Transcript of The Trojan War, with Mary Beard

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Hello, everyone.

It's Tom Holland here, and I have teamed up with the great Mary Beard to bring you four episodes on what we together have decided are the four most iconic themes in ancient history. Today, we are looking at the Trojan War. Here's a short extract of that episode. Hello, everybody, and welcome to Layton House in Kensington, in London. It's a gorgeous, beautiful, very grand house full of Arabic touches and classical touches. Gorgeous garden where We had an Athelstand party. We've come here because we need a sumptuous location for an imperious guest. That guest is the most famous classicist in the world and a woman to whom I owe, personally, an enormous amount because she was the person who first read Rubicon, my first book on classical history in manuscript. So ever since, I've been incredibly I'm grateful to her, as well as being her biggest fan. And it is, of course, the great, the one and only Mary Beard.

Tom, thank you very much. I mean, Leighton House is my favorite place in London, and it's great to talk to you. You've just done what you always do. You always said when you introduced me, she was really kind to me back in the day before I'd written Rubicon.

You were a professor of Classics at Cambridge. You've written a lot of wonderful Wonderful books aimed at more popular market as well as all your academic studies. So you've written books on the Parthenon, The General Reader, Pompei, The Caesars. And we're meeting here because we thought it would be fun that two of us to discuss the four most iconic subjects in ancient history, classical history, the history of Greece and Rome, specifically. And we've had to and fro, and we've come up with four subjects, haven't we? What did you decide we should do?

Well, we thought we had to do two Greek, two Roman. How could you not do the Trojan War, where it all begins?

That's what we're doing today.

We then thought, how could you not do Alexander the Great? A certain reservation on my part, it has to be said, but you persuaded me that we should do that. And then, and these do link, in a way, as I hope people listening will discover. Then we go from Alexander to Julius Caesar, and then Gladiator's and with a special look out for Sparticus, a movie.

All four of those, they're very masculine, aren't they? And they're very much focused on people killing each other.

They are. I think we thought that it would bring out some of our differences of opinion as well as things we hold in common. I think also, they're not just loads of men killing each other. They are that. Most of them, all of them, I think, they occupy that funny, fuzzy boundary between what's myth and what's history. That is one of the things I think is most interesting to explore in ancient history. How do we know what's true or not? And does it matter if it's true? And some of the most important aspects of all these, some of the most important aspects, are the mythical ones, whether or not they're strictly true. So it's going to be a great tightrope, actually, between- Well, it always is when you're- You're going to fall off.

Yeah, you're trying to tell stories that people want to know what actually happened. But But often it's the fact we don't know entirely what happened that is the real fascination.

I know that you think I'm going to be a downer. You think I'm going to be a downer because you think, Mary Beard, what's her trademark? Her trademark is skepticism. So we're going to have some great story, and then I'm going to come in and say, No, Nibli, it's true. So I'm going to try and hold myself in a bit.

You will make it much more interesting than just saying it's all rubbish. I have absolute confidence in that.

But some of the best history is not true.

I think that's- Well, so on that topic, would it be fair to say that really Greek and Roman civilization, in a sense, begins with this?

Yeah. The way the Greeks and Romans think about themselves goes back to what they think about the Trojan War. I mean, it's both a almost cosmic clash, which ends up slightly indirectly with the foundation of Rome, because Aeneas, one of the Trojan warriors, flees and founds the Roman race in Italy. The Trojan War is the place where Greeks and Romans start to debate about the morality of war, what the cost of war is, whether we think heroism is being a warrior or not. For me, that's why the stories of the Trojan war are so interesting.

Yeah, brilliant. Well, before we come on to the broader cultural context and what it meant for the Greeks and the Romans, and of course, in due course, the question that I'm sure lots of people will want to know your opinion on, did it actually happen? Can you tell us the story of the Trojan War itself? I'm aware that there are multiple versions of it, so feel free to complicate it, but a general sense of what's going on? Why did the Greeks and the Trojans come to fight? What's the sweep of the narrative?

Where did it start? That It's a question. Here we got this semi-cosmic conflict. How did it begin? Well, it began with a wedding party from hell, really. But the goddess Thetis is getting married to a mortal man called Peleus. Now, these, in the end, are going to be the parents of Achilles, but Achilles hasn't been born yet. Great hero of the Greek side. Now, they made a terrible error We all know about this. They didn't. It was somebody they should have invited, but they didn't. And they should have invited the Goddess Discord, conflict, Erius in Greek. So like a mad Gray, Erius turns up anyway, determined to have her say. And she throws in to this divine wedding party, really, a golden apple, which says on it, to the most fair, it's written on this apple, it could be to the best, to the finest. Kaliste is the word in Greek, which can mean beautiful, but can mean morally good, too. And three goddesses start to squabble about who owns the apple. And there's Hira, the quote's, Queen of the gods. There's Athena, the oversimplifying Goddess of Wisdom, and there's Aphrodite, who is the Goddess of Beauty.

And they can't work out who owns the apple, therefore. And in order to adjudicate, and I think it's quite hard to see the details of how this adjudication came into being, it was decided that Paris, who was the, at that point, estranged son of King Priam of Troy and his wife, Queen Hecuba, should decide which goddess had the apple. So he meets them, and they all each one tries to bribe him, saying, If you choose me, I'll give you something you really need. Here is going to give him power. Athena is going to give him wisdom. Paris chooses Aphrodite as the fairest because her bribe is the best. She is offering him the most beautiful, desirable woman in the world for himself, and that woman is Helen. What is going to happen is that Paris is going to go and get Helen. That's what he does. Now, Helen was so beautiful and had been so lovely and had been such a prize for Menelaus when he won her as his wife. In order to stop future trouble and civil war amongst the Greeks, they had agreed that if anybody came and pinched Helen, all the Greek kings and leaders would gang up and support Menelaus and go and get her back.

And in a nutshell, that That's what happens. That's what the Trojan War is all about. Paris takes Helen back to his city of Troy, and he arrives back in Troy with Helen, his new trophy bride.

All the Trojans think, Wow, she's great. We're never giving her back. So that then sets up the war. Thanks for listening. You can subscribe to the Rest is History Club at therestishistory. Com. Hear the whole episode, to hear the whole series in due course, and to get a massive, insanely brilliant range of other benefits. Mary and I will be back next week with Alexander the Great.