How Achillies Became Greece's Deadliest Hero

Summary

Camp Gagnon Podcast Summary

Episode: How Achilles Became Greece's Deadliest Hero
Host: Mark Gagnon
Guest/Co-host: Christos
Date: April 9, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this deeply engaging “History Camp” episode, Mark and Christos unravel the myth, history, and legacy of Achilles and the Trojan War. The discussion weaves together Greek legend, Homer’s epic poetry, archaeological discoveries, and the enduring influence of Troy’s story on Western civilization. The hosts blend accessible explanations with humor, offering both a crash course in the Iliad and an exploration of the boundary between myth and reality.

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Main Discussion Highlights

1. Setting the Stage: Troy's Legend and Archaeology

Timestamps: 01:00–04:00

• Mark introduces the legendary backdrop: “No son of TW will ever submit to a foreign ruler.” (01:00)
• The Trojan War’s supposed influence on Western literature and military thought is established.
• Discovery of the real site in Turkey – where “modern archaeologists dug beneath a hill in Turkey and found something that changed everything.” (01:25)

2. How the Trojan War Began: The Mythic Backstory

Timestamps: 05:00–09:00

• Christos guides the audience through the famous “golden apple” contest that started it all:
  • Eris, goddess of Discord, crashes a wedding, sparks a competition among goddesses Hera, Athena, Aphrodite.
  • Paris of Troy is called upon to judge (comically pronounced “Body” in Greek by Christos at 06:59).
• The bribes: Hera (power), Athena (wisdom), Aphrodite (Helen, most beautiful woman in the world).
• Mark jokes about the pitfalls of “wishing” for beauty:

  “When you said the most beautiful woman in the world, I assumed it would be a single woman, right?” (08:26)

3. Helen’s Abduction and the Oath of Tyndareus

Timestamps: 09:44–11:23

• The backstory of Helen—“the face that launched a thousand ships”—her abduction/seduction by Paris.
• Menelaus’ secret weapon: All Helen’s former suitors swore to defend her marriage—a mutual defense pact.
• Agamemnon’s leadership and assembling the Greek fleet.

  “He assembled the largest fleet of the ancient world... over a thousand ships.” (11:25)

4. The Epic of the Iliad: Heroes and Fates

Timestamps: 12:03–17:26

• Introduction to the Iliad: “It just covers a few weeks in the 10th year of the siege.” (12:15)
• Focus on Achilles, his near-invulnerability, and choice between a short glorious or long forgotten life.
  • Discussion of the heel myth (14:07–14:35) and its later addition to the tradition.
• Other Greek heroes:
  • Odysseus—“the smartest, sharpest dude” who feigned madness to avoid going to war (16:09)
  • Ajax—the “Greek wall” (16:41)
  • Patroclus—Achilles’s closest companion, whose death sparks Achilles’s rage.
• Trojans:
  • Hector—noble defender of Troy, whose tender moment with his son is described as

    “one of the most heartbreaking... in all of literature.” (15:38)

  • Paris and old King Priam.

5. Achilles’ Rage and the Turning of the War

Timestamps: 17:26–23:28

• Achilles withdraws from battle after an insult by Agamemnon.
• Patroclus dons Achilles’s armor, is killed by Hector—a pivotal tragedy.
• Achilles’s grief, return to battle, and the brutal slaying and desecration of Hector, “drag[ging] (Hector’s) body... day after day.” (22:29)
• The emotional climax: Old King Priam begs for Hector’s body. Achilles and Priam share a profound moment of mutual grief.

  “Achilles, for the first time, sees his enemy as a human being. And he weeps. And the two... just hold each other and they weep together.” (23:12)

6. Beyond Homer: The End of Troy

Timestamps: 24:01–27:50

• The Iliad ends with Hector’s funeral, not Troy’s fall. The rest is told in other epics (e.g., Aeneid).
• Achilles’s death (by Paris/Apollo’s arrow through the heel) is a later tradition, not found in the Iliad.
• The Greeks’ ruse of the Trojan Horse, with warnings from Cassandra and Laocoon, the fall of Troy, and the massacre.

7. Did Troy Exist? Unraveling Fact from Legend

Timestamps: 28:10–33:12

• 19th-century archaeologists (Schliemann, Dorpfeld, Blagan, Korfman) and the discovery of Hisarlik—layered cities beneath the legendary Troy.
• Archaeological evidence of a destruction event (Troy 7A), but no direct proof of Homer’s story, nor any giant wooden horse.
• References to the city in Hittite texts (“Wailusa” as Troy, “Ahiyawa” as Achaean Greeks). The “Alexandu Treaty” possibly linking Paris (also known as Alexander) to the historic record.

8. The Late Bronze Age Collapse

Timestamps: 33:33–38:03

• The wider context: simultaneous collapse of Mycenaean, Hittite, and Eastern Mediterranean civilizations.
• Potential causes: “drought plus famine plus civil war, internal rebellion... systemic failure, and then raids by the mysterious Sea peoples.” (37:30)
• Troy’s fall fits within this larger societal catastrophe.

9. The Legacy of the Iliad and the Trojan War

Timestamps: 38:10–44:32

• Enormous influence on Western storytelling—tragic heroes, epic war tales, concept of the “Trojan Horse” in military and digital security, and the Rome founding myth in the Aeneid.

• Europe’s medieval nations claimed descent from Trojans—myth as nation-building tool.

• The Iliad’s revolutionary depiction of both enemies’ humanity:

  “It shows us the humanity on both sides of war... Achilles is the hero, but he's also like, cruel and he's kind of, like mopey and Petty.” (42:49/43:01)

• The deeper lesson:

  “The real tragedy of war isn't about who won or who lost. It's that it costs everyone.” (44:17)

10. Reflections and Modern Cultural References

Timestamps: 45:07–49:10

• Discussion of the Iliad vs. Odyssey as literary masterpieces, their personal impact.
• Light-hearted banter about “Trojan” condoms and the misapplied metaphor—

  “The irony is, like, oh, you have this capsule that is brought in, and, you know, it seems like it's safe, and then a bunch of, like, little soldiers, you know, escape out of the capsule. It seems like a bad kind of metaphor for a contraceptive company...” (47:54).

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the Stakes of the Myth:

  “This is Troy, where for a millennia, the line between fiction and history was blurred.” —Mark Gagnon (01:19)

• On Achilles’s Fate:

  “He was either going to live a long, quiet life and just be forgotten or he could fight at Troy and die young, but be remembered as a hero forever.” —Mark Gagnon (14:48)

• On the Brutality and Humanity of War:

  “Priam, Hector’s father, crosses the battlefield alone at night... and he kneels before Achilles... and he just asks for Hector's body. He says, think of your own father. And Achilles... weeps. And the two of them just hold each other and they weep together.” —Mark Gagnon (23:06)

• On the Enduring Power of the Story:

  “Like, for a war that we don't even know if it really happened, it's one of the most impactful wars ever.” —Mark Gagnon (38:19)

• On The Iliad's Unique Lens:

  “It shows us the humanity on both sides of war, which is very unique for the time...” —Mark Gagnon (42:26)

• On the Irony of Trojan Brand Condoms:

  “You get a wooden horse that slips in, and their lawyers can be like, nah, read this shit. This will blow your mind, man. That's wild.” —Mark Gagnon (48:51)

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Overall Tone & Style

• Conversational, irreverent, but deeply informed.
• Frequent use of humor and modern references to make the ancient subject matter relatable.
• Both Mark and Christos demonstrate genuine fascination and reverence for Greek history, literature, and mythology.

