Was This the Face that Launched the Thousand Ships? Homeric Fighting over Beautiful Women

In Christopher Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus, Faustus conjures up the spirit of Helen of Troy and says: "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?"  

Many readers of Homer have asked the same question--with the same hint of disbelief.  Was this the face that launched over a thousand Greek ships to Troy for a ten-year long war?  Surely so many men would not engage in such a destructive war just to settle a dispute over one woman. 

But as Jonathan Gottschall has pointed out in The Rape of Troy, the primary conflicts in the Iliad and the Odyssey are over sexual access to women.  Moreover, Homer's men compete not just for any women but for beautiful women.  Homer also suggests that this competition for access to women was rendered especially intense by the shortage of available women.

Helen was considered one of the most beautiful women in the world.  She was the daughter of Zeus and Leda.  She married Menelaus of Sparta.  Her abduction by Paris of Troy (or perhaps her elopement with him) started the Trojan War.  But this is only one of many examples in the Iliad and the Odyssey of men attempting to gain sexual access to women claimed by other men.  The Greek warriors fought the Trojans not just to recover Helen for Menelaus but with the expectation that with the fall of Troy the Greeks could rape and enslave the Trojan women as their concubines, which they did.

And, of course, the primary conflict in the Odyssey arises from the suitors' meddling with women that Odysseus claims as his exclusive sexual property--his wife Penelope and his enslaved concubines.  Eventually, Odysseus massacres all the suitors and kills the twelve slave women who have been raped or seduced by the suitors.  He tells Telemachus and two male servants: "Hack at them with long swords, eradicate all life from them.  They will forget the things the suitors made them do with them in secret, through Aphrodite" (Odyssey 22.442-45).

Now it is true that Homer's men are competing with one another not just for women but also for wealth and social status.  But these proximate categories of competition--for status, wealth, and women--all serve the ultimate goal of enhanced reproductive success.  Wealthier high-status men have more sexual access to women, which means greater reproductive fitness.

Men with wealth and high status could be polygynous.  Although Homer's world was legally monogamous in that a man could have only one wife, it was effectively polygynous in that a man could have exclusive sexual access to multiple women, including enslaved concubines.  As a consequence of this polygynous mating by rich and powerful men, many low-status men had no mates at all.

Gottschall shows that the violent competition among the men for sexual access to women was a consequence of a shortage of available young women relative to young men.  This would explain why so many unmarried young men were willing to go to war or join raiding parties with the hope of capturing women.  

There were two reasons for this shortage of female reproductive capacity--the polygynous institution of slave-concubinage that allowed high-status men to monopolize many women and female infanticide (killing female infants either by abandoning them or by feeding the boys more than the girls).

Gottschall concedes that the practice of female infanticide is never explicitly acknowledged in Homer's poems.  But the poems do convey the cultural preference for sons over daughters.  They also suggest that in many families sons outnumbered daughters.

Priam's sons outnumber his daughters four to one; Zeus mentions many illegitimate sons and no illegitimate daughters (Iliad 14.312-28); among the dead 'wives of the might' (11.227) that parade by Odysseus in the underworld we hear of seventeen sons and only one daughter (Odyssey 11.23-332); Nausicaa is apparently an only daughter among five brothers (Odyssey 6.57-65); Briseis mentions three brothers and no sisters (Iliad 19.291-300); Andromache mentions seven brothers and no sisters (Iliad 6.414-30); Hector, Sarpedon, Achilles, and other young warriors have sons and no daughters; and, while we never hear of Nestor's sisters, we know he has eleven brothers along with seven sons (11.692-93) (Gottschall 2008, 128).

The strongest predictor of violence within and between societies is a male-biased sex ration--especially when the number of available young men exceeds the number of available young women.  There is a good biological reason for this: unmarried men have, on average, higher levels of circulating testosterone than married men of the same age.  Testosterone levels also drop when men become fathers and care for their children.  We can assume, therefore, that Homer's world was especially violent because it was saturated with testosterone, particularly in those young men who went off to war hoping to capture women that they could rape and enslave as their concubines.  Charles Darwin recognized this: "When, owing to female infanticide, the women of a tribe were few, the habit of capturing wives from neighboring peoples would naturally arise" (Descent of Man [2004], 660).

