Is there anyone Huey don’t teach you to hate at Notre Dame!?!? I mean seriously, I’ve never heard of a football team that hates so many people.
Brendan LoyPost author
Huh? Michigan is one of ND’s top 2 rivals, right up there with USC (who I obviously don’t hate). Next on the list would be BC, but I don’t hate them. I hate Sparty, but that’s a personal irrational thing specific to me, not the product of enforced ND brainwashing. Most Irish fans will tell you MSU doesn’t have enough stature to qualify as a hated “rival.” So really, we’re talking about a grand total of 2 to 3 hated rivals, of whom I actually hate 1. I daresay your average SEC fan can top that level of hatred in their sleep.
dcl
Yes, but you hate the SEC too… which is an entire conference. That’s a lot of teams…
Brendan LoyPost author
Heh, true, but not because of my Notre Dame affiliation, which was the point of David’s comment. Besides, David can hardly fault me for hating the SEC. That’s the pot calling the kettle a WAR!!!!! Er, or something. 🙂
I like Sparty. Yes they are a state school, but how can the Spartans and the Trojans not pull for each other?
dcl
Because they were on opposite sides of multiple wars? It’s like the British cheering for the French dude.
David K.
Seriously though I can’t think of another school that has such a reaction towards so many teams. Even if its four, thats still atleast twice as many as most schools. And for a lot of schools some of the rivalries aren’t all that heated.
Plus, on top of all that hate, Notre Dame picked on poor Navy for decades! Why do they hate America?!?
Nah man, it’s like two classicists who respect and admire the civilizations of antiquity. Just because you choose to reflect one city-state doesn’t mean you have to hate all the others. Instead, they are more like your brothers now.
In what sense? Greece as we know it today did not exist back then. Would you consider Cyprus Greece? Today Cyprus is split between the Greeks and the Turks, but once upon a time, it was its own civilization. Then you have Ephesus — a classical Greek city that also was not on the Greek mainland, but rather contiguous with Troy in what is today Turkey. How about the Dodecanese, Rhodes, or Ionia? Heck, Alexander the Great expanded the Greek Empire all the way to India and Africa, so where the heck do you want to draw the line?!?
Troy is every bit as important a city-state in antiquity and Aegean civilization as the city-states of what is today Greece (where did I reference Greece again?!?!?).
I love that a Greek history fight has broken out in a college football thread!
I’m with Andrew here. There was no such thing as a “Greek city state”. Just city states. Troy was one of many city states at the time. Remember, Homer wrote the Illiad years later, and the story had been changed into a “Greek national fable”. But as far as I know, that distinction came about after the Trojan War. Had Troy survived, it may have been just as Greek as Sparta.
Of course, being Greek was a loose concept. Sparta fought Athens, and there were only a handfull of times the whole Greek peninsula was ever united over anything. They did eventually view themselves as a common ethnicity, but they never thought of this as necessitating a political union. Or if they did, it was always through the idea that MY city state should be in charge.
dcl
Generally Troy is not thought of when considering classical city states. Now this could be due in part to the fact that we know very little about Troy itself. Granted, the Aeneis attempts to tie the mythical foundations of Rome back to Troy So I suppose you could argue Troy is a classical civilization in that sense. But it is both culturally and politically very different from what are generally termed Classical Civilizations.
Be that as it may, the Trojan War is the probable start of the battles between the Greek City States and what would become the Persian Empire. There is a firm distinction both culturally and politically between the civilizations that existed on the in the area that is now called Greece and the Persian empire and other regions. Even Macedonia was considered to be borderline barbarian country by the City States generally thought of as classical Greece. I think it would be a stretch to try and argue that Troy may have been just as Greek as Sparta. True there wasn’t any real national unity, except when it came to the “other” which they were actually rather clear about. And Troy was absolutely positively the other.
David K.
But I think we can all agree that the Trojans and Spartans would have hated the Irish if they had met them right?
I think the point I realized after my last comment is that during whatever co flict happened during the Trojan War, neither the Spartans nor the Trojans would be classical city states. Homer wrote about and era he didn’t fully understand, because nobody did at the time. The development of the polis had not started in Micenean Greece.
And of course, beautiful work though it is, the Aenid is Augustian propaganda, which sought to connect the Romans with the classical past they loved so much. A classical past that probably didn’t exist they way they thought of anyway.
dcl
That’s why I was trying to say that the Aenid connection would be at best tenuous. Granted my focus was more on Rome than Grecce, but generally the Hellinists saw there being a strong distinction between Trojans and Mycenaeans one leading to the Persian empire the other the pan hellinic alliance that ultimately defeated them collapsed was conquered and then conquered the near east and much of the far east before itself collapsing and being conquered by the now assendant Roman Empire. So the Spartans and the Trojans are not dissimilar form England and France. Thus AML thinking there should be some sort of Trojan Spartan sticking together ness makes about as much sense as the French rooting for the English.
There are numerous problems here, so I might as well identify them and correct them one by one:
1) My exact words were, “It’s like two classicists who respect and admire the civilizations of antiquity”; dcl responded with, “Troy was not a City State in Greece….” We’re arguing semantics here, but semantics are vital to the debate right now, so I’ll just say it as plainly as I can: I never said anything about Troy being in Greece. I referenced Troy being a classic civilization contemporaneous in antiquity with Sparta (although it actually predated what we commonly think of Sparta in its period as a city-state). There is zero room to debate about this; any argument to the contrary is contra the historical record.
2) B. Minich makes a number of interesting points at #12, and I will comment on a few of them.
Had Troy survived, it may have been just as Greek as Sparta.
This is undoubtedly correct, as attested to by the reach of the Greek Empire under Alexander the Great. In fact, what was left of Troy after Troy VII was destroyed more or less remained inhabited (albeit on a much larger scale) until the city was reestablished by the Romans. Had Troy VII not been destroyed by the Greeks and remained a powerful city (we also have to pretend it would have survived Persian domination), it likely would have been as Greek a city as Alexandria in Egypt or Ephesus in Turkey and would have been absorbed into Hellenic culture (if it wasn’t already considered Hellenic to begin with). In fact, the Ionian coast was settled by Greeks barely a century after the fall of Troy, so we have to draw the conclusion that the conflict between the Trojans and the Greeks was the inevitable result of two different peoples gradually intertwining themselves amongst each other and figuring how much they are the same or different, and how much to accept and/or adjust to the other.
