Page 383 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

33° Bronze and Iron [1230-1160 b.c.]

part. Though a containing force kept permanent watch around
the walls of Troy, the remainder of the fleet had sailed regularly
on other operations, striking at many points along the coasts
of Asia Minor and even farther afield. For it was clear that the
reduction of Troy was going to be a long-drawn-out affair. It
was not easy to starve the city out. Admittedly all the farmers for
miles around had sought refuge in the city (and spies told of the
hovels which now blocked the once-broad streets of the citadel),
but though the slaves and captives of the Achaeans now sowed
and reaped the fields for the sustenance of the attackers, food
still reached the defenders. With the prevailing northeast wind,
the Greek ships could not blockade the coast of the Dardanelles
to the north of the city, and small craft, hugging the coast, came
in regularly with supplies. And these supplies got into the city,
sometimes slipped in past the sentries at night, sometimes brought
in openly in the teeth of the besiegers by an organized sally.
It was during these sallies that the fiercest fighting took
place. Losses had been severe on both sides. Both Agamemnon
and Menelaus had been wounded, and Achilles, who had proved
himself one of the greatest of strategists and in-fighters, had been
killed. Among the Trojans Hector, the crown prince, had fallen,
and Paris himself had been killed only recently. But the fall of
the city seemed as far off as ever, and some of the allies, par­
ticularly the more loosely confederated northerners, were ad­
vocating breaking off the siege, now that honor had been satisfied
by the death of Paris. Matters had reached a stalemate, where
Troy could neither be taken by assault nor starved into surrender.
But now a side result of a greater war to the eastward showed
the way out. The Moski and the Phrygians, the two great tribes
from Europe which had crossed the Hellespont many years before
and carved out for themselves kingdoms in the western provinces
of the Hittite empire, had for years been fighting the Hittites
in one summer campaign after another. Now they had defeated
the main Hittite army in the field and had advanced on Hattusas
itself. And the news came that Hattusas had fallen and was
burnt. The Great King, a Suppiluliumas who had nothing but
his name in common with his almost legendary ancestor of nearly