The whole point of Dr. Leaf's argument is that at Troy there was a market, or fair, at which the produce of the countries in the east was sold to the Greeks and other people in the west, and that the Trojans derived much profit from this market. The profit from this market they would of course lose if the western people were able to sail up through the Hellespont and do their trade direct with the people along the shore of the Black Sea. The Trojans were, in fact, what we nowadays call "middle-men," and you know how we are always trying to bring the consumer, the person who wants to use the thing produced, into direct touch with the producer, and so to do away with the profit which the middle-man charges and which he again puts on to the price of the thing when he sells it to the consumer. The Greeks were the consumers. They wanted to do away with the middle-men, that is to say with the Trojans, and that, far more probably than the bringing back of the beautiful lady, was why they spent so many years and so many lives in the siege of Troy.
You will remember what we said before about the kind of ships that these people had. They were propelled by rowing, or by sails which were only useful when the wind was nearly directly behind them. They had to put in to some harbourage every night, because they did not dare to go along in the dark, without charts and without compass and without knowledge of how to steer by the stars. Even in daytime they hardly dared to go out of sight of land and of the landmarks which they knew.
The islands in these seas lie so close to each other that it was possible for them to creep along in this way from one to the other and so to the coasts of Asia from Greece. And there was another reason why they could not go long voyages—they had no light cisterns in which to carry fresh water. They had to take it in heavy earthern jars.
This need for water they could supply from rivers which ran out westward through Troy land. They would lie along the coast there, as they traded with the Trojan middle-men, or, possibly, as they waited for a favouring wind to go through the Hellespont, which the Trojans might allow them to do on payment of some toll money, as we should call it, for the permission.
The reasons for thinking that the wish to do away with these Trojans and their market was the real motive of the ten years' war are strengthened when we look at the names of the peoples that came to the help of the Greeks on the one side and of the Trojans on the other. Those that came to the assistance of the Greeks were the peoples along the Mediterranean shores or on the islands; those that aided the Trojans were the peoples from the east. So we have the two set in rather distinct opposition to each other; the Trojans and the eastern people who sent their things to the market at Troy and had an interest in the market being kept up, and the western peoples who wanted the market destroyed.
That is a very prosaic story, is it not, in comparison with the romance about the beautiful lady? It is not the kind of story that Homer or any other bard would care to sing or his listeners would take pleasure in hearing. But I am afraid it is more likely to be the true story of the reason why a practical and intelligent people like the Greeks fought so hard and so long to annihilate Troy. I have said so much about this famous siege because it gives such a good opportunity of setting what are probably the facts beside the fictions which have been founded on them. It teaches us how these poetic stories were made.
The Odyssey
The other great poem attributed to Homer, the Odyssey, is only another chapter, dealing with the adventures of one of the principal Greek heroes, of the story of the siege. It is even more glorious reading than the Iliad itself.
Now, whatever the truth be about the Trojan war, one fact is quite clear and certain from its story, as well as from other evidence, that the Greeks had dealings, constant dealings, with Asia Minor. Therefore their thought, their art, their culture, and all that was most remarkable in their character as a nation, was known in Asia Minor, it was known among all these islands of the Ægean Sea and along the southern, the African, shores of the Mediterranean. Everywhere that it went it was superior to the thought and the culture of the native people, and everywhere it had its effect. I want you to realise that. It was not by reason of the force of their arms, though they were such good fighters, that the Greeks count for so much in our great story, but by reason of the force of their thought, and of their accomplishments.
Some hundred or two hundred years after the siege of Troy we find certain colonies or cities of the Greeks founded along the western shore of Asia Minor. The Greeks living in these cities were called Ionians. Shortly before the coming of Cyrus, the all-conquering Persian, those Ionians had been conquered by that king Crœsus of Lydia whom we saw taking command of that ill-fated alliance formed against Persia. The Persian had now, by the time, 500 B.C., to which we have brought down the story, made himself master of all Asia Minor. The Ionian cities had come under his dominance.