Escaping from Homer's world of manly violence, the best way to lower the violence in any society is to enforce a strictly monogamous marriage system, with a roughly equal ratio of available men to available women, so that men are equal in their chance to find a sexual mate.  Indeed, as I will argue in a future post, the evolutionary spread of monogamy among the modern Western liberal societies was largely responsible for the declining violence in those societies.

I will also have to show that while the good is the desirable, what Homer's men desire--rape, polygyny, and unjust war--are not truly desirable and thus not good.

Why Do Homeric Men Fight So Much? "Don't Ask Such a Stupid Question! It's Women! We Fight Over Women!"

Prompted by the popularity of Christopher Nolan's movie based on Homer's Odyssey, the Iliad and the Odyssey have become bestselling books.  Surely many of those people now reading (or rereading) Homer's epic poems will ask the one question that Homer's readers have been asking for thousands of years:  Why?  Why do Homer's men fight so much?  

Some of the readers might also think about how this question about the male warrior culture of Homer's world can be generalized as a question about the human nature of male violence: why is it universally true--across time and across cultures--that most of the perpetrators and victims of violence are men and not women?

This is a perplexing question because male violence is so self-destructive that it seems that everyone suffers from it--everyone loses.  The men in Homer's poems clearly recognize that a peaceful life--with the pleasures of home, wives, and children--is more desirable than a life of "terrible warfare" (Iliad 2.291-96, 22.64; Odyssey 6.180-85).  So it's hard to understand why they don't choose to live a more peaceful life.  

Of course, men like Achilles and Odysseus fight because the heroic warrior wins fame (kleos) and honor (time).  But both Achilles and Odysseus weep when they think about their suffering lives (Iliad, 24.508-555; Odyssey, 8.520-585, 9.1-20).  And when Odysseus sees Achilles in the underworld, Achilles tells him that he regrets his choice to die heroically and win immortal glory in the Trojan war rather than to live a long life in peace: "I would prefer to be a workman, hired by a poor man on a peasant farm, than rule as king of all the dead" (Odyssey, 11.489-492).

To the question of why they fight, Homer's men seem to answer that they have no choice--that events are beyond their control.  Odysseus declares: "We are men to whom Zeus gave the fate of living through hard wars, from youth to old age, until we perish, each of us" (Iliad, 14.85-87).  But this begs the question:  why does Zeus give them this fate, and why do they resign themselves to this fate?

In The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin's answer was what he called the "law of battle": "With savages, for instance the Australians, the women are the constant cause of war both between members of the same tribe and between distinct tribes.  So no doubt it was in ancient times; nam fuit ante Helenam mulier teterrima belli causa. ['For even before Helen of Troy a woman was a most hideous cause of war.']" (627).  Darwin concluded from this "that the greater size, strength, courage, pugnacity, and energy of man, in comparison with woman, were acquired during primeval times, and have subsequently been augmented, chiefly through the contests of rival males for the possession of the females" (674).

Anthropologists have studied many foraging bands and horticulturalist tribes who live by Darwin's "law of battle."  For example, the Yanomami are an indigenous tribal people of the Amazonian rainforest who live as foraging horticulturalists, and they have been called the "fierce people" because 25% to 40% of all male deaths are caused by war.  When anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon asked one Yanomamo man why they were always fighting, the man thought this was a ridiculous question: "What?  Don't ask such a stupid question!  It is women!  Women!  We fight over women!" (Chagnon 1979, 87).  Chagnon confirmed this when he found that the most successful warriors had the largest number of offspring. 

But why is it men fighting over women rather than women fighting over men?  The Darwinian explanation of this was best developed by Robert Trivers in his Parental Investment Theory of sexual selection (1972).  Females typically invest more in reproduction than do males, and thus the greater parental investment of the females becomes a valuable resource for the males who invest less, and consequently the males will compete among themselves for access to those females' reproductive capacity.  