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For Listeners New to the Trojan War

This episode serves both as a crash course in the myth of Troy and a thoughtful meditation on why the story has shaped Western culture for millennia. Mark and Christos discuss not only the mythic tale—full of flawed heroes, divine meddling, and tragic consequences—but also interrogate what is fact and what is poetic license. The nuanced humanity found in Homer’s depiction of both Greeks and Trojans forms the philosophical core of the conversation.

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Key Takeaways

• The story of Troy lies at the intersection of myth and reality; a real city was violently destroyed, but the cause may have been more mundane than an epic war over love and pride.
• The Iliad’s narrative choices, especially its refusal to make war heroic or simplistic, shaped Western literature’s approach to character and tragedy.
• Archaeology and Hittite records provide tantalizing clues, but no definitive “smoking gun” for the myth as Homer tells it.
• The legacy of Troy infuses language (e.g., “Trojan horse”), cultural identity, and even everyday products (with a healthy dose of irony regarding Trojan condoms).
• Ultimately, Homer’s lesson is as relevant now as it was 3,000 years ago: war is catastrophic for all involved, and its true cost is shared grief and loss.

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For further learning:

• The Iliad & Odyssey by Homer
• Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles
• BBC Series: Troy: Fall of a City
• Research on Late Bronze Age Collapse and Hittite cuneiform records

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Mark Gagnon]

We gather here tonight to bring women back to their rightful place.

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[Mark Gagnon]

No son of TW will ever submit to a foreign ruler. For 2,000 years, readers treated it as just a legend. A literary landscape, but not a real place. This was a war so famous that it shaped literature, philosophy and military strategy of every civilization that came after it. A story where gods walked amongst men and the greatest warrior in history wept on the battlefield. This is Troy, where for a millennia, the line between fiction and history was blurred. But then modern archaeologists dug beneath a hill in Turkey and found something that changed everything. Real evidence of destruction, roughly aligning with later Greek chronology. So what actually happened? Was there a real Trojan War? Did Achilles and Hector truly fight outside of those very walls? Well, today we're diving into the story of Troy, where myth and reality collide and we will try to separate what we know from what we can only

[Christos]

pass as a hypothesis.

[Mark Gagnon]

So sit back, relax, and welcome to History Camp. What's up, people? And welcome back to History Camp. My name is Mark Agnon and thank you for joining me in my tent, where every single week we explore the most interesting, fascinating and controversial stories from all time. From all history forever. Yes. This is the purpose of the show. I sit in this tent every single week and I try to understand everything that's ever happened.

[Christos]

And oh, boy, there's a lot of stuff.

[Mark Gagnon]

There's a whole world out there with things happening every single day, and we're wasting time in here doing the intro. But I just wanna say thank you for tuning in.

[Christos]

Every time you click on a video,

[Mark Gagnon]

every time you support us it truly. It means the world. It keeps the lights on, keeps the fire burning here at the campsite. And I have great news.

[Christos]

We have a campfire.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now, what is the campfire? That is the place where you wanna gather. That's the place where you wanna get around and tell stories. And that is over at Patreon. Yes, patreon.com Camp Gagnon.

[Christos]

That is the gathering. That is the campfire.

[Mark Gagnon]

That is where people just like yourselves go to feel more like you.

[Christos]

I mean, we drop extra episodes. We got content that only lives behind the paywall. We got zooms every month where we actually just hang out and just talk. It's the best. I really love it.

[Mark Gagnon]

Merch discounts, all that stuff.

[Christos]

Check it out.

[Mark Gagnon]

Patreon.com Camp Gagnon all the proceeds go

[Christos]

to a haircut for my dear friend, Christos. How are you, Christos?

As long as I'm getting proceeds, sign up.

[Mark Gagnon]

All right. Okay. All right, all right, all right. See, now we're cutting.

[Christos]

Now we're chopping that down.

[Mark Gagnon]

Your long, illustrious hair needs to get chopped off.

[Christos]

All right? And I think the audience has had it with how handsome and just beautiful your hair is.

Sounds like the pot calling the kettle

[Mark Gagnon]

black, but yes, that is exactly what's happening. You are black. Is that what that means?

[Christos]

That's not what I said.

I don't know exactly what you said,

[Mark Gagnon]

but look, we're talking about the myth of Troy.

[Christos]

Have you heard of this before?

Absolutely.

I mean, you're a Greek.

Exactly.

[Mark Gagnon]

So this is. I mean, I've heard it said that the. The legends of, you know, the Iliad, the Odyssey, it's.

[Christos]

I mean, like, these famous battles of

[Mark Gagnon]

Troy, like, this is etched into the. The subconscious of the Greeks going back thousands of years. I mean, Alexander the Great allegedly slept with this very story under his pillow. What say you?

[Christos]

That?

I'd say I met a few Helen of choice in my day.

Oh, okay, Christos, that is just a regular six

[Mark Gagnon]

for you. I mean, come on. That's what I mean. This is a fascinating story, truly. I mean, Alexander the Great, that's kind of my purview into this. I never actually read Iliad, the Odyssey, any of that. I mean, no, I read the Odyssey. I never read the Iliad, but I understand that, you know, Alexander the Great wanted to be Achilles. That was his thing. He was like, I am destined to be Achilles. I'm literally the guy in the book.

[Christos]

Like, that is a wild amount of influence.

[Mark Gagnon]

And for the longest time, people were like, oh, yeah, this is just a story. But According to some current records, the line between what is real and what

[Christos]

is fake has been blurred. And today we're figuring that all out.

[Mark Gagnon]

So first, let's understand the Trojan War. We have to understand the mythos around it. And really, we understand the ancient Greeks,

[Christos]

which no one has ever done in history. But we're going to give our best shot. All right?

[Mark Gagnon]

And we're not talking about, like, armies or politics. We're talking about a party and a golden apple. We're going into the. The myth, the mythos, the founding sort

[Christos]

of stories that the Greeks tell themselves.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now, according to the myth, there was this big wedding for the sea goddess Thetis, and there was a mortal king named Pelaeus.

[Christos]

And basically every God and goddess on

[Mark Gagnon]

Mount Olympus was invited to pull up. Every God was accepted except for one, and that's Eris.

[Christos]

Eris is the goddess of Discord? Yes. She's a gaming mod and she just. She lives in a basement. No, not that Discord.

[Mark Gagnon]

She is the goddess of basically, chaos, of sewing, descent, and was left off the guest list for obvious reasons. Right.

[Christos]

If I'm having a wedding, I'm not inviting Eris.

[Mark Gagnon]

I have a few heiresses in my life, and I didn't invite them. But you. You don't want that kind of thing

[Christos]

showing up at the party.

[Mark Gagnon]

But what does Eris do? Classic goddess of Discord shows up uninvited and tossed a golden apple into the crowd. And in it, or on it rather, was inscribed a single phrase for the fairest. Literally, like, yo, the baddest bee in here.

[Christos]

You guys get the apple.

[Mark Gagnon]

So then three goddesses immediately claimed it, right?

[Christos]

Hera, queen of the gods.

[Mark Gagnon]

Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war,

[Christos]

and Aphrodite, goddess of love. Zeus wisely refused to judge the contest himself, like. Cause obviously that's a pretty.

[Mark Gagnon]

Like, if you're.

[Christos]

If.

[Mark Gagnon]

Because Zeus is married to. Come on, bro, you don't know this, Christos.

