Troia-Distrugere !

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2-Istoria ramane pasiunea mea nr-1!

“Honour is for the dead. Now run along, old man, to my father in the Underworld, and tell him the tale of his wicked son.”

Words cannot do justice to the horror of the experience of being in a city that is being sacked. Fortunately, it is an experience that very people in the world today will ever have to experience. That in itself is something we should be hugely thankful for, given that it has been an all to familiar occurrence throughout most of human history. Rape, plunder, death, mutilation – often the sacking army turn on each other in an attempt to take the greatest loot. What is it in the human psyche that sees us so prone to cruelty? And given that the sacking of the cities has been common until relatively recently, is it an innate feeling we all have, but restrain? This is not soldiers being forced to commit atrocities – this is soldiers revelling in the opportunity to butcher, to dominate, to humiliate and crush a largely civilian population who the fates have condemned to be victims. There are accounts during Roman civil wars of the generals looking to negotiate a peaceful opening of city gates, only for their legionnaires to oppose them as they want to sack the town. While part of this is to ensure they get some of the loot rather than just the commander getting it, another part is to indulge that bloodlust frenzy that can is rarely satisfied in a disciplined army, except for during the rout of another army or the sack of a city. The sack of Troy was horrific, tens of thousands of Greek soldiers storming into a city that had defied them for a decade to vent their fury on a population in a drunken stupor from the news of their ‘victory’. Sadly, it was by no means a unique event, and a horrific night experienced by millions of people throughout human history.

King Priam realised too late what was happening. When he was awoken by sounds of alarm, he could already heard the screaming of women being raped, the wailing of frightened children, the last gasps of dying men. He could smell the smoke, the tinge of iron in the air that comes from so much blood, and see the flames illuminating the night. The old king donned his armour, though his bewildered wife Hecuba – praying at a shrine – asked what he was doing, for he could not hope to fight. The frayed leather straps gave way, and his armour fell to the floor.

As Priam went to join his wife, his youngest son Polites ran in, a laughing Neoptolemus just behind him. The son of Achilles lazily threw a spear, and Polites looked confused as he slumped to the floor. Priam wailed at Neoptolemus, saying how his father was an honourable man who would never have killed an unarmed child, asking: “Have you no honour?” A bemused Neoptolemus replied: “Honour is for the dead. Now run along, old man, to my father in the Underworld, and tell him the tale of his wicked son.” With a flick of his sword, Priam was decapitated. Neoptolemus would have turned to Hecuba, but at that moment saw Aeneas fleeing with his whole household, carrying his father Anchises while clinging to his wife, Priam’s daughter Creusa. He would have slain them there, but the prophet Calchas said that he must leave them. The father of Rome was a hair’s breadth from never leaving Troy.

Storming through the royal suited, Menelaus dragged a drunken Deiphobus from his bed, and ran him through the gut with his blade. He vowed similar vengeance on the unfaithful Helen, who instead of cowering sat serenely in the corner with his son, Nicostratus. One look at Helen’s enduring beauty and his bloodlust was stilled. Instead, he gladly accepted her back to him.

Cassandra ran past the now burning remains of the Trojan Horse, wailing for her curse that nobody would believe her prophecy. She ran into the Temple of Athena, praying at the alter where the Palladium had once stood, the Luck of Troy stolen by the Greeks. Seeing her running in there, Ajax the Lesser followed her. She cried sanctuary, that Athena would avenge any violation. He laughed at her piousness, and brutally raped her on the alter. After her had left, she stumbled out of the temple in a daze. Out of one horror, and into another, for she stumbled straight into the path of Agamemnon. The king of kings was gleeful at such a prize as a Trojan princess, and said she would make a fine servant for him and his wife Clytemnestra. She laughed in his face, calling him the “King of Fools”, sand said his wife had been unfaithful to him, and would murder him.

Other soldiers among the rampant Greek army burst into the room that had housed Troy’s greatest warrior, Hector. There they found his cowering widow Andromache, and her wailing baby Astyanax. Despite her despairing pleas, they were convinced that the son of Hector could not grow old to avenge his father. Astyanax was ripped from his mother’s arms, and thrown from the walls of Troy. Andromache begged to be killed with him, but the soldiers said she would make a handsome prize for Neoptolemus.

Among the horror and the violence, there were two stories of kindness. Not forgetting the hospitality Antenor had shown when the Greeks arrived a decade ago, and the honesty in warning them of Paris’ duplicity, Agamemnon ordered that his house not be touched in the carnage. The sons of the first Athenian King Theseus, Acamas and Demophon, had joined the Greek effort late on the free their grandmother. They found Aethra, the mother of the Minotaur slayer now in servitude to Helen, and got her safely out of the city to their ships.

Looking down at the havoc and the bloodshed, the gods despaired at the inhumanity of it all. Neither Hera, Athena, or any of the pro-Greek Olympians felt any satisfaction in seeing their favourites wade through the streets of Troy, knee deep in the blood of innocents. Zeus rued the day he made mankind, ignoring the advice of Prometheus. For their savagery, the gods agreed that the Greeks must be punished as they returned home.

From the ashes of Troy, a phoenix would emerge in the centuries to come. For while the Greeks had destroyed one city, the descendants of Aeneas would go on to destroy entire nations, kingdoms, and civilisations – they would make deserts, and call them peace. While he fled the city during that night of chaos and horror, he could have had no idea of the magnitude of the destiny that awaiting him. Yet history hinges on a knife edge, and as the refugees made their ways out of the city, this particular refugee and his followers would eventually find themselves establishing a small colony on the banks of the River Tiber.