Of course, being Greek was a loose concept.
Again, this is right on. The concept of nations and nationality did not come about until well after the Renaissance and Enlightenment were underway. And when you’re talking about antiquity and the classical period, that’s a helluva long time line to deal with, spanning multiple centuries. Troy likely spoke Luwian or proto-Lycean, with Luwian being tied to Hittite culture and Lycian eventually dying out and being replaced by Ancient Greek. Scholars honestly don’t have much evidence to work with, but we can surmise from its geography that Troy wasn’t quite as “Greek” as Athens or Sparta, and was undoubtedly a very commercial and cosmopolitan city due to its strategic location along key trade routes, so many languages were probably spoken, and my guess is the religion and deities worshiped reflected the broader area influence as well. Still, by the time of Alexander, it absolutely would have been Hellenized like the rest of Lycia and the Luwia peoples were, and today we would have remembered it as being Greek had the Ottomans and Turkic people not eventually overrun Anatolia.
A modern analogy to this debate would probably be the attempt to delineate Northern Irish from Scotch-Irish, Scottish, and Irish, and all that from Celtic, and then from British. Not even Alasdair and Joe Loy would want to wade into that one!
3) Back to dcl, who states:
Generally Troy is not thought of when considering classical city states.
Well, no, because it was destroyed well before the city-state period. Still, Sparta existed at that time as a city, and since we tend to refer to Sparta throughout that entire period as a city-state (even though it was technically a city-state for a much shorter period than that), we’re wasting our time arguing about the terms “city” vs. “city-state”. Beyond that, B. Minich nails it in his first paragraph at #15.
Now this could be due in part to the fact that we know very little about Troy itself. Granted, the Aeneis attempts to tie the mythical foundations of Rome back to Troy So I suppose you could argue Troy is a classical civilization in that sense. But it is both culturally and politically very different from what are generally termed Classical Civilizations.
The mythical Roman connection has very little to do with it, and frankly, we don’t have enough evidence to make a judgment about Troy’s politics, religion, and culture at the time it was in conflict with the Greek cities (~1300 BC). The proper place of Troy in antiquity is lost since it was destroyed, but there is enough evidence to suggest it must be strongly factored in to analyses of both Greek and Hittite civilizations. And since it plays such a major role in the Homeric tradition, from a historian’s point of view, Troy is absolutely classical.
Be that as it may, the Trojan War is the probable start of the battles between the Greek City States and what would become the Persian Empire. There is a firm distinction both culturally and politically between the civilizations that existed on the in the area that is now called Greece and the Persian empire and other regions.
It is completely irrelevant to talk of Troy in relation to the Persian Empire. The Persians didn’t come along until well after the Hittites (of which Troy was probably a dependency / vassal / tributary), the Assyrians, and the Babylonians. Troy was no more influenced culturally by Persia than was Sparta. The dividing line was really the “Sea Peoples” (i.e. Mediterranean cultures) vs. the inland civilizations with which they interacted and occasionally warred: Egyptian, Babylonian, Hittite, Persian, Israelite, etc. That’s not to say the Sea Peoples were all the same; scholars can’t even agree on which Mediterranean peoples constituted the Sea Peoples, but you essentially have Etruscan, Minoan, Greek, Lycian / Lukka, Phoenician, and Philistine, to name a few. Many of these encountered the Persians and fought or were subjugated by them, but none of them can really be associated with the Persians culturally or ethnically. And since the Persians were very light on their subjugated peoples and their reach over the Mediterranean was relatively short, it is likely that the Trojans would’ve retained little Persian influence, similar to what the Israelites and the Cypriots experienced.
I think it would be a stretch to try and argue that Troy may have been just as Greek as Sparta.
Nobody was making that argument — you invented a strawman. See my first point above: “I referenced Troy being a classic civilization contemporaneous in antiquity with Sparta”. Troy’s level of Greekness is totally hypothetical and subject to pure conjecture based on very little evidence to work with one way or the other.
…generally the Hellinists saw there being a strong distinction between Trojans and Mycenaeans one leading to the Persian empire the other the pan hellinic alliance that ultimately defeated them….
What is the basis for this assertion that the Hellenists saw the Trojans and Mycenaeans as being proto-Persians? Troy fell a good 800 years before the Persians came along — that’s eons even in the Homeric tradition. The concept of Trojans and Mycenaeans makes no sense whatsoever. That’d be like the Basques considering the Visigoths as proto-Moors. In other words, under even the lightest scrutiny accounting for geography and region, language and culture, and ethnicity, it simply makes no sense.
So the Spartans and the Trojans are not dissimilar form England and France. Thus AML thinking there should be some sort of Trojan Spartan sticking together ness makes about as much sense as the French rooting for the English.
The roots of conflict between Britain and France arose around the turn of the first millennium and concerned itself over disputes related to medieval and feudal interrelations.
After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Franks (a Germanic people) migrated into Gaul and pushed the Celtic peoples westward to Brittany, while the Anglo-Saxons (another Germanic people) displaced the Celtics in Britain and pushed them to Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Right around the end of the first millennium, the Vikings started raiding and settling the shores of Ireland, Britain, France, Spain, and down the European rivers (e.g. the Rhine, Danube, and Volga). They came to Normandy and absorbed into the Gallic / French-ish culture, and subsequently there arose a series of disputes (tying back to blood ties between Anglo-Saxon nobility and Viking nobility) that led to William of Normandy conquering England in 1066. Subsequent disputes arose associated with feudal lands in Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Normandy that were tied together with the English crown, and the long and short of it is, we had the Hundred Years’ War.
Keep in mind, at this time, though peasants from England spoke a different language (though Anglo-Saxon English was heavily influenced by Norman French around this time) and looked different than their French counterparts, the monarchs and nobles of both Britain and France spoke Latin, were Catholics beholden to the pope, and were interrelated by marriage. Looking back, it makes little sense to delineate French from English, and more sense to view it all through the prism of feudalism, knights, and medieval culture.
Given this historical reality, it makes perfect sense to view the golden era of English-French conflict in the same nostalgic vein as one might view the Spartan/Greek-Trojan conflict. I thus defend my mild rooting for the Michigan State Spartans and save any enmity I have for the Spartan polity for the occasional Rose Bowl clash or March Madness showdown.