[Christos]

I should, but I don't.

[Mark Gagnon]

You should. I think. I think Hera.

[Christos]

I think Zeus and Hera, but I don't know, I'm just kind of like, swinging.

[Mark Gagnon]

Here it is. Here it was here. So Zeus and Hera are married, and all of a sudden he's at this wedding. His wife pulls up and goes, can

[Christos]

you judge who's the hottest, me or

[Mark Gagnon]

these other two women?

[Christos]

And he's like, oh, God, I'm not. You can't get involved in that.

[Mark Gagnon]

So he doesn't. And instead he sent the three goddesses to a. A young Trojan prince named Paris, or Paris Body. Oh, you say body?

[Christos]

Yeah.

That's kind of nice. It's Greek body.

[Mark Gagnon]

I'm gonna say Paris. And basically, Paris is the son of

[Christos]

King Priam, and as you know, Priam of Troy.

[Mark Gagnon]

So each goddess offers Paris a bribe. Hera offered him power, dominion over all

[Christos]

of Europe and Asia.

[Mark Gagnon]

Which is kind of funny that the

[Christos]

goddess of all the goddesses was like, I'll give you some of the land.

[Mark Gagnon]

Like, I'm assuming in the story, it

[Christos]

was like, all that they knew.

[Mark Gagnon]

But it's funny that they were like.

[Christos]

She was like, yeah, you're not gonna get Argentina. That's crazy.

[Mark Gagnon]

You're not gonna get Morocco.

[Christos]

Why would they.

[Mark Gagnon]

I'm just saying, if you're offering this whole bribe to get this golden apple

[Christos]

to be the fairest of them all, I'm just.

[Mark Gagnon]

You would think you should up the ante regardless.

[Christos]

All right.

[Mark Gagnon]

Athena offers him wisdom and skill in battle he would never lose a war against.

[Christos]

That's a pretty good sales pitch that actually, I think is better than land.

[Mark Gagnon]

Well, actually, you do war to get land.

[Christos]

Anyway.

[Mark Gagnon]

Aphrodite offers the most beautiful woman in the world.

[Christos]

Yeah, that's. I mean, it's kind of funny that even way back then they were like,

[Mark Gagnon]

yeah, obviously, because men go to war to what, get land.

[Christos]

And why do they want land? To get women.

[Mark Gagnon]

So just go straight to women. Now Paris chooses Aphrodite, the most beautiful

[Christos]

woman in the world.

[Mark Gagnon]

And that decision, according to the Greeks, is what burned Troy to the ground. The most beautiful woman in the world that is basically offered is Helen. And Helen is married to Menelaus, the king of Sparta. Ugh. Don't you hate that? I mean, this is like a real,

[Christos]

like, monkey paw thing. Because it's like, hey, I assumed when

[Mark Gagnon]

you said the most beautiful woman in the world, it would be a single woman, right? Like that. Like, oh, give me the most beautiful woman in the world. And then it's like an 85 year old, and you're like, what? And they were like, oh, she used to be the most. You didn't specify when. She is the most beautiful of all time.

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[Mark Gagnon]

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[Christos]

Are you saying married women are 85 year old women?

[Mark Gagnon]

I'm just saying it's like if you're, if you're thinking most beautiful, you just think like, oh, yeah, that conditionally would mean, you know, between the ages of

[Christos]

like 24 and 35.

[Mark Gagnon]

You know, is that bad? All right, let me rephrase that. If you're thinking the most beautiful woman in the world, you're assuming, oh, she's

[Christos]

not like a criminal.

[Mark Gagnon]

Like, you don't want someone that's gonna like murder you.

[Christos]

You assume that she's like, not psychotic. You assume that she's single.

No STIs.

[Mark Gagnon]

No, I think beautiful women can have STIs, actually. I think perhaps the most beautiful woman, probably.

[Christos]

Probably right.

[Mark Gagnon]

Anyway, now this guy's the king of Sparta.

[Christos]

And Paris sails to Sparta.

[Mark Gagnon]

And whether he seduced her or abducted

[Christos]

her depends on, like, which version you read.

[Mark Gagnon]

But either way, Helen is now chilling

[Christos]

with Paris and is going back to Troy.

[Mark Gagnon]

And now Menelaus wants her back because obviously it's his wife, A, and B,

[Christos]

she's the hottest one in the world.

[Mark Gagnon]

But he had a secret weapon that

[Christos]

Paris knew nothing about.

[Mark Gagnon]

So before Helen had married Menelaus, she had dozens of suitors. Every king and prince, and I mean

[Christos]

just everyone in Greece. They wanted a piece.

[Mark Gagnon]

And her father, fearing that the rejected suitors would start a war amongst themselves. I mean, that's how bad this girl was. He basically made them all swear an oath. Whoever won Helen's hand, the rest would defend that marriage.

[Christos]

Think about that.

[Mark Gagnon]

It was a mutual defense pact. And now Menelaus was calling it in. So the man who organized the Greek response was Menelaus. Brother. This guy, Agamemnon, this is the king of Mycenae and was the most powerful

[Christos]

ruler in all of Greece at the time.

[Mark Gagnon]

And Agamemnon didn't just want Helen back, he wanted all of Troy. Yeah, according to later Greek Tradition. He assembled the largest fleet of the ancient world, the largest fleet ever assembled. Over a thousand ships, according to Homer,

[Christos]

carrying the greatest warriors of the Greek world.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now, let's just pause the story here, all right? We're going to do like a little

[Christos]

Lion King one and a half thing.

[Mark Gagnon]

We're going to talk about what and

[Christos]

who is talking about this and how that changes what the story actually is.

[Mark Gagnon]

So you might have heard of Homer, right? He's the Greek poet that writes the Iliad. And the Iliad is an epic poem about the Trojan War. It was likely the product of, you

[Christos]

know, centuries of oral song and storytelling.

[Mark Gagnon]

Some of it is fact, some of

[Christos]

it is kind of embellished, some of

[Mark Gagnon]

it's just purely fictional. And it was crystallized sometime around, like the 8th or early 7th century BC. Now, by Homer's time, the world that

[Christos]

the poet was describing was already gone.

[Mark Gagnon]

And the Iliad doesn't actually cover the entire Trojan War. It just covers a few weeks in the 10th year of the siege. And it centers on one dude, this guy Achilles.

[Christos]

Now every time I think of Achilles, the only thing I think of, oh, I'm actually curious, what do you think Chris does?

Heal.

Heal. Obviously. Come on now.

[Mark Gagnon]

But there's two.

[Christos]

One, Hercules has a great little joke on Achilles.

What is it?

It's like there's a statue of Achilles and then I think Hercules is like looking at it. He like just taps it very gently and the whole thing collapses.

[Mark Gagnon]

But he taps it right on the heel. Spoiler alert.

[Christos]

Sorry. I'm not sorry. It's a 2000 year old story. If you don't know by now, that's on you.

[Mark Gagnon]

The other thing I always think about

[Christos]

is that one was a wheel of

[Mark Gagnon]

fortune where they try to guess the.

[Christos]

Guess the letters.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, he's. This guy's up there and it's like the, the warrior Achilles, but there's like three letters missing.

[Christos]

And he's like, I think I'm gonna guess it. And everyone's like, oh, yeah, he's got it. So obviously the hero Achilles.

[Mark Gagnon]

And then he goes up there and goes, the hero Hls.

[Christos]

And the dude's like, I am so sorry. That is. It's not ageless.

