Page 374 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

[1230-1160 B.C.] The Sack of Troy 321

It was a great disappointment for Menelaus when Agamem­
non, at sixteen, was given command of a ship and sailed with his
father, while Menelaus must wait the two years until he, too,
was old enough. And even more when Agamemnon returned with
the first of the autumn storms, bearing the beginnings of a
beard, and a notched sword, and tales of skirmishings with
the Arzawans and Hittites deep in Asia Minor behind Miletus.
Menelaus knew, of course, that their family held lands in Asia
Minor inherited from their great-grandfather Tantalus, who was
king in Lydia. They had recently been troubled by a Hittite free­
booter, and Atreus had crossed the Aegean to assert his rights.
But it took more than one campaign to discourage what was
clearly a disguised Hittite attempt to win the Aegean coast of
their peninsula, and in the third year Menelaus, too, received
his command and sailed with the fleet. It was a heart-stirring
sight for the young prince, as the score or so of long beaked gal­
leys sailed before the wind, with their crews resting at the oars,
over the incredibly blue summer sea. One by one the green and
white islands of the Cyclades passed astern, and after three
days the ships ran up the beach of the bustling town of Miletus.
As they passed through the streets to the palace where they were
to be lodged, Menelaus forgot his princely dignity and gaped
around, at the stone houses and temples, shops and warehouses.
He had expected Asia Minor to be barbarian and primitive, but
here was a city far surpassing the greatest towns of Greece,
Mycenae, or Sparta, or even Corinth. He caught himself won­
dering if it were not Greece that was primitive and barbarian.
And the journey into the interior, with the chariots clattering
over paved roads that wound up the hillsides past well-kept
vineyards, reinforced the impression of a tamed and civilized
countryside, contrasting with the crags and woods and goat­
pastures of inland Greece.
Menelaus saw his first fighting on that campaign. The
Hittite brigand, Maduwatas, who had invaded the Achaean pos­
sessions in Lydia and had been driven out by Atreus two years
before, was now commanding a border province as the official
Hittite governor, and still laid claim to Atreus’s realm of Sipy-
los. This practically amounted to an official Hittite claim to the