The Trojan Women

( A version of this post featured in the BDSMLR Blog Erinn the Journalist and was excerpted in Steel Worlds Inc, Chapter Six).

Erinn Swyft was an ambitious young journalist who had come to popular attention while presenting a series on modern day slave trafficking. She had hosted and presented a number of programmes on ancient antiquity for the BBC. As part of the series, she presented a programme on the Trojan War. Erinn was a professional, she made an excellent job of presenting the story in an understandable way, that would interest the general public while not infuriating (too badly) the professionals.

 

It was near the end of the program, and Erinn dealt with the aftermath of the fall of the great city, and the fate of the Trojan Women, a subject of interest in plays and sculpture since ancient times. The Warbands of the Greek warlords and Petty Kings had swept into the city, killing all the population, exempting only the women and young children. These, along with the other loot of the city they carried off to their homes in rocky Greece. Erinn was interviewing a distinguished Professor on the subject, with the interview itself cut with scenes of bronze statues of questionable taste.

“Of course, these captive prize women were the basis of Greek wealth and of democracy itself.”

 

“How is that, professor?” asked Erinn.

 

“Although the 'Kings' took many of the women for themselves, each surviving warrior was allocated two or even three for himself. By putting them to work spinning and weaving the wool from his flocks by day, more cloth than his family needed was created, leaving a surplus to be sold to increase his wealth. He could expand his flocks and wealth. By night, the slave women would share his bed, breeding more slaves for his fields, and more women for his bed and clothmaking.”

 

“And how did this exploitation create civilization and democracy?” asked the young presenter.

 

“The wealth gave him the ability to buy better armour and weapons, making him the equal in battle of kings; the surplus wealth allowed the creation of cities and the time to contemplate ideas and the time to rule themselves. A man with a slave at his feet is a confident man; his triumph over the flesh of his slaves makes him believe he is master of his own fate.”

 

“Leading to the rise of the Citizen-Warrior?” suggested Erinn.

 

“Yes, democracy relied on slavery. The citizen phalanx, all well armoured, marching to acquire more land and slaves and to protect their own. Ruling themselves and the city as they ruled their slaves. Think of the confidence of a citizen-warrior with a naked slave chained at his feet! The Greeks knew this - look at their statuary, their sculptures, their poems and plays, the odes to the conqueror with slaves at his feet. In time it would allow them to defeat the Persian Invasion, and, under Alexander, conquer the known world as far as Egypt and India.”

The show ended with the studio camera panning out, leaving a few silent seconds of the Professor and Erinn contemplating the vision of a confident citizen-warrior with a naked slave woman in chains looking up adoringly at her master. It was a powerful image to end the programme on, and if many in the audience imagined Erinn as the naked chained woman, that was only natural. In that moment, both the professor and Erinn had possibly been imagining that scene as well.