And then just Trebek just looks down.

[Mark Gagnon]

He's just like, oh. And it's like, so like you knew it and you're actually getting punished for

[Christos]

reading it and not knowing how to pronounce it.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's kind of the bad thing. Like I have friends that say homage and it's like you actually know what the word is. You just don't know how to pronounce Homage.

[Christos]

I think more people are saying homage now than homage.

Yeah, maybe. And eventually that's just going to become the word.

[Mark Gagnon]

Regardless.

[Christos]

It's just the funniest video ever.

[Mark Gagnon]

The hero aus and just going.

[Christos]

And then it goes to the person

[Mark Gagnon]

right next to him, the hero Achilles.

[Christos]

Everyone's like, yeah. And then just cuts back to his face and he's just like, all time

[Mark Gagnon]

clip Regardless, that guy Achilles from Wheel of Fortune, he's basically the greatest warrior that Greece has ever produced. His mother was the goddess Thetis.

[Christos]

Remember her from the whole thing?

[Mark Gagnon]

According to the later legend, she had dipped him in the river sticks as an infant, making him invulnerable. He was completely protected and virtually immortal everywhere, except for the very heel where she held him.

[Christos]

Would you think that she would just do the whole job right?

Get her fingers in that thing?

[Mark Gagnon]

That's what I'm saying.

[Christos]

Oh, my fingertips are now invincible.

[Mark Gagnon]

It's like, all right, both of you guys jump in head first.

[Christos]

I don't even understand.

[Mark Gagnon]

Regardless, the famous story comes from later tradition, not from the Iliad itself. Homer actually never mentions the river sticks

[Christos]

or the heel or any of that stuff.

[Mark Gagnon]

Achilles was fast and ferocious and was terrifying.

[Christos]

In general, he was just a beast, all right?

[Mark Gagnon]

He knew because a prophecy had told him that he had two possible fates,

[Christos]

that he was either going to live

[Mark Gagnon]

a long, quiet life and just be

[Christos]

forgotten, or he could fight a Troy

[Mark Gagnon]

and die young, but be remembered as a hero forever.

[Christos]

And as you can imagine, for the reasons that we're obviously talking about him, he chooses glory.

[Mark Gagnon]

But alongside Achilles is this iconic cast

[Christos]

of characters, all right? And they have made the Iliad kind of what it is, this lasting, influential piece of literature.

[Mark Gagnon]

And they also shape so much of

[Christos]

storytelling and character development and, like, side

[Mark Gagnon]

characters, like stuff that we still use

[Christos]

to this very day.

[Mark Gagnon]

So on the Trojan side was this guy Hector. This is the eldest son of King Priam and the commander of Troy's armies. And this is where Achilles fought for personal glory. Hector was fighting for something different. He was fighting for his city and for his family and most importantly, for his infant son. In the Iliad, Homer actually gives us

[Christos]

one of the most heartbreaking, like, the saddest visuals ever, maybe, in all of literature.

[Mark Gagnon]

Hector is reaching for his baby boy,

[Christos]

and the child is crying because he

[Mark Gagnon]

doesn't recognize his father in his war helmet.

[Christos]

And Hector laughs and takes off his helmet and holds his son.

[Mark Gagnon]

And he knows that he's probably going

[Christos]

to die and never see this boy grow up. But he fights anyway. Beautiful.

[Mark Gagnon]

Could bring a tear to my eye, but it's not. And then there is Odysseus, the king of Ithaca. This is like the smartest, sharpest dude

[Christos]

in all of the Greek army.

[Mark Gagnon]

He didn't really want to go to Troy at all. And so when the recruiters arrived, Odysseus pretended to be crazy.

[Christos]

He was like, plowing his fields with salt, which would obviously destroy your fields.

[Mark Gagnon]

But the story goes that they placed his infant son in front of the plow.

[Christos]

And then when Odysseus swerved to avoid

[Mark Gagnon]

the child, they knew that he was actually faking it, which, I don't know.

[Christos]

Like, I could imagine someone being crazy is like, yeah, I'm. I think that, you know, I'm talking to. I am Jesus Christ. But also, I'm not going to kill my kid. Anyway.

[Mark Gagnon]

So then they go to war, and

[Christos]

his cunning eventually, you know, would end it.

[Mark Gagnon]

And then there was Ajax, this massive, immovable beast of a man carrying a shield said to be made of seven layers of ox hide and a layer of bronze. He was the Greek wall. He was the man who basically held

[Christos]

the line when everyone else broke.

[Mark Gagnon]

And then, of course, Patroclus, Achilles closest companion and the person that he loved the most in the world and remember

[Christos]

that name because we'll come back to him in a second.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now, on the Trojan side, alongside Hector,

[Christos]

obviously you have Paris, more of a lover kind of thief type dude than a fighter, and kind of starts this whole, you know, saga.

[Mark Gagnon]

And then you have the aging king Priam, who had built Troy into one of the wealthiest cities in the ancient

[Christos]

world and would then live to watch it burn down.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now let's move on to the siege. According to the wider mythic tradition, especially later epics, the Greeks besieged Troy for 10 years.

[Christos]

A decade of fighting and raiding the surrounding countryside and skirmishes and just Troy's fortifications were legendary. It had these massive stone walls that the myths claimed were built by the gods Poseidon and by Apollo themselves.

[Mark Gagnon]

The Greeks couldn't break through. They just couldn't.

[Christos]

And the Trojans couldn't drive them away.

[Mark Gagnon]

So as a result, they were kind of just stalemated for 10 years. The Iliad picks up the story in that 10th year, right at the very end. And it begins with this catastrophic argument. So you got Agamemnon, the Greek commander. He's basically taken a war prize. He captured a woman named Chryseis, and Chryseis father is a priest of Apollo. So when Agamemnon refuses to return her. Apollo sends a plague through the Greek camps. Achilles pushes publicly, affronts Agamemnon, and is like, bro, what are you doing? Give the girl back. Everyone's dying. Agamemnon agrees, but then he takes Achilles's war prize, a woman named Briseis, as compensation.

[Christos]

Achilles is obviously humiliated, and his response changes the course of the entire war.

[Mark Gagnon]

He refuses to fight. He withdraws to his tent, and he

[Christos]

stays there while the Trojans basically push

[Mark Gagnon]

the Greeks back to their ships. What's up, guys? We're gonna take a break really quick because you know what time it is. It's time to level up. And Bluechew just dropped something wild. Okay? Bluechew's been rocking with us from the beginning, so of course, we have to rock.

[Christos]

Pun intended.

[Mark Gagnon]

With them, all right? And what they've just done is change the game. All right? This is next level gold medal energy, this Bluechew Gold. If you've never heard of it, this is the newest innovation from the number one chewable Ed brand. All right? This isn't the little blue pill that your grandpa used. This is the four in one beast that is setting the gold standard for performance. We're talking two ingredients to keep the the good times rolling, okay? Mixed with apomorphine and oxytocin that are going to turn up the arousal and the connections in your brain, as well as the ingredients to keep the blood flow, to keep everything pumping, okay? Bluechew Gold dissolves into your tongue and works in as little as 15 minutes. And that means you're going to be rocking quicker and staying in the game longer. Let me just say that's how we put this tent up every single episode. We give Christos a bluechew, and you know what? We have this tent rocking all year round, okay? That's what it takes. Now, I recommend this in a, you know, a married, Christian relationship, but you know what? You guys can do whatever you want. Bluechew is the ultimate service to get you these chewables to your door in a discreet way to keep the bedroom on fire. We have a special deal for the listeners of this program. You're going to get 10% off your first month of Bluechew Gold if you use the code Gagnon G A G N, O N. That's promo code Gagnon G A G N o N. You can visit bluechew.com for more details and important safety information. And thank you so much to Bluechew for keeping the lights on and making this show for possible now, let's get back to it. Without Achilles, the Greeks are suddenly losing. Hector leads the Trojans on a devastating

[Christos]

offensive, nearly burning the Greek fleet completely to the ground.