First off, the “Troy may have been just as Greek as the Spartans” comment isn’t a complete straw man. I said that, more or less. But that’s complete speculation. Troy fell when it fell. We can’t really see where they would have fallen as a civilization. Because there were many Greek city states and colonies on the Turkish coast of the Aegean Sea, as well as those on the Peloponnese. So perhaps Troy would have eventually been counted as Greek as Ephesus.
And while the idea of Greece was a loose concept, it is a concept that began to take hold. Its why Athens and Sparta fought for control of the Aegean coasts and the Peloponnese. At that point, there was an idea that there was a Greek civilization, that everyone else were barbarians (I mean, just LOOK at those uncouth Romans!), and that perhaps it would be right for someone to hold hegemony over those civilized Greek people.
However, Spartans having kinship with Trojans not withstanding, I don’t think this gives me any excuses to root for one of those schools. Nittany Lions probably existed at this time, but they were related to nobody, classical or otherwise.
gahrie
Personally, I have always rooted for the “other” USC….The University of South Carolina.
I’ll admit to getting a guilty pleasure that the two USC’s are ‘cocks and Trojans………
dcl
Perhaps we are arguing at cross purposes here, I’m not sure. I think honestly, AML’s final four paragraphs are the most relevant to this discussion. And perhaps we shall have to agree to disagree. I think perhaps there is a disparity of perspective and definition that leads to this issue. For if we are arguing from the perspective of the historian, I think Andrew is right. If we are arguing from the perspective of the French and English he is wrong. Thus if we are thinking of things as a Trojan fan, one should not be a Spartan fan unless one is neither a Trojan nor a Spartan. As one can be a fan of French and English history but one cannot be both French and English. And if one is French one cannot be a fan of the English and vica versa.
More specifically
1) Troy did not exist during the classical period. What did exist was the Persian empire. In terms of the historical record if there was any progeny of the Trojans this is about all she wrote otherwise there is simply nothing. The Trojan war was used as an excuse by the Greeks to fight and drum up support to fight The Persian Empire. I don’t see them as worrying too much about the historical accuracy of this desire to fight the Persians and using the Iliad as an excuse. To them, it’s just the people on the other side of the isthmus.
2) Totally false. Is there a way short of continued conquest and colonization Ashencourt is English? No, neither is Troy. Troy may have become a Greek colony, like the various other locals on the isthmus that you reefer too, or it is something completely different both a different civilization and culture. Which is my main point. Troy is something all together different from Classical (Greek) City States (and yes, the Greek is implied) when we are talking about Classical City States.
2.b) Alexander the great came from the equivalent of Ireland not Scotland. Stop bringing him into this unless you understand that he came down and conquered Greece before beginning his world conquest. Macedon had an inferiority complex to the Greek mainland because they kept treating them as inferiors (so the complex kind of makes sense). Which is why he Conquered them in an effort to make Macedon Greek (A sort of who’s the man now bitch sort of action) So let’s say a dude from Ireland decides to Conquer England and call himself English, how English is he? Alexander continued to be ridiculed for wearing pants, especially after he conquered Persia.
2.c) Yes, Troy may have remained powerful, perhaps even been more historically relevant than Athens. I don’t know, you don’t know, and nobody can know because it didn’t. But back to point 2, completely different culture. So the counter factual doesn’t matter. The world would have evolved in a completely different way, thus “Classical Civilization” and “City State” would possibly have a totally different meaning than it does. There is a massive cultural disparity between just Sparta and Athens. Troy is most certainly even more different. But one thing is pretty certain, Troy wasn’t going to be invited to the Pan Hellenic Games, no games no Greek, no Classical City State. Now there is also the possibly that Troy would have been just as historically important or more so, but that is a totally different argument and that doesn’t change that it was something different, separate, and distinct from the Mycenaeans.
2.d) The English settled part of the French coast following the Norman invasion then lost these settlements, are these some how English towns now / still? No. The greeks lost their colonies too.
2.e) No there is not much evidence at all for Trojan culture. There is scant evidence for Spartan culture, there is some evidence for Delphic culture. In terms of Greek civ, just about the only thing there is strong evidence for is Athenian culture. Which makes it very easy to conflate things. But they should not be conflated. They each need to be treated with care as their own unique thing.
2.d) The Scotts analogy is a hornets nest I’ll grant. But there is a simpler way to suss this out. Would you say Egypt is just as Greek as Athens? Had Troy lived the differences would likely have been more like the difference between Greek Civ and Egyptian Civ than Athenian Civ and Spartan Civ. Troy was a proto state when it was destroyed, so we don’t know what it might have become, but what it would have become would have been something separate and distinct from Greek Classical Civ, though likely it would have been informed and influenced by it due to trade in the same manner that Egypt influenced and informed Greek Civ. So Straw man or not, Troy is something different that we don’t know much about.
3) And back to: Primary point, Troy is not was not and by the definition most scholars use never would be considered a Classical City State in the same sense as Athens and Sparta. It is something separate and distinct from them. I think trying to conflate these things does a disservice to all of them. As Troy, again, was something separate and distinct culturally, politically, religiously, historically, etc, etc. Don’t short change Troy, it was its own thing. We don’t know much about it, but we do know it was its own thing. Again, it’s like saying you know French history because you studied English history. Two different things, part of the same overall story, but two different things.
Thus if we are thinking of things as a Trojan fan, one should not be a Spartan fan unless one is neither a Trojan nor a Spartan. As one can be a fan of French and English history but one cannot be both French and English. And if one is French one cannot be a fan of the English and vica versa.
Finally, a point that is eminently reasonable, but I still disagree. We are now wading into issues of identity and psychology — areas of much much more gray and nuance, filled with subjectivity, much like the insider / outsider problem inherent with studying religion.
My dad is English, which makes me [at least] half-English, though I was born in America. Not surprisingly, I like to follow British politics, I genuinely respect English and British historical accomplishments, and I tend to root for all things British / English. When England plays in soccer, I root for them. However, at the end of the day, I am not English, I am American, and when USA plays England, I root like hell for Team USA.