The difference in parental investment starts with the different sizes of the gametes.  The biological definition of a female is the member of the species with larger sex cells, while the male is the member with smaller sex cells.  Females have a few large and expensive eggs.  Males have many small and cheap sperm.  From the beginning, therefore, reproduction is usually more costly for women than for men.  And once an egg is fertilized, the mother must invest in nine months of pregnancy, followed by years of feeding and rearing her offspring.  Consequently, women need to be discriminating in their choice of mates--hoping to find a male willing and able to invest more in the offspring than just a sperm.

By contrast, men can attempt to produce many offspring with multiple women.  But if every man attempts this, some men will succeed, and other men will not reproduce at all.  It comes down to supply and demand, with a shortage of female reproductive capacity relative to male demand.  As a result, men are inclined to engage in risky, even deadly, competition with other men for access to scarce female reproductive capacity.  Of course, most men most of the time are not fully conscious of their being driven by violent competition with other men for reproductive success.  But evolution has shaped male psychology to fight for sexual access to women and thus maximize their reproductive fitness even without men being fully aware that the ultimate goal of what they are doing is reproductive success.

That this Darwinian explanation of male violence applies to Homer's heroic ethic of masculinity is well argued by Jonathan Gottschall in his book The Rape of Troy: Evolution, Violence, and the World of Homer (2008).  That will be the topic for my next post.

Trump Is a Narcissistic Political Imposter Driving America to Geopolitical Defeat and National Bankruptcy

I have written about the evolution of human progress through the Liberal Enlightenment.  But I have also written about how Donald Trump's grandiose narcissism could threaten the two pillars of the Liberal Enlightenment--liberal constitutionalism and liberal internationalism.  Now, in the new book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan--Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump--we have an insider's account of the first year and a half of Trump's second term that shows how Trump's quest for absolute power over the whole world has exploded the liberal norms of constitutionalism and internationalism.  

But Haberman and Swan's analysis of Trump and his presidency falls short in many ways.  For example, they rightly stress the importance for Trump of his claim to be "the most powerful man that the planet has ever known," but they mistakenly suggest that he is right about this.  They don't see how Trump's disastrous war against Iran shows that he is not as powerful as he claims to be.  They don't see that America's military defeat in Iran is part of a general decline in America's global power caused by Trump that could allow China to become the new geopolitical superpower.  

Haberman and Swan also ignore Trump's massive increases in deficit spending that are driving the U.S. to a colossal debt crisis, which is another example of Trump's political incompetence. 

Haberman and Swan don't recognize that Trump is a narcissistic political imposter who has failed as a political leader just as he has failed as a businessman.  Trump is a con man, and his claim that he has always been a "winner" in both business and politics is all part of the con.  Haberman should be able to recognize this because her previous book on Trump was entitled Confidence Man!

Mary Trump (Trump's niece) is better than Haberman and Swan in explaining Trump's psychological profile as a narcissistic psychopath produced by his father's abusive parenting.

MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN!

Haberman and Swan write about a conversation between Trump and Tucker Carlson.  Carlson warned him not to go to war with Iran.  Trump answered: "We're not doing that."  Carlson responded: "Good, because the only thing that can blow up your administration is if you get into a war with Iran. Your voters don't want any more wars. . . This is a trap set by your enemies.  These people fucking hate you.  And once you get in, it's very hard to get out of it.  And that'll wreck your presidency.  That'll wreck everything.  You won't be able to do anything."  Trump then said: "I don't think there's ever been an American President as powerful as I am."  Carlson replied, "Certainly not since FDR. Really, the only thing that could wreck it is war with Iran" (74-75).

Notice the subtle point in this exchange.  Carlson was warning Trump that going to war with Iran would expose the limits of his power because he would lose the support of his voters, and he would not be able to win the war.  Trump refused to accept this suggestion that his power was limited by saying that no President had ever been as powerful as he was.  Carlson answered by saying sure you're at least as powerful as FDR, but even so, you're not powerful enough to successfully fight a war with Iran without destroying your presidency.