[Mark Gagnon]

And this is where Patroclus makes this fateful decision. Remember, that's the guy that Achilles loves. He goes to Achilles and begs him

[Christos]

to return to battle, and Achilles basically refuses and says, I'm not going. That dude took my girl. I'm out.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now Patroclus asks for the next best thing. Permission to wear Achilles armor and basically lead his men to go fight. And Achilles agrees. But he warns him, hey, you can go put on my armor.

[Christos]

They'll think it's me.

[Mark Gagnon]

Push the Trojans back from the ships, but don't do anything else, and then

[Christos]

we'll figure it out.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now, Patroclus does a lot more.

[Christos]

He gets a little sugar high from this little skirmish.

[Mark Gagnon]

So wearing Achilles armor, he rallies the Greeks and drives the Trojans all the way back to the walls of Troy. Now, the Trojans think that Achilles has returned, and they panic. But Patroclus pushes too far. He doesn't listen to Achilles. He reaches the walls of the. And there, Hector kills him. Now, right off the bat, let's just be clear about what happens next, because it is one of the most devastating sequences in all of ancient literature ever. When Achilles learns that Patroclus is dead, he lets out a scream so terrible that according to the story, his mother hears it at the bottom of the ocean. He doesn't just grieve, he's destroyed. And his grief turns into a rage that is just all consuming. And it becomes so much that it becomes the driving force of the entire poem. Achilles returns to battle wearing new armor forged by the God Hephaestus himself, and cuts through the Trojan armor like wildfire. I mean, the dude's just on a, like, just passing the ball, bro.

[Christos]

He's hot.

[Mark Gagnon]

And so he fills the river Scamander with so many bodies that the river gods rise up in anger, and they're like, what are you doing dumping all these bodies in a river? Finally, outside the walls of Troy, he meets Hector. Homer writes that Hector runs the greatest Trojan warrior ever sees Achilles and just books it three times around the walls

[Christos]

of the city because he knows what's coming next.

[Mark Gagnon]

Finally, tricked by the goddess Athena into standing his ground, Hector turns and fights.

[Christos]

And Achilles kills him.

[Mark Gagnon]

But Achilles isn't done. He ties Hector's body to the back of his chariot and drags it around the walls of Troy, around the tomb of Patroclus, day after day. And it's in this act of desecration that shocks everyone, even the gods. But again, Achilles was going crazy. He's blind with rage. Now, the Iliad doesn't end with the fall of Troy, but with something quieter, I guess, and a lot of ways, like more.

[Christos]

More poetic, a lot more powerful from a rhetorical perspective.

[Mark Gagnon]

Old King Priam, Hector's father, crosses the battlefield alone at night and enters the Greek camp and he kneels before Achilles,

[Christos]

the man who literally killed his son. And he just asks for Hector's body. He' begging him, like, please.

[Mark Gagnon]

He says, think of your own father. And Achilles, for the first time, sees his enemy as a human being. And he weeps. And the two of them just hold each other and they weep together. And Achilles gives Hector's body back to his dad. Now, that is where Homer ends the poem.

[Christos]

Not with victory, not with the fall of Troy.

[Mark Gagnon]

Just two enemies, I guess, like, you

[Christos]

know, the father of an enemy and,

[Mark Gagnon]

you know, Achilles himself sharing this moment of grief. And they're both really crying. And I think in a way, Achilles

[Christos]

is crying for the loss of his friend and obviously Hector's dad is crying for the loss of his son. And that, you know, more than any

[Mark Gagnon]

battle scene, more than any of the themes of honor or glory. That is why the Iliad has endured

[Christos]

for like, literally almost 3,000 years.

[Mark Gagnon]

So Homer doesn't describe the fall of

[Christos]

Troy in the Iliad, and this is told about in later epics and tragedies.

[Mark Gagnon]

And for that story we have to rely on the so called Epic Cycle, a collection of poems by other ancient

[Christos]

authors, most of which survive only in

[Mark Gagnon]

fragments or pieces or summaries and later works where they reference them. And this is especially prominent in Virgil's aeneid, written nearly 700 years after Homer. Now, according to these traditions, Achilles didn't survive the war. He's killed by Paris, of all people, the weakest warrior on the field. The guy who literally gets this whole thing kicked off because he goes and steals slash, seduces a woman from the Spartans, and he literally shoots him with an arrow. Guided by Apollo, the arrow strikes his heel.

[Christos]

At least according to the later tradition.

[Mark Gagnon]

None of the earliest sources agree on the exact manner of his death.

[Christos]

The heel shot is a detail that

[Mark Gagnon]

kind of grew in the retelling, which

[Christos]

is not derived from the Iliad.

[Mark Gagnon]

But of course, the image stuck. The greatest warrior of the age, the most fearsome man to ever live, brought

[Christos]

down by the one man that no one really respected, hitting the one spot where he was vulnerable.

[Mark Gagnon]

The Greeks said even the gods had

[Christos]

a sense of irony.

[Mark Gagnon]

After Achilles death, Odysseus devises a plan

[Christos]

that will end the war.

[Mark Gagnon]

The Greeks get together and build this enormous wooden horse.

[Christos]

You've probably heard of this, or at least seen it.

[Mark Gagnon]

And this horse is hollow on the inside. And they hide their best warriors inside the horse. The rest of the Greek army sails away, appearing to abandon the siege. The war is done.

[Christos]

And there's a horse now.

[Mark Gagnon]

The Trojans, believing that the war is over, drag the horse inside basically as like a trophy. But there are warnings. The Trojan priest Laocoon famously said, I fear Greeks even bearing gifts. This is the origin of the popular

[Christos]

phrase, beware of Greeks bearing gifts. Christos, you gave me this most immaculate honey like not a year ago. Do you remember that?

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[Christos]

You have HPV now.

[Mark Gagnon]

Oh, oral through the honey genital. No. How do you know what I did with the honey? Dude, that's crazy. Now once again, the prophetess Cassandra, cursed by Apollo. And this is the curse to see the future but never to be believed. Screamed that the horse meant death.

[Christos]

And of course due to the prophecy, no one believed.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now that is one of the most

[Christos]

all time evil curses ever.

[Mark Gagnon]

If I'm Cassandra though, I would just

[Christos]

say the opposite of what you want to happen, right?

[Mark Gagnon]

If Cassandra's like, bring that horse in here. I'm sure it's full of gold.

[Christos]

Everyone would be like, we don't believe that.

[Mark Gagnon]

Keep the horse out there.

[Christos]

Like she's got to know that you can reverse psychology anyway.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now, that night, the Greek warriors crept

[Christos]

out of the horse.

[Mark Gagnon]

They opened the gates and signaled the

[Christos]

fleet which had only sailed to like a nearby island. They were hiding.

[Mark Gagnon]

The Greek army poured into Troy and what followed was just a massacre. Priam was killed at his own altar.

[Christos]

Hector's infant son was thrown from the walls.