My wife, in contrast, is a naturalized citizen born in Colombia. She is in tune with, follows, and roots for, all things Colombian, whether it be Colombian politics and national achievements, sports, or culture (Shakira, Carlos Vives, Juanes). Her passion for things Colombian is notably stronger than my passion for things English, and perhaps most telling, when Team USA plays Colombia, she roots for … Colombia.
But back to England and France. No doubt I am predisposed to take the Brits side, even when it comes to history, and the French never let us down in providing material with which to poke fun (OMG, they’re raising the retirement age from 60 to 62. Let’s strike and shut down the country!!!). But ultimately I am not “English”, or at least don’t feel English, even if I might be predisposed to hang the cross of St. George off my balcony when England plays Germany or Argentina.
Despite my English side, I can fully appreciate the French and English conflict and see them as two sides of the same coin, especially given that the modern concepts of what makes one French or English is completely not applicable to that time period. If I traveled back to England in 1100, I’d be dismayed at how much French I heard, and similarly, a French vintner in Burgundy would be annoyed to realize how tied his land and fortune was to British nobility in 1100, but I wouldn’t project onto the past my perceptions of modern England and France. Whereas, indeed, some hypothetical extreme Englishman with traits of JRR Tolkien might rue the loss of Anglo-Saxon language to the Norman French-Latin influence, and insist that the borders of France should end short of Bordeaux and Burgundy, which are rightly English territories.
Similarly, I went to USC and have a strong affinity for all things Trojan, because USC has adopted the Trojans as their mascot and name. But we are not, technically, “Trojans”; we are merely a group of people who have adopted the Trojans as part of our identity and as part of an appreciation of classical traditions and ideals (evident in our campus’ architecture and the attributes of a Trojan written on the Tommy Trojan statue). We are not just the Bears, or the ‘ruins, or the Fighting Irish — our identity has meaning and an appreciation of history and civilization behind it. It is in this vein that we share respects with the Michigan State Spartans, who have chosen a different tradition and historical peoples to adopt for their identity, but one that clearly comes from the same historical thread and shares the same impact on Western civilization. Out of this context, we can appreciate and respect Michigan State more than we might another run-of-the-mill school hawing its wares as Beavers, or Wolverines, or Longhorns.
1) Yes, Troy was inhabited during the classical period, so technically you are wrong. The Troy of legend and influence was destroyed ~1300 BC, but its relevance in antiquity lived on through Homer and the Greeks, and later the Romans co-opted the Trojans’ legacy as well. So, from a historical relevance and tie-in to the classical period, Troy matters, and outside of the field of archaeology, Troy would fall into the realm of classical history scholarship.
Meanwhile, the citation of Troy in relation to the Persians is moronic. Homer wrote about the Trojan war ~ 800 BC — well before the Persians had appeared on the historical scene. Just because the Greeks rallied themselves against the Persians by citing the heroics of the Greeks against the Trojans doesn’t mean the two are related. If war between Greece and Turkey broke out and Greek generals and propagandists began citing the bravery of the 300, does that mean the Turks and the Persians of antiquity are now tied together as well? That’s total nonsense.
And the isthmus has nothing to do with it. By the time the Persians came along, the Greeks were already establishing themselves in cities and colonies all along the Anatolian coastline and trading heavily with Phoenicians and Egyptians across the Mediterranean. The isthmus as a demarcating border between civilization and barbarians had as much relevance to the Greeks at that time as the Mississippi River does for us today (well, check that — when it comes to sports, pretty much nothing west of the Mississippi seems to matter in the consciousness of the East Coast media).
2a) You need to take your modern goggles off. In the year 1000 AD, was Agencourt English, or French? It was neither. The peasants probably spoke a crude, vulgar form of French that sounds nothing like today’s Parisian French, and the nobles all spoke Latin and were interrelated with other nobles in England and elsewhere. The rituals of daily life would have been centered around the Catholic Church and Mass and for all intents and purposes would’ve felt exactly the same as in Yorkshire or Bath. Both England and France endured a heavy dose of Roman influence prior to feudalism, and moving between the two areas, one would never be struck by the idea that one is “French” and the other is “English” — the concepts simply did not apply at that point in time.
2b) I didn’t bring up anything about Alexander the historical figure except to demarcate a specific time in history wherein he conquered the known world. Alexander’s origins in Macedonia are nothing but an ironic footnote. Alexander’s conquest paved the way for the Hellenization of most of the known civilized world at the time, and if Troy was still relevant by the time he came along, you’d have to assume it would have been Hellenized and become a major Greek city no different than Ephesus or Alexandria. That was my main point and it still stands.
2c) Troy was destroyed in 1300 BC, and you have absolutely no basis on which to judge that it’s culture was wildly different than other Greek cities, nor that it would never have been invited to the pan-Hellenic games had Troy remained relevant into that time period.
2d)
The English settled part of the French coast following the Norman invasion then lost these settlements, are these some how English towns now / still? No. The greeks lost their colonies too.
This paragraph is rife with misconceptions and misapplied terms. Who were the English, and who was doing the settling? After 1066, Normandy and England were under the same crown, and English nobility had ties to other French lands. That endured for centuries and led to much conflict, and it had nothing to colonization, it had to do with how feudalism worked.
Meanwhile, the Greeks didn’t “lose” their colonies. Most Greek cities and colonies retained their Hellenic culture even after Rome took over. Alexandria persisted as a major city of Hellenic influence right up until the Muslims came along. Even today, there are significant Greek minority populations in many parts of the Mediterranean that date back to the Roman Empire (similar to the Jews, who were dispersed under entirely different circumstances).
2e) Sounds like you’re agreeing with me here.
2f)
Would you say Egypt is just as Greek as Athens?
I would say Alexandria was just as Greek as Athens. And that’s the point. A Troy under Greek rule post-Alexander would have become known as a Greek city of antiquity.
3) Again, this is a giant strawman attack. I never said Troy was a classic Greek city-state, I said it was an important city of antiquity tied to Sparta and Greek history. We don’t know how different Troy was from the Greeks, and we don’t know how much the same it was. We do know it was very, very close by geographically, and the Trojans had much sway in the Greek consciousness due to the extent of their dominion and interaction with the Greeks. In fact, Homer goes so far as to describe the Trojans as speaking the same language and worshiping the same gods and sharing the same religious beliefs, which would indicate the Greeks saw them as a sort of brethren, vs. the alien culture of an Egypt or Phoenicia. Historically this is probably inaccurate, but it dispels the notion that Troy was way, way different and could not possibly be considered in the same vein of classical antiquity as the Greek city-states.