In contrast to Carlson's warnings to Trump about the limits of his power, Benjamin Netanyahu flattered Trump by telling him how powerful he was as America's Commander-in-Chief, and then insisting that the most dramatic display of his power would be to join Israel in a war against Iran.

Ever since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 that overthrew the Shah of Iran and established the Islamic Republic of Iran, when Trump was 32 years old, Iran has been a thorn in the side of the United States; and Trump throughout those years has complained that America has been humiliated by the failure of every President to defeat Iran.  Netanyahu was the first foreign leader to meet Trump at the White House at the beginning of his second term, and he immediately began working on Trump to persuade him that he could be the first president powerful enough to defeat Iran in cooperation with Israel.

When Israel first launched its 12-day war of bombing Iran on June 12, 2025, the U.S. was officially not involved.  But Netanyahu knew that once Trump saw the apparent success of Israel's campaign on Fox News, he would not be satisfied to be a mere bystander to history, and he would have to jump into the war so that he could be the center of attention.  Specifically, Netanyahu needed Trump to drop "the big one"--the thirty-thousand-pound bunker-busting bomb that only the U.S. has.  When Trump finally decided to enter the fighting for one day on June 21 ("Operation Midnight Hammer"), 14 of these bunker-busting bombs were dropped on Iran's Fordow Uranium Enrichment Plant and the Natanz Nuclear Facility.  This was the first time this bomb was used in combat.  Trump announced that Iran's nuclear program had been "totally obliterated."  

Trump also suggested that it was time for "regime change" in Iran.  On Truth Social, he wrote: "It's not politically correct to use the term, 'Regime Change.'  But if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change???  MIGA!!!"

When Trump was asked how helping Israel fight Iran could be consistent with his theme of "America First," he answered: "Well, considering that I'm the one that developed 'America First,' and considering that the term wasn't used until I came along, I think I'm the one that decides that" (194).  In other words, "America First" means whatever Trump says it means, and his followers will have to accept that.  

That's his ultimate power: he speaks into existence whatever he happens to want at any moment.  Haberman and Swan quote one senior administration official as saying privately that U.S. policy on any given issue is "whatever Donald Trump said last on the subject," which will then change "in twenty-four hours, or in two hours, or in one minute" (190).

Within a few months after "Operation Midnight Hammer," Netanyahu was back asking Trump to join him in a larger war against Iran.  On February 11, 2026, Netanyahu met in the Situation Room, a restricted space in the lower level of the White House, with Trump and a small group of senior advisors along with intelligence and military officials.  Netanyahu made an hour-long presentation that argued four points.  First, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, could be killed by an airstrike on his compound.  Second, Iran's military power--particularly, its ballistic missile program--could be crippled by airstrikes.  Third, an intense bombing campaign would provoke a popular rebellion to overthrow the regime.  And, finally, a new leader, such as Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran's last shah, could take power as a secular ruler who could overturn the theocratic government.

The next day, February 12, Trump had another meeting in the Situation Room.  Two senior intelligence officers briefed him on the U.S. intelligence analysis of Netanyahu's presentation.  They judged that the first two objectives--killing the Ayatollah and crippling Iran's ballistic missile program were achievable.  But the second two objectives--a popular revolution overthrowing the government and the installation of a new secular leader--were ridiculously unrealistic.

Trump suggested that for him achieving the first two objectives would be enough to justify going to war.  But Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned about two problems.  A major war against Iran would deplete stockpiles of American munitions and missile interceptors that had already been reduced by years of support for Ukraine and Israel.  This would make it difficult for the U.S. to engage in any future war--such as defending Taiwan against a Chinese invasion.  The second problem was that Iran could shut the Strait of Hormuz and impede the shipments of oil.  Trump dismissed this because he assumed that Iran would surrender and not have the power to shut the strait.

On the morning of February 28, at 2:30 a.m., Trump announced the war on Iran ("Operation Epic Fury") with a post on Truth Social, with an eight-minute video.  He expected that the war would be over in a few weeks.

