But wasn't the Trojan War after the Bronze Age collapsed anyways?

So the traditional Greek date for the sack of Troy is 1184.

Should have the Trojan War, since it's supposed to be 10 years, run from 1194 to 1184.

That would put it squarely inside of the late Bronze Age collapse.

And given the archaeology...

So...

A very sloppy 19th century German archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, famously decided that he was going to trust Homer and go digging where Homer said stuff was.

with your foreign policy.

... can you explain this, this part of the books?

Yeah.

So, so yeah.

So, uh, after, so Faramir is, um, struck down early in the defense of Minas Tirith.

Eowyn is injured when she defeats the Witch-king, and so they're both in the Houses of Healing while Aragorn and the army go off.

And we get these sort of cutbacks in the books to what they're doing.

Um, Eowyn is doing some trauma processing.

[laughs]

So for anyone who has seen the movies but not the books, can you explain this part of the

books? Yeah.

So Faramir is struck down early in the defense of Minas Tirith.

Eowyn is injured when she defeats the Witch King.

And so they're both in the houses of healing while Aragorn and the army go off.

And we get these sort of cutbacks in the books to what they're doing.

Eowyn is doing some trauma processing.

You know,

Mm-hmm.

And one of the patterns here is what we sometimes call ports and forts imperialism.So you send out an expedition.

In the case of Portugal, these are gonna be a mix of trading and raiding.

So you have some boats, you put some trade goods on the boats.

The boats are also filled with armed men.

If you find someone who has something you want, you offer them the goods.

If they don't take the goods, maybe you do a little pillaging, maybe you do a little piracy.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

... as I argue, I mean, I think he would find Italy a relatively tough nut to crack.

Alexander's great advantage in invading the Persian Empire is that there was only one of it, that he's facing a single unified state that rules over a lot of people who have essentially been traded from one empire to another for about 400 or 500 years.

And so, like once Alexander defeats-... a Persian field army.

You know, he beats the Persian Satrapal Army, the local field army at Granicus, and then he marches all the way across Asia Minor and nobody tries to stop him.

The cities surrender in advance.

Then he fights the, the Great King, uh, Darius III at, at Issus.

... are very (laughs) hard to come by.