As far as English and French history, that really only goes back to 1500 or so. Prior to that, we’re better off referring to it as European history, and that’s the era we are discussing — an era in which the delineations between French and English (as we understand those concepts today) make little sense and it is appropriate and legitimate to appreciate both sides of the conflict.
Is there anyone Huey don’t teach you to hate at Notre Dame!?!? I mean seriously, I’ve never heard of a football team that hates so many people.
Huh? Michigan is one of ND’s top 2 rivals, right up there with USC (who I obviously don’t hate). Next on the list would be BC, but I don’t hate them. I hate Sparty, but that’s a personal irrational thing specific to me, not the product of enforced ND brainwashing. Most Irish fans will tell you MSU doesn’t have enough stature to qualify as a hated “rival.” So really, we’re talking about a grand total of 2 to 3 hated rivals, of whom I actually hate 1. I daresay your average SEC fan can top that level of hatred in their sleep.
Yes, but you hate the SEC too… which is an entire conference. That’s a lot of teams…
Heh, true, but not because of my Notre Dame affiliation, which was the point of David’s comment. Besides, David can hardly fault me for hating the SEC. That’s the pot calling the kettle a WAR!!!!! Er, or something. 🙂
Ahhhhh, Sparty. I, too, hate Sparty for no real reason.
I like Sparty. Yes they are a state school, but how can the Spartans and the Trojans not pull for each other?
Because they were on opposite sides of multiple wars? It’s like the British cheering for the French dude.
Seriously though I can’t think of another school that has such a reaction towards so many teams. Even if its four, thats still atleast twice as many as most schools. And for a lot of schools some of the rivalries aren’t all that heated.
Plus, on top of all that hate, Notre Dame picked on poor Navy for decades! Why do they hate America?!?
Nah man, it’s like two classicists who respect and admire the civilizations of antiquity. Just because you choose to reflect one city-state doesn’t mean you have to hate all the others. Instead, they are more like your brothers now.
Troy was not a City State in Greece… Just saying.
In what sense? Greece as we know it today did not exist back then. Would you consider Cyprus Greece? Today Cyprus is split between the Greeks and the Turks, but once upon a time, it was its own civilization. Then you have Ephesus — a classical Greek city that also was not on the Greek mainland, but rather contiguous with Troy in what is today Turkey. How about the Dodecanese, Rhodes, or Ionia? Heck, Alexander the Great expanded the Greek Empire all the way to India and Africa, so where the heck do you want to draw the line?!?
Troy is every bit as important a city-state in antiquity and Aegean civilization as the city-states of what is today Greece (where did I reference Greece again?!?!?).
I love that a Greek history fight has broken out in a college football thread!
I’m with Andrew here. There was no such thing as a “Greek city state”. Just city states. Troy was one of many city states at the time. Remember, Homer wrote the Illiad years later, and the story had been changed into a “Greek national fable”. But as far as I know, that distinction came about after the Trojan War. Had Troy survived, it may have been just as Greek as Sparta.
Of course, being Greek was a loose concept. Sparta fought Athens, and there were only a handfull of times the whole Greek peninsula was ever united over anything. They did eventually view themselves as a common ethnicity, but they never thought of this as necessitating a political union. Or if they did, it was always through the idea that MY city state should be in charge.
Generally Troy is not thought of when considering classical city states. Now this could be due in part to the fact that we know very little about Troy itself. Granted, the Aeneis attempts to tie the mythical foundations of Rome back to Troy So I suppose you could argue Troy is a classical civilization in that sense. But it is both culturally and politically very different from what are generally termed Classical Civilizations.
Be that as it may, the Trojan War is the probable start of the battles between the Greek City States and what would become the Persian Empire. There is a firm distinction both culturally and politically between the civilizations that existed on the in the area that is now called Greece and the Persian empire and other regions. Even Macedonia was considered to be borderline barbarian country by the City States generally thought of as classical Greece. I think it would be a stretch to try and argue that Troy may have been just as Greek as Sparta. True there wasn’t any real national unity, except when it came to the “other” which they were actually rather clear about. And Troy was absolutely positively the other.
But I think we can all agree that the Trojans and Spartans would have hated the Irish if they had met them right?
I think the point I realized after my last comment is that during whatever co flict happened during the Trojan War, neither the Spartans nor the Trojans would be classical city states. Homer wrote about and era he didn’t fully understand, because nobody did at the time. The development of the polis had not started in Micenean Greece.
And of course, beautiful work though it is, the Aenid is Augustian propaganda, which sought to connect the Romans with the classical past they loved so much. A classical past that probably didn’t exist they way they thought of anyway.
That’s why I was trying to say that the Aenid connection would be at best tenuous. Granted my focus was more on Rome than Grecce, but generally the Hellinists saw there being a strong distinction between Trojans and Mycenaeans one leading to the Persian empire the other the pan hellinic alliance that ultimately defeated them collapsed was conquered and then conquered the near east and much of the far east before itself collapsing and being conquered by the now assendant Roman Empire. So the Spartans and the Trojans are not dissimilar form England and France. Thus AML thinking there should be some sort of Trojan Spartan sticking together ness makes about as much sense as the French rooting for the English.
There are numerous problems here, so I might as well identify them and correct them one by one:
1) My exact words were, “It’s like two classicists who respect and admire the civilizations of antiquity”; dcl responded with, “Troy was not a City State in Greece….” We’re arguing semantics here, but semantics are vital to the debate right now, so I’ll just say it as plainly as I can: I never said anything about Troy being in Greece. I referenced Troy being a classic civilization contemporaneous in antiquity with Sparta (although it actually predated what we commonly think of Sparta in its period as a city-state). There is zero room to debate about this; any argument to the contrary is contra the historical record.
2) B. Minich makes a number of interesting points at #12, and I will comment on a few of them.