Of course, we now have seen that General Caine's two warnings have come true.  Iran's closing of the Strait of Hormuz has been its greatest weapon in defeating the U.S.  And the U.S. now has a severe shortage of munitions and interceptor missiles that will take many years to replenish.

The worst consequence is that Xi Jinping now sees an opportunity to invade Taiwan and to make other moves towards establishing China as the geopolitical superpower to replace the U.S.  Now that Trump has wasted U.S. military resources in the Iran war, while also breaking up the global alliances that have supported U.S. global power over the past seventy years, the U.S. cannot check the expansion of Chinese power.

TRUMP'S ASSAULT ON LIBERAL CONSTITUTIONALISM AND INTERNATIONALISM

Trump's war on Iran illustrates his disregard for liberal constitutionalism because only Congress has the constitutional power to declare war, and yet not only did Trump not get a congressional declaration of war, he didn't even consult with Congress about the war, or even announce the war before a joint session of Congress.

Trump's war on Iran also illustrates his scorn for liberal internationalism because he did not seek the support of NATO, the UN, or any nation other than Israel.  Nor did he try to justify the war under international law.

A few weeks before announcing the war, Trump was interviewed by the New York Times.  He was asked if there were any limits on his powers as Commander in Chief.  He answered: "Yeah, there is one thing.  My own morality.  My own mind.  It's the only thing that can stop me.  I don't need international law."  Notice that he does not appeal to morality in general but to "my own" morality.

Not only is Trump's power unconstrained by international law, but it is also unconstrained by constitutional law.  For example, I have written about how Trump has in effect denied the constitutional right to due process of law--the Fifth Amendment right that no person shall "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

Trump has the absolute sovereignty that comes from combining the executive, legislative, and judicial powers in his hands.  Trump makes laws by signing executive decrees.  Trump executes those laws that he has made by ordering executive officials to carry them out according to his directions.  Trump judges the laws by interpreting them for himself and deciding how they apply to particular cases and refusing to obey judicial orders that go against his will.  Trump is thus carrying out the Claremont Institute's Red Caesar Plan for America.

That violates the fundamental principle of liberal constitutionalism that to avoid tyranny governmental power must be limited by a system of countervailance with separation of powers and checks and balances between the branches of government, so that "ambition must be made to counteract ambition," as James Madison said in Federalist Number 51.

"THE MOST POWERFUL MAN THAT THE PLANET HAS EVER KNOWN"?

Trump's ambition, however, cannot be satisfied by the limited powers granted to the President in the American Constitution.  As he told Haberman and Swan when they interviewed him on March 16 of this year, it is not even enough for him to be the most powerful president who has ever lived, because he must be "the most powerful man that the planet has ever known," which is what "a historian" had told him he was.  Haberman and Swan later found out that this "historian" was not a professional historian but the long-time caddie for the golfer Gary Player.

Trump had attended an event honoring Player.  Player's caddie asked to speak to the audience to say something about the President.  Later, the caddie sent Trump a two-page text of his speech.  Trump gave copies of this document to Haberman and Swan, and then he began reading from it.  The opening line was "Donald Trump is, without question, the most powerful man that the planet has ever known--by a long way."  The caddie historian went down a list of history's most powerful men--Alexander the Great, Caesar, William the Conqueror, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Tamerlane, Napoleon, Hitler, Mao, and Stalin.  None of them had the global power of Trump.

Haberman and Swan observe:

What was revealing was not really that Trump agreed with the thesis but the way he inhabited it: the evident pleasure he took in the company of Mao, Hitler, and Stalin, masters of state control through murder, torture, and detention, and Napoleon--and the untroubled ease with which he accepted a place among men who had reshaped the world through conquest and fear.  He drew no distinction between those who built and those who destroyed, between those who liberated and those who enslaved.  What mattered was that they had had huge power--and that he had more (412).