[Mark Gagnon]

The woman of Troy were enslaved and the city its was burned to ashes. Troy fell and the story became immortalized. Now for over 2000 years. Many scholars in the early modern period, they heard this story, they read the actual source material and they went through and they were like, yeah, this is just a story. This is a metaphor.

[Christos]

Talking about, you know, like honor and

[Mark Gagnon]

tragedy and, you know, family and love. This is not a real, this is just a play. It's not a real thing. Homer's world of gods and heroes, it's

[Christos]

just, it's not history.

[Mark Gagnon]

This is just a literary invention and nothing more. However, some 19th century classicists did suspect that a real site was perhaps behind the legend. And then in the 1870s, a German businessman named Heinrich Schliemann made a fantastic discovery.

[Christos]

But Mr. Schliemann, well, he was a complicated guy, okay? To put it mildly.

[Mark Gagnon]

He was a self made millionaire, a

[Christos]

compulsive liar who would fabricate the very own parts of his own autobiography, and

[Mark Gagnon]

an amateur archaeologist with a lot more

[Christos]

ambition than actual archaeology insight.

[Mark Gagnon]

He was convinced against the scholarly consensus of the time, that Homer's Troy was a real place. And he believed that it was buried beneath a mound called Hisarlik in northwest Turkey near the entrance to the Dardanelles. Now he started digging in 1870 and what he found stunned the world. He found buried under Hisarlik. It's not just one city. It was a bunch of cities layered on top of each other, on top of each other over and over like a cake. And over the centuries, city after city had been built in the same exact spot, each one rising from the ruins of the last. And obviously, civilizations did this all the time.

[Christos]

You would either stumble across this, you

[Mark Gagnon]

know, great place to live and there'd be some huts that were kind of burned down. He'd be like, oh, let's just build on top.

[Christos]

It's great.

[Mark Gagnon]

It's already cleared out. You know, there's a river nearby. Archaeologists would eventually identify at least nine major layers spanning roughly 3,000 years to the Roman period. Now, Schliemann, in his excitement, dug straight through several layers and literally just went all the way down and said that he found Priam's Troy. He even claimed to have discovered Priam's treasure, a cache of gold, jewelry and artifacts that he smuggled out of Turkey and presented to the world as proof

[Christos]

that this was actually the ancient city of Troy.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now, what's crazy about this whole thing is that he later admitted that he just made up parts of the story and the treasure that he actually discovered came from a layer a thousand years too early. Isn't that wild? He discovers gold that's actually older than Troy. It's dating back to around 2500 BC, long before the Trojan War. But later, the discoveries of more careful archeologists revealed that the layer known as Troy vii A or 7A, dating to somewhere between 1220 and 1180 BC, show distinct evidence of some type of violent destruction. There's fire damage and arrowheads that are scattered and even like unburied human remains,

[Christos]

which is very strange for the time.

[Mark Gagnon]

And this combination of damage and weaponry

[Christos]

and emergency storage jars crammed inside houses

[Mark Gagnon]

had been interpreted by some archaeologists as signs of a siege, though there are

[Christos]

not any written records that identify the attackers or what the city even was.

[Mark Gagnon]

The 20th century archaeologists responsible for these new discoveries are these guys, Wilhelm Dorpfeld and Karl Blagan. And then there was Manfred Korfman, who led a massive institutional project in 1988, which also contributed to many of these discoveries. Now, scholars still debate whether it's Troy 6H destroyed by an earthquake or Troy 7A destroyed by war that lies behind Homer's Troy. And some argue that the legend blends kind of memories of both. The destruction window does roughly line up

[Christos]

with when the ancient Greeks said that Troy fell.

[Mark Gagnon]

Though those ancient dates, like erosthenes calculation of 1184 or 1183 BC are themselves later scholarly constructs, they're not contemporary records. They happen to align with the destruction horizon at Troy. But that alignment is just suggestive.

[Christos]

It's not actually proof.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now, does that prove that the Trojan

[Christos]

War happened the way that Homer described it? Obviously not. There's no inscription saying Achilles was here, and there was an arrow guided by Apollo that hit him in the heel and he died.

[Mark Gagnon]

No archaeological evidence of this giant wooden

[Christos]

horse was ever discovered. Obviously it'd be too old.

[Mark Gagnon]

The city that was destroyed at Troy 7A was significant, but it was smaller than the grand description of the city

[Christos]

of Troy that Homer describes.

[Mark Gagnon]

Though Korfman's excavations did reveal a much larger, lower city than previously known, suggesting that Troy was potentially more important than

[Christos]

earlier archaeologists had even assumed.

[Mark Gagnon]

What the evidence found at the archaeological sites tells us is basically this, that there was a real fortified city at Hasarlik.

[Christos]

It's kind of it.

[Mark Gagnon]

It was wealthy and strategically located, likely

[Christos]

benefiting from this position near the Dardanelles and you trade routes between the Aegean and the Black Sea.

[Mark Gagnon]

And sometime between 1220 and 1180 BC it was destroyed violently. Something happened.

[Christos]

Now, whether it was similar to what Homer described and you know, like a love affair gone bad that turns into this all out war, the most beautiful

[Mark Gagnon]

woman ever, or was it just, you know, one of the many, numerous millions

[Christos]

of sieges that have happened throughout human history to an ancient site that just got built on and built on, then eventually forgotten?

[Mark Gagnon]

Because there are multiple things at play

[Christos]

during that time in history that might

[Mark Gagnon]

have contributed to the fall of Troy that Homer never wrote about. The late Bronze Age was one of the most interconnected and sophisticated periods in

[Christos]

all of ancient history.

[Mark Gagnon]

And the truth is, around the time of the Trojan War, it was about to collapse. You see, around 1400-1200 BC the Western Mediterranean was dominated by a network of powerful civilizations. The Mycenaeans were essentially the Greeks of the Bronze Age. They controlled mainland Greece and the Aegean islands from a massive fortified palace. And at Mycenae, and then you have the Tiryns and the Pylos. These are the people that Homer was

[Christos]

writing about for, you know, four centuries after their civilization was basically, you know, wiped off the earth.

[Mark Gagnon]

When he described Agamemnon as the king of golden Mycenae, he was referring to a real place. And when Schliemann excavated Mycenae in 1876, he found shaft graves filled with gold, including the famous golden death masks. Now, Schliemann reportedly telegraphed the king of Greece and said this. I have gazed upon the face of Agamemnon.

[Christos]

The thing is that he hadn't.

[Mark Gagnon]

The masks were just centuries too early. But the discovery proved that Mycenaean Greece had been massively wealthy. Now, to the east, in what is now Turkey, sat the Hittite empire, one of the great powers of the Bronze

[Christos]

Age, rivaling even Egypt in its time.

[Mark Gagnon]

And this is where some of the most compelling evidence for a historical Trojan War comes from. You see Hittite diplomatic records written in cuneiform on clay tablets. Cuneiform is basically like this imprinting method

[Christos]

that, you know, the Hittite people and

[Mark Gagnon]

Sumerians, they would basically use to keep records in these clay Tablets basically mention a place called Wailusa. Many scholars believe that this is the Hittite name for the city of Troy, corresponding to the Greek Ilios or Elion. These same records mention a kingdom called Ahiyawa, which most specialists think referred to,

[Christos]

you know, broadly, the Mycenaean world.

[Mark Gagnon]

Though not everyone agrees Hittite texts do not name specific Greek cities.

[Christos]

And the identification, while widely accepted, is not settled amongst every scholar.

