URSABLOG: Trading Places

Summer has arrived, and I find my mind turning towards my annual pilgrimage to the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus to see another selection of the tragedies of Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles. Even if I have seen them before I don’t mind; the reason why these classics still speak to me today across the millennia is because they hold eternal truths, and some of those bear repeating. These truths give me sustenance – intellectual and emotional – in the intervening months between the summers.

One of the plays I saw last year was Οι Ικέτιδες (The Suppliants) by Aeschylus, and I must admit that although the production was good enough – if not spectacular – the play itself has stayed with me.

The Danaids – the fifty daughters of Danaus – flee Egypt to escape forced marriage to their cousins, the fifty sons of Aegyptus, and turn up on the shores of Argos, just down the hill from Epidaurus, seeking asylum at the sanctuary of the Gods, pleading with the king of Argos, Pelasgus to protect them. He does not agree at first, as protecting them might provoke war with Egypt, but by refusing them might well incur retribution from any number of gods, going against the sacred duties of asylum and the protection of the weak, to say nothing of hospitality.

The play addresses the right to asylum and refuge, divine justice and/or retribution – not to mention the competing claims of democracy, oligarchy and  tyranny – as well as a strong affirmation of female resistance to patriarchal violence and coercion. There is nothing new under the sun. But what struck me, sitting in that ancient theatre so near the scene of the action, was that Egypt was actually not that far away, geographically or culturally,  and at the time when the play was written, or even when the play was set – what we would call the Late Bronze age – the sea was connecting communities allowing them to trade. It also occurred to me that trade is never simply a one way voyage and people are always involved. And with people, ideas travel too.

Trade, I firmly believe, is the story of human civilisation and without it we would not have reached this far. Trade is not an absolute good. It develops within many different contexts – social, economic, political, cultural – to good or evil ends. Trade is eternal, and the story of trade precedes the stories written down by the tragedians, and even those first spoken by the father of all western literature, Homer.

“Trade affects not only economy or culture, as in the case of stylistic influences, but more importantly society and politics. The interaction with different ideas transforms the already existent exchange mode and consequently part of the social structure.” This passage was not written recently by a defender of rules-based liberalism against the current trade wars of our time. It was actually written by Mercourios Georgiadis in 2000 in conclusion to an article titled: The Mycenaean Role in Late Bronze Age III Exchanges, a paper included in The Seas of Antiquity recording the proceedings of the Liverpool Interdisciplinary Symposium in Antiquity.

Using the evidence found in four shipwrecks in the Eastern Mediterranean dated from that time, he argues – convincingly in my view – that trade in raw materials (in particular metals like copper, essential for making bronze) as well as finished and semi-finished metal goods, pottery and other domestics utensils was not simply a network between kings of various kingdoms exchanging gifts and tributes, but also an active informal network – tramping in fact – where both materials and skilled artisans and craftsmen went from port to port to make, buy and sell before money became, well, common currency. And with every visit in every port came technology transfer, and – humanity being what it is – genetic transfer too.

In a world before – way before – the existence of nation states trade existed, not as statecraft, but as a risky venture of individuals wishing to make their lives and societies better, whether as kings, merchants, entrepreneurs, shipowners or adventurers. But it was by no means a halcyon period of enlightened and mutual respect. Trade then, as now, was used as a precondition to conflict. The desire to exchange goods and ideas – and genetic material – enabled proximity, jealousy, theft, and alliances – which in turn degenerated into conflict. But conflict is also a pre-condition for further exchanges of ideas, technologies, but also – and I would argue longer lasting – for the exchange of stories, of myths, cults, and value systems.

And what enabled this exchange? Shipping. The story of the Late Bronze Age is a story of the sea, and we don’t have to look very far for evidence.

The foundation myths of Archaic and Classical Greece are based on two of the greatest works of literature ever created, first spoken by Homer around the early eighth century BCE (and later written down in the sixth century BCE when the Greek alphabet had taken root). The Iliad is not a history of the war in Troy, but an exploration into the triumphs and tragedies of humanity in one small part of the war. The ships are there, beached but ever-present, as a record of the Achaeans coming to avenge the abduction (or flight) of Helen – whose face launched a thousand ships – and as the escape route out of it. In fact the whole work hinges on the moment that Hector and the Trojans breach the Greek wall and reach the ships, setting fire to at least one, creating understandable panic in the Greek camp. This leads Patroclus to don Achilles’ armour, setting off a chain of events that brings Achilles back into the battle, and the most memorable scenes that follow.

The Odyssey is nothing without ships. Odysseus sets course for home – Ithaka – with a fleet that is scattered or destroyed by storms sent by a vengeful Poseidon. After encountering the sirens – singing him to shipwreck even whilst tied to the mast – and steering a perilous course between Scylla and Charybdis, by the time he reaches Calypso’s island, he has none left. He escapes on a self-made raft, but after this is destroyed in another storm, he is welcomed by the Phaeacians, skilled seafarers who give him a magical, self-steering, autonomous ship.

These myths, created in the early eight century BCE, were about a time when trade in the Eastern Mediterranean was at its peak, centuries before, and before the collapse into the Dark Ages before a glorious Classical Greece came into being. These myths were assumed to be just that, myths, until archaeological investigation in recent years proved the existence of both Troy and Mycenae, and therefore the real backdrops for the stories of Hector, Agammemnon and others.

The basis of this world is trade. In the Late Bronze Age, the Eastern Mediterranean is a world before nation states. The wars – and their causes – have been mythologised but the sea – the wine-dark sea – and ships are easily recognisable, and not just as props but fully fleshed-out actors in the story. The end of the Bronze Age becomes not just an ending, but creates an empty space from which the Archaic Age emerges. And with it, Homer, literature, and the full gamut of western civilisation up until, but hopefully not finishing with, the Elon Musk/Donald Trump cock fight.

Life in the Late Bronze Age was all about trading with the unknown: nowhere, in fact. A world without written records, a dangerous sea connecting places known only by word of mouth. A world that collapses into a vacuum which becomes the very space into which a voice is born: and where Homer is heard telling the stories of the old world to lay the foundations of the new.

The Iliad is not about Troy, it’s about us. The Odyssey is not just about ships, it is about the idea of a hero, a very human hero, trading everything for the necessity of return. The necessity of return is the story of trade.

A ship from Egypt arrives in Argos with fifty young women claiming asylum from tyranny and sexual coercion. The King balances geopolitical consequences with the rights of all humans, whether or not they come from where the King rules. The voyage is possible because others – for reasons of trade, commerce, adventure – have charted the waters before. Is that trade’s fault? Or is it a bit more complicated than that? No-one, not Aeschylus, not even Homer, ever said it was simple. Trade cannot answer the question; it just leaves us with the story.

Simon Ward