The Chronicle of Lerna by Michal Karski

 The Trojan War has been over for many years and the glorious city of Troy is just a memory, but the anti-Trojan propagandists are still at work. There are people who fought with Agamemnon’s army who are intent on justifying Achaean aggression. The truth of what really happened at Troy is already being manipulated for political ends.

At his peaceful home overlooking the bay of Argos, the poet Linos of Lerna, who was with the Argives at Troy and served for a time as Agamemnon’s personal chronicler, decides to set the historical record straight.

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The excerpt, below, is interesting! Thank you to Michal for sharing it. 

Here is an excerpt from the ending of Chapter Two. The poet Linos is talking to his helper, Glaukos:

"As for the story of the Trojan campaign, you and I both know, my boy, that the spur for Agamemnon’s enterprise was primarily the lust for conquest and booty and an opportunistic land-grab at the expense of the isolated Trojans. Helen’s abduction may have been the motivation for Menelaus himself, but it only served as a convenient pretext for Agamemnon.

Of course, the entire thing is now being painted by Menelaus and his acolytes as some kind of mythical quest of divine origin, with the abduction of Helen coming to the fore and increasingly being proposed as the one and only legitimate cause for the Achaeans to make war on the wealthy city of Troy with its fertile lands and its world-famous horses.

But the Spartan propagandists and spinners of Menelaus are also engaged in something quite sinister. They are already doing their utmost to try to shift the blame for the war onto the Trojans. The perpetrator is beginning to blame the victim. The glaring example that springs immediately to mind is the expression ‘Trojan Horse’.

 

How so, sir?

 

Think about it, Glaukos. The famous Trojan Horse. The wooden horse was constructed by the Achaeans and was left on the Trojan shore. Should it not be called the Achaean Horse or the Argive Horse or the Danaan Horse? Or perhaps the Horse of Odysseus, after the man who thought of it, or the Horse of Epeius after the actual architect?

No, the revisionists at the court of Menelaus have successfully labelled it a ‘Trojan Horse’, supposedly on the grounds that it was built in Troyland of Trojan wood. What they are actually doing, of course, is subtly and deliberately trying to conflate victim and aggressor. Any surviving Trojans who hear the story of the ruin and burning of Troy will recall not only the horror of the desperate fighting and carnage and atrocities committed upon the civilians of Troy, not to mention the total devastation and destruction of the city, but they will also suffer the added indignity of having the engine of their destruction labelled as ‘Trojan’.

 And, judging by the frequency of the use of this phrase by now – I had to remonstrate with that minstrel fellow for using it – I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this expression becomes the generally accepted shortcut in future ages.

 

I had never considered that, venerable sir.

 

Thersites was one of those who understood the value of propaganda quite early on. “In the long run, propaganda can be more effective than a sword-thrust,” was one of his maxims. We may be fighting a losing battle against the revisionists of Menelaus, but fight we must, Glaukos. We owe it to the inhabitants of Troy, who may not have had a perfect society, but who certainly did not start the war nor do they deserve the kind of denigration which is being heaped upon them by the victors.

There were certainly xenophobes among them, and far be it from me to defend the indefensible, but on the whole, they were no more and no less xenophobic than any other society of the region. Far be it from me to be an apologist for injustice and I did, after all, take part in the campaign against them, because we all believed they had transgressed against the gods by abducting Helen, and I was one of the many among us who believed that much more should have been done by way of diplomacy, but I am not biased either for them or against them.

I can understand that Menelaus might want to present some kind of justification for his own and his brother’s actions, but aggression must be called out for what it is and no amount of revision will disguise that and no amount of myth-making can convince posterity that the Trojans were the architects of their own downfall or somehow deserve to be collectively slandered, much less deserved to be obliterated in the first place."