[Mark Gagnon]

One Hittite text known as the Alexandu Treaty, records this agreement between the Hittite king and the ruler of Wusa, this man named Alexandu.

[Christos]

Now, Alexandu, interesting, sounds a lot like Alexander. Anyway, that's a little side fact.

[Mark Gagnon]

And Paris, the guy from Troy, his other name in the Greek tradition was Alexander. You see what's happening. You have the Alexandu Treaty, right?

[Christos]

Alexandu, and then you have Paris, and his name is Alexander.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now, many scholars see this as a genuine linguistic connection, a possible historical kernel

[Christos]

behind this Paris tradition. Yet others cautioned that it might be just completely coincidental and it was just

[Mark Gagnon]

a common naming pattern in the region. But either way, we have Hittite records mentioning a place that sounds a lot like Troy, ruled by a man whose name is literally Paris's or Paris's alternative name in diplomatic contact with people who

[Christos]

sound a lot like the Greeks of Homer's story.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now, again, none of this proves that the Iliad is literally history, but it strongly suggests that the Trojan War legend was rooted in real Bronze Age conflicts

[Christos]

between the Mycenaean Greeks and the peoples of Western Anatolia.

[Mark Gagnon]

And then around 1200 BC, the entire system collapsed. Within a span of roughly 50 years, nearly every major civilization in the Eastern

[Christos]

Mediterranean was either destroyed or just severely diminished.

[Mark Gagnon]

The Hittite empire fell, Mycenaean Greece was devastated, and the great palaces burned down, writing lost, trade networks destroyed, Egypt barely

[Christos]

survived, and the cities across Levant were just completely demolished.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now, scholars call this entire phenomena the

[Christos]

collapsing of all these civilizations in the

[Mark Gagnon]

region, the late Bronze Age collapse. And it remains one of the great

[Christos]

mysteries of ancient history, like what caused it.

[Mark Gagnon]

And no one really knows, but there's, of course, many explanations.

[Christos]

It was likely caused by some combination of drought plus famine plus civil war,

[Mark Gagnon]

internal rebellion, revolution, systemic failure, and then raids by the mysterious Sea peoples. Now, Troy's destruction around 1220-1180 BC fits pretty squarely within this catastrophe. It's very possible that the Trojan War was one event or even a series

[Christos]

of events within the broader collapse.

[Mark Gagnon]

And it could have been a real Mycenaean military campaign against a wealthy Anatolian city.

[Christos]

That was just transformed over centuries of

[Mark Gagnon]

oral tradition to be this great epic story that we know today. Now, the Trojan War, whether it happened

[Christos]

exactly as it described or whether it

[Mark Gagnon]

ever happened at all, might be one of the most influential stories in the

[Christos]

history of Western civilization.

[Mark Gagnon]

Like, for a war that we don't

[Christos]

even know if it really happened, it's

[Mark Gagnon]

one of the most impactful wars ever. And the impact, I mean, is everywhere. The Iliad, by most accounts, is the

[Christos]

oldest surviving work of Western literature. Every epic poem, war novel, every story about heroes, glory.

[Mark Gagnon]

The cost of glory, in some sense, is in the shadow of the Iliad. When Virgil wrote the Aeneid in the first century, he created Rome's national epic by having the Trojan prince Aeneas escape

[Christos]

the fall of Troy and then eventually

[Mark Gagnon]

found a city called Rome. The Romans, the most powerful state in the ancient world, literally built their identity on being descendants of a Trojan refugee. I mean, the influence here is crazy.

[Christos]

I mean, obviously, the Roman Empire extends all the way to Europe and England, and then from England, we have America.

[Mark Gagnon]

Like, in a way, our founding myth is kind of predicated on this story that we don't even know if it's real. Like, is that not crazy?

[Christos]

It's real.

Of course. Shout out to Greeks.

[Mark Gagnon]

What's up, guys? We're gonna take a break really quick because I just want to state the obvious. You're not gonna hire a chiropractor to do brain surgery. And if you're gonna go fight in the Octagon, you wouldn't hire a guy that watches a lot of ufc. And if you have a personal injury case, you're not going to just, like, hire your buddy. That's good with contracts because you know that when you're hurt, it's because someone else was negligent. You don't want just, you know, lawyer vibes. You want real lawyers. And that's where Morgan and Morgan comes in. They are America's largest injury law firm, with over a hundred offices nationwide and more than 1,000 lawyers. Crazy thing, they've recovered over $30 billion for over 500,000 clients. They've got a real track record of fighting to get people full and fair compensation. So if you are ever injured, you can check out Morgan and Morgan. And their fee is free. Unless they win. Yes, free. You literally don't pay anything unless they win your case. That's how confident Morgan Morgan is that they can get compensation for you and your injuries. So for more information, go to for the people.com gagnon that is for the people.com g a g n o n or, or dial pound law, that is £529 and let them know that you got sent by the people here at the campsite. Also, this is a paid advertisement.

[Christos]

Now let's get back to the show.

[Mark Gagnon]

And then later on, medieval European kingdoms would compete to basically, like, claim Trojan ancestry. So the Franks said that they descended from Trojan refugees who, you know, escaped. And then the Britons threw. Geoffrey Monmouth claimed their founder was a Trojan named Brutus. Troy became the original myth that basically

[Christos]

all of Europe fought to claim.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now, the philosophy, the Iliad, basically gave

[Christos]

us the concept of the tragic hero.

[Mark Gagnon]

The idea that greatness and destruction were

[Christos]

kind of inseparable and that the things

[Mark Gagnon]

that make someone extraordinary are also the same things that doom them. Achilles choosing glory over this long life

[Christos]

and getting exactly that is the prime example, right?

[Mark Gagnon]

This framework, the hero who is undone by the very quality that makes them so heroic, runs through Shakespeare, through modern cinema, through, I mean, even analysis of, like, modern athletes. Every story about a brilliant person brought

[Christos]

down by their own nature.

[Mark Gagnon]

And the phrase Trojan horse, I mean,

[Christos]

you've obviously heard this, right? This has taken on a brand new

[Mark Gagnon]

life in military strategy. It means a deceptive tactic, getting inside your enemy's defenses, but, you know, appearing harmless in cybersecurity.

[Christos]

A Trojan horse is literally malware disguised as, like, an actual software that's, you know, basically poisons your computer. So every time a security analyst talks about a Trojan, they're literally referencing this 3,000-year-old story from Homer plus Hollywood. I mean, they're, like, obsessed with this.

[Mark Gagnon]

Brad Pitt plays achilles in the 2004 film Troy.

[Christos]

The story has been adapted into television and paintings and video games.

[Mark Gagnon]

I mean, everywhere, Achilles and Hector are

[Christos]

just like the ultimate frenemies, bromance thing. Heated rivalry, 1.0, and even like the

[Mark Gagnon]

2018 BBC series Troy, fall of a City and a Madeline Miller novel, the Song of Achilles and Circe brought the

[Christos]

story of the Trojan War to everyone in the modern age.

[Mark Gagnon]

And perhaps most importantly, the Iliad gives us something that no other ancient text really does. It shows us the humanity on both sides of war, which is very unique

[Christos]

for the time and really kind of unique.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now, Homer doesn't make the Greeks purely

[Christos]

heroic or the Trojans purely villainous. Hector's arguably, like, the best character in the poem, right? Like, he's like a good dude fighting for his family against impossible odds.

