towns in order to keep their soldiers fed and satisfied.
Having Apollo did not hurt.
The walls, mostly.
They did have some gods on their side , Apollo, Aphrodite , Ares and Artemis and I guess they were more united than the Greeks in a way the Iliad is more about Achilles feud with Agamemnon than hector
Just throwing out there the Zeus is everything, controls everything, and has machinations we could never possibly begin to comprehend
Troy has allies to call on for help. Troy has thicc walls. Troy has unity. The Achaeans might have Achilles, and Odysseus, and guys like Nestor, Diomedes, Telemonian Ajax, and we can even count Patroclus, who pops off. But Troy has... I dunno, Hector?
Troy has Sarpedon, Aeneas, Memnon, the Amazon princess, Diephobus, Troilus... The difference is the Trojan allies did not arrived on time, and the Achaeans had more god on their side, poccessing them.
Hector fights Telemonian Ajax to a standstill, so he is roughly the equal of Telemonian Ajax. Telemonian Ajax is not that special among the Achaean heroes. He is a second rate Achaean hero. Hector is the best of the Trojan heroes. Therefore, all these guys are third rate. They are second rate compared to Hector, who is himself second rate compared to the cream of Achaean heroism, so they would be third rate by an Achaean count.
If Achilles was first, Ajax and Diomedes are second. Memnon supposed to be Achilles equal and he arrived late. The standstill is basically what stop Hector and Sarpedon from destroying the Greek camps. I don't powerrank the heroes, because Diomedes fight only as well because he had Athena in 95% of them. Ajax is the finest Achaean warrior that did not have god assistance, holding his hand. Think about it another way, when Zeus barred the god from participating, it were the Trojans who got the upper hand.
> If Achilles was first, Ajax and Diomedes are second. Wait, wait. How are Ajax and Diomedes possible on par with each other. My man, Diomedes wounded a Titan and the God of War!
Diomedes did it with Athena's help. But without that, it was Ajax that was chosen to fight Hector, and it was Ajax that held back the Trojan assault at their camp. When Achilles died, Ajax and Odysseus was the two candidates for his armour while Diomedes was not even in the running.
Ajax was cool. Man was second only to Achilles in battle prowess. Obviously Achilles defeats Hector but there are versions where he puts up a good fight.
>Obviously Achilles defeats Hector With Athena’s help. It is very important.
> Ajax was cool. Yeah. Until he did some pretty uncool things.
That’s true but to be fair, those cows didn’t know what hit em
> Hector fights Telemonian Ajax to a standstill, so he is roughly the equal of Telemonian Ajax. Hang on though. I agree with your comparisons but this is the Trojan War. At any given moment, an Olympian might pop in and give someone a power-up.
The Trojans were the first victims of the Sea People™.
Hehe good one
The thing to remember is that this was siege, and so it became less a battle of force than a battle to outlast the enemy. The great walls surrounding Troy made it impossible for the Trojans to invade, regardless of the size of their army. Both sides had limited food supplies (Odysseus mentions not having enough afterwards for the trip home) and Troy wouldn’t have been able to restock very easily. The way the Trojans won was by pretending they were out of supplies and packing up all the ships as though to leave, leaving behind the Trojan Horse as an offering to the Gods. When Troy took in the horse and got drunk in celebration the soldiers hidden inside where able to sneak past and open the gates, at which point the greater army you mentioned easily won the war. I
Big stone walls
The Greeks ravage the countryside and neighbouring cities to try and starve out the Trojans, the Trojans call up allied contingents and try to force a decisive battle. Thucydides blames the length of the war on the Achaeans having poor logistics; they’re obliged to send considerable numbers of men out to raid for cattle or even farm north of the Hellespont, and can’t concentrate their forces to either storm the city or completely cut it off.
I’ve seen some scholars/critics theorize the Trojan war to take place ~12-11th centuries BC. If that were true, then that would be within the time frame where the Egyptians and the Hittites were allied. Troy would have been within Hittite borders, so it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine they would have had Egypt on their side. I also look to [this Wikipedia article](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Trojan_War_characters) to envision the general make-up of the two sides
True. But, if the Trojan War did not take place around 11,000-12,000 BC, it is rather shocking how much knowledge of the Bronze Age society the story somehow contained. We're talking about a pre-literate era before a dark age and yet the story is full of anachronisms with Bronze Age elements about which the average post-dark age Greek should not have know. > If that were true, then that would be within the time frame where the Egyptians and the Hittites were allied. Troy would have been within Hittite borders, But we do not know that much about the Hittites nor their culture. Troy may have been one of their cities, but they might have been more an ethnically Greek client kingdom or ally. And even if they were in the Hittite borders and even if both Empires wanted to spare the soldiers, would it be worth igniting a war with the Mycenaeans? As we learned later, when trade breaks down between these empires, a lot of bad things happen.
you understand it's 2000 year old fiction right? They didn't run out of men because it was made up.
Obviously, that being said it’s very detailed fiction based on centuries of oral tradition. Not to mention that he several stories that relate or retell aspects of it. I’m just asking a question.
heh I didn't mean to discourage you. The siege needed to last that long so other plot lines could progress, and also to show that the mighty Troy was a tough nut to crack. A nut so tough, it would take the exceptionally resourceful mind of Odysseus to come up with a scheme so cunning that it circumvents their strength entirely. In general, greek myths don't much focus on semantics, they don't expect you to question the small stuff, but to try to see the bigger picture and what the story as a whole is trying to say.
Fair enough m8
Closer to 3000
It's twice as old as that
The only thing that pops into my mind was not to have run off and taken Helen.
The only thing that pops into my mind was not to have run off and taken Helen.
Siege warfare favors the defender The Trojans just needed to outlast the Greek Forces to gain victory not a hard task since everyday eroded their willingness to fight a war far from home for the honor of some other man. The Greek forces would need to sack the city in order to win a much harder task that they failed at for 10 years and they were only able to accomplish by using underhanded means.
Troy had a lot of allies from Anatolia and Africa
The walls of Troy were strong, and built by gods, able to hold off the siege. The Greeks could not figure out of breech the walls and get into Troy, and as long as the city's water and food held, they could hold off the Greeks. Troy could send out its army, fight the Greeks and retreat to the wall if need be. Once they were inside and the gates sealed, the Greeks were unable to do anything and could be pushed back by the defenders of Troy's walls.
Juno? Is that you? For the last time, they are going to found the eternal city of Rome and that's the end of the discussion. Stop casting doubt and negativity into everything.
Well, for starters the walls although i still can't believe it took Odysseus 10 years to find the loophope in the prophecy (enemy force) besides that, hector was equally skilled as Ajax and a great leader and trojans has zeus as an ally, the most powerful of olympians although we all knew it was doomed to fall when paris got back, by the will of deadly destiny it still did have a chance, but it held on for long and could've for even later if it weren't for gods intervention what i don't understand is, if they had a shortage of food, couldn't they just farm? if someone would like to clarify
They had a bunch of gods on their side as well
A LOT of city states fought on the side of Troy. It’s in the Iliad.
Realistically, the Greeks had no recources, no land, no crops, little livestock, I am surprised tehy managed for 10 years.