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In this history documentary we seek to uncover where trophies come from. Our discussion begins with an analysis of warfare in Bronze Age Greece. Here soldiers would celebrate their victories over opponents by stripping them of their gear and making a dedication to a god. This practice is captured in the works of Homer. For example in the Iliad we see Odysseus slay Delon and over his weapons and armor to the goddess Athena. However as the Bronze Age turned to the Classical Period we see the rise of the polis and hoplite warfare. This made battle more about the effort of the group rather than the individual.
Now victories would be celebrated at the point where one side managed to prevail over the other. This was physically marked at the location where battle was said to have turned. It is from the greek work "trope", to turn that we get the name for this victory monument, the tropaion.
We next talk about how the Tropaion grew in prominence throughout the classical period, first appearing during the Greco Persian wars when these trophies were erected for famous battles like Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea. By the time of the Peloponnesian War the Tropaion had become quite common and appears 41 times in the account of Themistocles. We talk at length about the different types of trophies and what they signified. There were all sorts of ritualized aspects of the Tropaion such as the idea that they could not be removed and that one must not erect permanent versions between fellow Greeks. This taboo was famously broken by the Theban Army at the Battle of Leuctra after their defeat of the Spartan Army. Finally we talk about how the Roman army further developed the idea of the war monument.
Stay tuned for more history documentaries on ancient greece and rome!
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Bibliography and suggested reading
“Greek trophy monuments” by Jutta Stroszeck
“The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece” by Victor Davis Hanson
“The Battlefield of Marathon: the Tropaion, Herodotus, and E. Curtius” by Peter Fromherz
“Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks” by Palgrave Macmillan
“Religion & Classical Warfare” by Matthew Dillon