[Mark Gagnon]

Achilles is like the hero, but he's also like, cruel and he's kind of, like mopey and Petty. The Iliad insists that war is both glorious and amazing, but also, like, horrifying.

[Christos]

And it brings out, like, the best in people, but the worst in people.

[Mark Gagnon]

And really that your enemy is a human being and that this feeling of pain and loss and grief is a universal feeling. That scene where Priam kneels before Achilles

[Christos]

and they just hold each other and cry, sort of sharing this mutual loss, right?

[Mark Gagnon]

It may be one of the most

[Christos]

important moments in all of Western literature.

[Mark Gagnon]

So just to wrap up, the Trojan War sits at this crazy intersection, the

[Christos]

place where, like, you have myth and history kind of, like, blurring into this

[Mark Gagnon]

sort of amorphous thing that no one can really fully explain. There was a real city that was

[Christos]

really destroyed, and there was a real Bronze Age collapse of Greeks and, you know, fighting between Bronze Age Greeks and Anatolian peoples.

[Mark Gagnon]

And, you know, all this stuff did happen in theory, right? But the story that we tell about

[Christos]

it, the Golden Apple, you know, this beauty competition that turns into this big war with Helen, the most beautiful woman

[Mark Gagnon]

ever, all that kind of stuff that

[Christos]

obviously belongs to Homer and to the centuries of oral poets that kind of shaped the story before him.

[Mark Gagnon]

But I think Homer knew something in

[Christos]

writing this that we're still learning today and that our politicians and leaders from around the world are still discovering every new generation, is that the real tragedy

[Mark Gagnon]

of war isn't about who won or who lost. It's that it costs everyone. It's about enemies. A prideful hero, this pitiful king, both kneeling in the dirt, weeping for the

[Christos]

loss of their loved ones, and the

[Mark Gagnon]

fact that 3,000 years later, we're still telling the story.

[Christos]

I don't know.

[Mark Gagnon]

I think there's something in that, right,

[Christos]

that you can imagine any conflict in the world where there's tragedy and death on both sides. Both of those groups that are dying have parents that love them, and oftentimes they're just people put in a situation where they kind of had no choice.

[Mark Gagnon]

And Homer knew it.

[Christos]

And unfortunately, we're still figuring it out today.

[Mark Gagnon]

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is an abridged history and mythology of the Battle of Troy.

[Christos]

I mean, what a fascinating story. Like, you got a shout at the Greeks.

[Mark Gagnon]

You know, I just want to say

[Christos]

thank you to you and your ancestors for, I guess, two things. One, like, providing the west with an infrastructure for civilization and, like, democracy and philosophy and just everything you guys have contributed to my life and also for producing this podcast.

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[Christos]

anytime.

Mark, those two things go kind of

[Mark Gagnon]

hand in hand for me, but I mean, just. What a crazy story. Did you read the Iliad when you were a kid?

[Christos]

Was this like, a part of, like, your Greek education?

I read the Odyssey in college. All right, Close enough.

We've strayed a long way from the times of Alexander the Great, but it's,

[Mark Gagnon]

it's, it's probably worth a read. I read the Odyssey. High school, the Iliad, college, and I

[Christos]

thought the Iliad was better.

[Mark Gagnon]

Odyssey is cool. Odyssey is like a lot of fun

[Christos]

kind of stuff, you know what I mean? The hot siren singing.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's the best part.

[Christos]

You dirty dog.

[Mark Gagnon]

Tie me up to the pole. Let me hear him. I mean, it's got cool stuff in there, right?

[Christos]

Like, oh, he comes back and she's like, how do I know you're my husband? That whole thing.

It's a classic Joseph Campbell hero journey.

[Mark Gagnon]

It's an all time great story, of course.

[Christos]

I mean, Homer's like legit the goat,

[Mark Gagnon]

but all that to say the Iliad has something about it.

[Christos]

Like, it's got like a heart to it that I don't know if the Odyssey has.

[Mark Gagnon]

And.

[Christos]

Yeah, I mean, I just remember. I remember reading it for the very first time. It was like 10 years ago. Just blew my mind.

[Mark Gagnon]

And it's just a. I don't know, it's a. It's a. Perhaps the most significant piece of literature ever. And it's crazy that it's still talked

[Christos]

about so much to this day. And just the humanity you see across the board now. Something I always thought was funny.

[Mark Gagnon]

And this is a little.

[Christos]

A little blue here. All right, so if there's any kids watching this, you can. I would recommend you tune out here.

Earmuffs.

[Mark Gagnon]

There's a type of latex contraceptive named Trojan. Yep.

[Christos]

And I.

[Mark Gagnon]

People always pointed this out.

[Christos]

They're like, the Trojan horse is what

[Mark Gagnon]

people think about when they think of the Trojans. Right. Can you Google why they call themselves Trojan? Because, like, the irony is, like, oh,

[Christos]

you have this capsule that is brought in, and, you know, it seems like it's safe, and then a bunch of, like, little soldiers, you know, escape out of the capsule. It seems like a bad kind of metaphor for a contraceptive company, but I wonder if there's some other type of tie in. What do you. What'd you find?

So it's this. It's to evoke strength, durability, and virility, referencing the impenetrable walls of the ancient city of Troy.

Hmm.

[Mark Gagnon]

But they're not impenetrable.

[Christos]

That's. Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

Did they not finish it? Like, did they read, like, half the book?

[Christos]

And they were like, this city is pretty impenetrable.

Well, maybe they're trying to cover their asses by the fact that condoms are only 97% effective.

Oh.

[Mark Gagnon]

If they ever get a lawsuit. And they're like, what happened? They're like, yeah, every now and again, you get a.

[Christos]

You know. You never heard of the Trojan horse?

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. You get a wooden horse that slips in, and their lawyers can be like, nah, read this shit. This will blow your mind, man. That's wild.

[Christos]

All right, well, this has been a fabulous episode. I love learning ancient history. What a world. There's so much stuff to learn, especially when it's Greek. All right, not. We're gonna move. We're gonna go to Persia next. Or we'll do Turkish history or something.

[Mark Gagnon]

I mean, you guys have been fighting

[Christos]

the Hittites for a long time.

Well, last week, we talked about Xerxes. That's another Greek w. All right, all right, let's just.

You know what? Let's wrap this up, guys.

[Mark Gagnon]

Great news.

[Christos]

If you like this channel, we drop these episodes every week.

[Mark Gagnon]

But if you like the religious vibe

[Christos]

and you like religious content, we have religion camp. If you like deep dives on current events, on crazy conspiracy stuff, on talking

[Mark Gagnon]

to way smarter people than me, actual experts on medieval history, on military stuff, geopolitics.

[Christos]

That's Camp Gagnon. That's the main channel. You can see all those in the description. Google them. You'll find it.

[Mark Gagnon]

If you want to see me on the road, Mark Yagnon Live. And of course, if you want to hang out at the campsite, I mean,

[Christos]

again, monthly live zooms, extra content, talk to Christos. That is patreon.com campgaignon Also, let's remind

people to sign up on a web browser and not through the App Store. Save yourself some money.

Web browser, not the App Store. I like that. Well, shout out to Christos. Putting cash in your pocket now if

[Mark Gagnon]

you just rock with the history vibe. Great news. We drop these episodes every single week. And I appreciate you guys being a

[Christos]

part of the campsite and. Yeah, just really, you know, chilling with us while we build this thing into something awesome. I'm really grateful you guys are here,

[Mark Gagnon]

truly, and I will see you all

[Christos]

in the future to talk about the past. Peace.