When I read this, I was reminded of my argument that Abraham Lincoln in his Lyceum Speech in 1838 had warned about the "towering genius" of people like Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon who would destroy a constitutional republic like America for the sake of the glory coming from having absolute power, and he predicted that someone like this--someone like Trump--would destroy the constitutional order.

Haberman and Swan conclude their book by agreeing with John Judis's argument that Trump is one of Hegel's "world-historical individuals" like Alexander the Great, Caesar, and Napoleon.  And thus they leave their readers with the impression that Trump can rightly be compared with such great men of history, and that he might even be right to claim to be "the most powerful man that the planet has ever known."

But this ignores the fact that while the power of people like Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon came from their extraordinary competence as political and military leaders, Trump's entire life has shown his incompetence leading to a record of failure.  His bragging that he has always be a "winner" who has never lost is a boastful fantasy that is all part of the con.

THE NARCISSITIC POLITICAL IMPOSTER AND HIS BANKRUPTCIES

Some years ago, I claimed that the fundamental argument in Trump's political campaign rhetoric depends on his myth of himself as the self-made multi-billionaire businessman.  This argument can be put into the form of a syllogism:

Major premise:  Because of stupid politicians, America no longer wins; and America will not win again until a successful businessman who knows how to win is elected president.

Minor premise: Donald Trump is unique in his business success and his shrewdness in knowing how to win, because he is a self-made multi-billionaire.

Conclusion:  Therefore, Americans need to elect Trump president.

Both of the premises are open to dispute.  I have challenged the minor premise by pointing to the evidence that Trump's business career shows many failures from his imprudent decisions, that he was saved from ruin by his father's life-long transfer of money to him, and so he is not the self-made billionaire that he claims to be.  He had a long string of bankruptcies that would have destroyed him were it not for the hundreds of millions of dollars funneled to him from his father.  This started early.  By age 3, the young Donald Trump was earning $200,000 a year in today's dollars as an employee of his father.  By age 8, Donald was a millionaire. 

I have also suggested that Trump's financial imprudence as a businessman has been continued in his financial imprudence as a president who has promoted reckless increases in the federal budget deficits and the national debt, which contradicts his promise in his first campaign that he would balance the federal budget and even pay down the national debt.  Once he became president, he never again mentioned that campaign promise.

Trump has added to the national debt at a faster rate than any president in American history.  Before his first term as president, the national debt was under $20 trillion.  Now the national debt is approaching $40 trillion.  The Congressional Budget Office is projecting that the budget deficit for Fiscal Year 2026 will be over $2 trillion.  Under Trump, the government has been borrowing about $6 billion per day.  Trump is driving America to national bankruptcy.

That's why I call him narcissistic political imposter.  He boasts that he, and he alone, can lead America to greatness.  But since he lacks any competence for prudent governance, he is actually leading America into decline at home and abroad.  

"THE TERRIFIED LITTLE BOY"

In her book Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man, Mary Trump has offered the best explanation for why her uncle is the man he is.  Donald is the product of his father's abusive parenting:

"Nothing is ever good enough.  This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism; Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be.  He knows that he has never been loved" (198).

"Though Donald's fundamental nature hasn't changed, since his inauguration the amount of stress he's under has changed dramatically.  It's not the stress of the job, because he isn't doing the job--unless watching TV and tweeting insults count.  It's the effort to keep the rest of us distracted from the fact that he knows nothing--about politics, civics, or simple human decency--that requires an enormous amount of work" (199).

"Every time you hear Donald talking about how something is the greatest, the best, the biggest, the most tremendous (the implication being that he made them so), you have to remember that the man speaking is still, in essential ways, the same little boy who is desperately worried that he, like his older brother, is inadequate and that he, too, will be destroyed for his inadequacy.  At a very deep level, his bragging and false bravado are not directed at the audience in front of him but at his audience of one: his long-dead father" (202).

"Donald withdraws to his comfort zones--Twitter, Fox News--casting blame from afar, protected by a figurative or literal bunker.  He rants about the weakness of others even as he demonstrates his own.  But he can never escape the fact that he is and always will be a terrified little boy" (210).