This is undoubtedly correct, as attested to by the reach of the Greek Empire under Alexander the Great. In fact, what was left of Troy after Troy VII was destroyed more or less remained inhabited (albeit on a much larger scale) until the city was reestablished by the Romans. Had Troy VII not been destroyed by the Greeks and remained a powerful city (we also have to pretend it would have survived Persian domination), it likely would have been as Greek a city as Alexandria in Egypt or Ephesus in Turkey and would have been absorbed into Hellenic culture (if it wasn’t already considered Hellenic to begin with). In fact, the Ionian coast was settled by Greeks barely a century after the fall of Troy, so we have to draw the conclusion that the conflict between the Trojans and the Greeks was the inevitable result of two different peoples gradually intertwining themselves amongst each other and figuring how much they are the same or different, and how much to accept and/or adjust to the other.
Again, this is right on. The concept of nations and nationality did not come about until well after the Renaissance and Enlightenment were underway. And when you’re talking about antiquity and the classical period, that’s a helluva long time line to deal with, spanning multiple centuries. Troy likely spoke Luwian or proto-Lycean, with Luwian being tied to Hittite culture and Lycian eventually dying out and being replaced by Ancient Greek. Scholars honestly don’t have much evidence to work with, but we can surmise from its geography that Troy wasn’t quite as “Greek” as Athens or Sparta, and was undoubtedly a very commercial and cosmopolitan city due to its strategic location along key trade routes, so many languages were probably spoken, and my guess is the religion and deities worshiped reflected the broader area influence as well. Still, by the time of Alexander, it absolutely would have been Hellenized like the rest of Lycia and the Luwia peoples were, and today we would have remembered it as being Greek had the Ottomans and Turkic people not eventually overrun Anatolia.
A modern analogy to this debate would probably be the attempt to delineate Northern Irish from Scotch-Irish, Scottish, and Irish, and all that from Celtic, and then from British. Not even Alasdair and Joe Loy would want to wade into that one!
3) Back to dcl, who states:
Well, no, because it was destroyed well before the city-state period. Still, Sparta existed at that time as a city, and since we tend to refer to Sparta throughout that entire period as a city-state (even though it was technically a city-state for a much shorter period than that), we’re wasting our time arguing about the terms “city” vs. “city-state”. Beyond that, B. Minich nails it in his first paragraph at #15.
The mythical Roman connection has very little to do with it, and frankly, we don’t have enough evidence to make a judgment about Troy’s politics, religion, and culture at the time it was in conflict with the Greek cities (~1300 BC). The proper place of Troy in antiquity is lost since it was destroyed, but there is enough evidence to suggest it must be strongly factored in to analyses of both Greek and Hittite civilizations. And since it plays such a major role in the Homeric tradition, from a historian’s point of view, Troy is absolutely classical.
It is completely irrelevant to talk of Troy in relation to the Persian Empire. The Persians didn’t come along until well after the Hittites (of which Troy was probably a dependency / vassal / tributary), the Assyrians, and the Babylonians. Troy was no more influenced culturally by Persia than was Sparta. The dividing line was really the “Sea Peoples” (i.e. Mediterranean cultures) vs. the inland civilizations with which they interacted and occasionally warred: Egyptian, Babylonian, Hittite, Persian, Israelite, etc. That’s not to say the Sea Peoples were all the same; scholars can’t even agree on which Mediterranean peoples constituted the Sea Peoples, but you essentially have Etruscan, Minoan, Greek, Lycian / Lukka, Phoenician, and Philistine, to name a few. Many of these encountered the Persians and fought or were subjugated by them, but none of them can really be associated with the Persians culturally or ethnically. And since the Persians were very light on their subjugated peoples and their reach over the Mediterranean was relatively short, it is likely that the Trojans would’ve retained little Persian influence, similar to what the Israelites and the Cypriots experienced.
Nobody was making that argument — you invented a strawman. See my first point above: “I referenced Troy being a classic civilization contemporaneous in antiquity with Sparta”. Troy’s level of Greekness is totally hypothetical and subject to pure conjecture based on very little evidence to work with one way or the other.
What is the basis for this assertion that the Hellenists saw the Trojans and Mycenaeans as being proto-Persians? Troy fell a good 800 years before the Persians came along — that’s eons even in the Homeric tradition. The concept of Trojans and Mycenaeans makes no sense whatsoever. That’d be like the Basques considering the Visigoths as proto-Moors. In other words, under even the lightest scrutiny accounting for geography and region, language and culture, and ethnicity, it simply makes no sense.
The roots of conflict between Britain and France arose around the turn of the first millennium and concerned itself over disputes related to medieval and feudal interrelations.
After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Franks (a Germanic people) migrated into Gaul and pushed the Celtic peoples westward to Brittany, while the Anglo-Saxons (another Germanic people) displaced the Celtics in Britain and pushed them to Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Right around the end of the first millennium, the Vikings started raiding and settling the shores of Ireland, Britain, France, Spain, and down the European rivers (e.g. the Rhine, Danube, and Volga). They came to Normandy and absorbed into the Gallic / French-ish culture, and subsequently there arose a series of disputes (tying back to blood ties between Anglo-Saxon nobility and Viking nobility) that led to William of Normandy conquering England in 1066. Subsequent disputes arose associated with feudal lands in Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Normandy that were tied together with the English crown, and the long and short of it is, we had the Hundred Years’ War.
Keep in mind, at this time, though peasants from England spoke a different language (though Anglo-Saxon English was heavily influenced by Norman French around this time) and looked different than their French counterparts, the monarchs and nobles of both Britain and France spoke Latin, were Catholics beholden to the pope, and were interrelated by marriage. Looking back, it makes little sense to delineate French from English, and more sense to view it all through the prism of feudalism, knights, and medieval culture.
Given this historical reality, it makes perfect sense to view the golden era of English-French conflict in the same nostalgic vein as one might view the Spartan/Greek-Trojan conflict. I thus defend my mild rooting for the Michigan State Spartans and save any enmity I have for the Spartan polity for the occasional Rose Bowl clash or March Madness showdown.
A couple of follow ups to Andrew’s small book. 😉
First off, the “Troy may have been just as Greek as the Spartans” comment isn’t a complete straw man. I said that, more or less. But that’s complete speculation. Troy fell when it fell. We can’t really see where they would have fallen as a civilization. Because there were many Greek city states and colonies on the Turkish coast of the Aegean Sea, as well as those on the Peloponnese. So perhaps Troy would have eventually been counted as Greek as Ephesus.
