The Casualty Lists in the Trojan War

Extract

The casualty lists in the Trojan War, owing to their late publication, are not very accurate, but they have some interesting features. The named casualties of officers total 238, and unnamed 26. Other ranks are not recorded. Of these 24 seem to have been wounded only, though in some cases it is left uncertain whether a man was only wounded, and not killed. To the wounded must be added Ares and Aphrodite, who obviously could not be killed, though they seem to have suffered considerably. Apparently the Gods and Goddesses who engaged in the fighting had a convention that they must not kill anyone themselves: they only interfered by encouraging their respective sides, and protecting certain favourites or balking their would-be killers. Ares, Apollo, Aphrodite, and Hephaestus were thus active on the Trojan side, and Athena, Hera, and Poseidon for the Greeks. Unlike us, the early Greeks appear to have been more proud of the killers than sorry for the killed.