The Trojan War of Homer’s epics is heavily mythologized. But it is set in a world of seafaring and sea passages that the ancient Greeks knew intimately well.
Interestingly, Nolan’s film has reframed the Trojan War as a trade war over a shipping route. This economic motive is absent from Homer’s original.
But it would have been a highly relevant theme for the Athenians listening to the Homeric epics hundreds of years later, when actual wars hinged on control of a vital shipping route to the Black Sea, passing right by where Odysseus began his mythological journey home: the Dardanelles.
Controlling this waterway – including tolling the ships that traversed it – was crucial to the rise of the Athenian Empire. That has parallels with – and lessons for – today, when placing tolls on crucial shipping routes is again being debated.
A gateway to the Black Sea