And while the idea of Greece was a loose concept, it is a concept that began to take hold. Its why Athens and Sparta fought for control of the Aegean coasts and the Peloponnese. At that point, there was an idea that there was a Greek civilization, that everyone else were barbarians (I mean, just LOOK at those uncouth Romans!), and that perhaps it would be right for someone to hold hegemony over those civilized Greek people.
However, Spartans having kinship with Trojans not withstanding, I don’t think this gives me any excuses to root for one of those schools. Nittany Lions probably existed at this time, but they were related to nobody, classical or otherwise.
Personally, I have always rooted for the “other” USC….The University of South Carolina.
I’ll admit to getting a guilty pleasure that the two USC’s are ‘cocks and Trojans………
Perhaps we are arguing at cross purposes here, I’m not sure. I think honestly, AML’s final four paragraphs are the most relevant to this discussion. And perhaps we shall have to agree to disagree. I think perhaps there is a disparity of perspective and definition that leads to this issue. For if we are arguing from the perspective of the historian, I think Andrew is right. If we are arguing from the perspective of the French and English he is wrong. Thus if we are thinking of things as a Trojan fan, one should not be a Spartan fan unless one is neither a Trojan nor a Spartan. As one can be a fan of French and English history but one cannot be both French and English. And if one is French one cannot be a fan of the English and vica versa.
More specifically
1) Troy did not exist during the classical period. What did exist was the Persian empire. In terms of the historical record if there was any progeny of the Trojans this is about all she wrote otherwise there is simply nothing. The Trojan war was used as an excuse by the Greeks to fight and drum up support to fight The Persian Empire. I don’t see them as worrying too much about the historical accuracy of this desire to fight the Persians and using the Iliad as an excuse. To them, it’s just the people on the other side of the isthmus.
2) Totally false. Is there a way short of continued conquest and colonization Ashencourt is English? No, neither is Troy. Troy may have become a Greek colony, like the various other locals on the isthmus that you reefer too, or it is something completely different both a different civilization and culture. Which is my main point. Troy is something all together different from Classical (Greek) City States (and yes, the Greek is implied) when we are talking about Classical City States.
2.b) Alexander the great came from the equivalent of Ireland not Scotland. Stop bringing him into this unless you understand that he came down and conquered Greece before beginning his world conquest. Macedon had an inferiority complex to the Greek mainland because they kept treating them as inferiors (so the complex kind of makes sense). Which is why he Conquered them in an effort to make Macedon Greek (A sort of who’s the man now bitch sort of action) So let’s say a dude from Ireland decides to Conquer England and call himself English, how English is he? Alexander continued to be ridiculed for wearing pants, especially after he conquered Persia.
2.c) Yes, Troy may have remained powerful, perhaps even been more historically relevant than Athens. I don’t know, you don’t know, and nobody can know because it didn’t. But back to point 2, completely different culture. So the counter factual doesn’t matter. The world would have evolved in a completely different way, thus “Classical Civilization” and “City State” would possibly have a totally different meaning than it does. There is a massive cultural disparity between just Sparta and Athens. Troy is most certainly even more different. But one thing is pretty certain, Troy wasn’t going to be invited to the Pan Hellenic Games, no games no Greek, no Classical City State. Now there is also the possibly that Troy would have been just as historically important or more so, but that is a totally different argument and that doesn’t change that it was something different, separate, and distinct from the Mycenaeans.
2.d) The English settled part of the French coast following the Norman invasion then lost these settlements, are these some how English towns now / still? No. The greeks lost their colonies too.
2.e) No there is not much evidence at all for Trojan culture. There is scant evidence for Spartan culture, there is some evidence for Delphic culture. In terms of Greek civ, just about the only thing there is strong evidence for is Athenian culture. Which makes it very easy to conflate things. But they should not be conflated. They each need to be treated with care as their own unique thing.
2.d) The Scotts analogy is a hornets nest I’ll grant. But there is a simpler way to suss this out. Would you say Egypt is just as Greek as Athens? Had Troy lived the differences would likely have been more like the difference between Greek Civ and Egyptian Civ than Athenian Civ and Spartan Civ. Troy was a proto state when it was destroyed, so we don’t know what it might have become, but what it would have become would have been something separate and distinct from Greek Classical Civ, though likely it would have been informed and influenced by it due to trade in the same manner that Egypt influenced and informed Greek Civ. So Straw man or not, Troy is something different that we don’t know much about.
3) And back to: Primary point, Troy is not was not and by the definition most scholars use never would be considered a Classical City State in the same sense as Athens and Sparta. It is something separate and distinct from them. I think trying to conflate these things does a disservice to all of them. As Troy, again, was something separate and distinct culturally, politically, religiously, historically, etc, etc. Don’t short change Troy, it was its own thing. We don’t know much about it, but we do know it was its own thing. Again, it’s like saying you know French history because you studied English history. Two different things, part of the same overall story, but two different things.
Plus, the Macedonians were thought of as barbarians by the Greeks.
Also true B.
I cam to say the vid was great, and had to wade thru 99 pages of hypothetical history.
The vid was great!
Let’s see: Arkansas, Ole Miss, Auburn, Alabama, Georgia. And at only 5, I’m one of the calmer LSU fans.
Can we get back to the hypothetical historical counter factual?
Finally, a point that is eminently reasonable, but I still disagree. We are now wading into issues of identity and psychology — areas of much much more gray and nuance, filled with subjectivity, much like the insider / outsider problem inherent with studying religion.
My dad is English, which makes me [at least] half-English, though I was born in America. Not surprisingly, I like to follow British politics, I genuinely respect English and British historical accomplishments, and I tend to root for all things British / English. When England plays in soccer, I root for them. However, at the end of the day, I am not English, I am American, and when USA plays England, I root like hell for Team USA.
My wife, in contrast, is a naturalized citizen born in Colombia. She is in tune with, follows, and roots for, all things Colombian, whether it be Colombian politics and national achievements, sports, or culture (Shakira, Carlos Vives, Juanes). Her passion for things Colombian is notably stronger than my passion for things English, and perhaps most telling, when Team USA plays Colombia, she roots for … Colombia.
But back to England and France. No doubt I am predisposed to take the Brits side, even when it comes to history, and the French never let us down in providing material with which to poke fun (OMG, they’re raising the retirement age from 60 to 62. Let’s strike and shut down the country!!!). But ultimately I am not “English”, or at least don’t feel English, even if I might be predisposed to hang the cross of St. George off my balcony when England plays Germany or Argentina.
Despite my English side, I can fully appreciate the French and English conflict and see them as two sides of the same coin, especially given that the modern concepts of what makes one French or English is completely not applicable to that time period. If I traveled back to England in 1100, I’d be dismayed at how much French I heard, and similarly, a French vintner in Burgundy would be annoyed to realize how tied his land and fortune was to British nobility in 1100, but I wouldn’t project onto the past my perceptions of modern England and France. Whereas, indeed, some hypothetical extreme Englishman with traits of JRR Tolkien might rue the loss of Anglo-Saxon language to the Norman French-Latin influence, and insist that the borders of France should end short of Bordeaux and Burgundy, which are rightly English territories.
Similarly, I went to USC and have a strong affinity for all things Trojan, because USC has adopted the Trojans as their mascot and name. But we are not, technically, “Trojans”; we are merely a group of people who have adopted the Trojans as part of our identity and as part of an appreciation of classical traditions and ideals (evident in our campus’ architecture and the attributes of a Trojan written on the Tommy Trojan statue). We are not just the Bears, or the ‘ruins, or the Fighting Irish — our identity has meaning and an appreciation of history and civilization behind it. It is in this vein that we share respects with the Michigan State Spartans, who have chosen a different tradition and historical peoples to adopt for their identity, but one that clearly comes from the same historical thread and shares the same impact on Western civilization. Out of this context, we can appreciate and respect Michigan State more than we might another run-of-the-mill school hawing its wares as Beavers, or Wolverines, or Longhorns.
As for the rest…
1) Yes, Troy was inhabited during the classical period, so technically you are wrong. The Troy of legend and influence was destroyed ~1300 BC, but its relevance in antiquity lived on through Homer and the Greeks, and later the Romans co-opted the Trojans’ legacy as well. So, from a historical relevance and tie-in to the classical period, Troy matters, and outside of the field of archaeology, Troy would fall into the realm of classical history scholarship.
Meanwhile, the citation of Troy in relation to the Persians is moronic. Homer wrote about the Trojan war ~ 800 BC — well before the Persians had appeared on the historical scene. Just because the Greeks rallied themselves against the Persians by citing the heroics of the Greeks against the Trojans doesn’t mean the two are related. If war between Greece and Turkey broke out and Greek generals and propagandists began citing the bravery of the 300, does that mean the Turks and the Persians of antiquity are now tied together as well? That’s total nonsense.
And the isthmus has nothing to do with it. By the time the Persians came along, the Greeks were already establishing themselves in cities and colonies all along the Anatolian coastline and trading heavily with Phoenicians and Egyptians across the Mediterranean. The isthmus as a demarcating border between civilization and barbarians had as much relevance to the Greeks at that time as the Mississippi River does for us today (well, check that — when it comes to sports, pretty much nothing west of the Mississippi seems to matter in the consciousness of the East Coast media).
2a) You need to take your modern goggles off. In the year 1000 AD, was Agencourt English, or French? It was neither. The peasants probably spoke a crude, vulgar form of French that sounds nothing like today’s Parisian French, and the nobles all spoke Latin and were interrelated with other nobles in England and elsewhere. The rituals of daily life would have been centered around the Catholic Church and Mass and for all intents and purposes would’ve felt exactly the same as in Yorkshire or Bath. Both England and France endured a heavy dose of Roman influence prior to feudalism, and moving between the two areas, one would never be struck by the idea that one is “French” and the other is “English” — the concepts simply did not apply at that point in time.
2b) I didn’t bring up anything about Alexander the historical figure except to demarcate a specific time in history wherein he conquered the known world. Alexander’s origins in Macedonia are nothing but an ironic footnote. Alexander’s conquest paved the way for the Hellenization of most of the known civilized world at the time, and if Troy was still relevant by the time he came along, you’d have to assume it would have been Hellenized and become a major Greek city no different than Ephesus or Alexandria. That was my main point and it still stands.
2c) Troy was destroyed in 1300 BC, and you have absolutely no basis on which to judge that it’s culture was wildly different than other Greek cities, nor that it would never have been invited to the pan-Hellenic games had Troy remained relevant into that time period.
2d)
This paragraph is rife with misconceptions and misapplied terms. Who were the English, and who was doing the settling? After 1066, Normandy and England were under the same crown, and English nobility had ties to other French lands. That endured for centuries and led to much conflict, and it had nothing to colonization, it had to do with how feudalism worked.
Meanwhile, the Greeks didn’t “lose” their colonies. Most Greek cities and colonies retained their Hellenic culture even after Rome took over. Alexandria persisted as a major city of Hellenic influence right up until the Muslims came along. Even today, there are significant Greek minority populations in many parts of the Mediterranean that date back to the Roman Empire (similar to the Jews, who were dispersed under entirely different circumstances).
2e) Sounds like you’re agreeing with me here.
2f)
I would say Alexandria was just as Greek as Athens. And that’s the point. A Troy under Greek rule post-Alexander would have become known as a Greek city of antiquity.
3) Again, this is a giant strawman attack. I never said Troy was a classic Greek city-state, I said it was an important city of antiquity tied to Sparta and Greek history. We don’t know how different Troy was from the Greeks, and we don’t know how much the same it was. We do know it was very, very close by geographically, and the Trojans had much sway in the Greek consciousness due to the extent of their dominion and interaction with the Greeks. In fact, Homer goes so far as to describe the Trojans as speaking the same language and worshiping the same gods and sharing the same religious beliefs, which would indicate the Greeks saw them as a sort of brethren, vs. the alien culture of an Egypt or Phoenicia. Historically this is probably inaccurate, but it dispels the notion that Troy was way, way different and could not possibly be considered in the same vein of classical antiquity as the Greek city-states.
As far as English and French history, that really only goes back to 1500 or so. Prior to that, we’re better off referring to it as European history, and that’s the era we are discussing — an era in which the delineations between French and English (as we understand those concepts today) make little sense and it is appropriate and legitimate to appreciate both sides of the conflict.