From Troy’s Gold to Tehran’s Oil: The Ancient Ruse Behind Modern Wars

--- This article was originally published on Substack on March 9, 2026. --- The news of the United States starting yet another war in the Middle East has made me want to lie down and never get up. I know that sounds incredibly self-centered and completely privileged—must be nice to not have to actually live the war, but just feel the grief of it from the comfort of my home thousands of miles away and only exposed to it through the safety of a smartphone screen, right? That would be an accurate statement. It is self-centered and privileged. And yet, like so many others who feel the same way that I do, I get up every day, go to work, and pay taxes into a government that continues to commit atrocities with the money collected from citizens of the United States. While there’s nothing any of us can do on an indivdual level that would actually move the needle for change (unless you’re thinking of running for office, and if that’s the case, more power to you!) but for the majority of us, our options are limited to voting, calling or emailing our representatives and having open dialogue with our friends and families who did vote for the current presidential administration. For me, that also includes looking at history to see how we got here because, as my mother always used to tell me, “You can’t get to where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been.” And as someone who obsessively researches mythology and ancient history, there are stark similarities between the ancient mythological Trojan War and modern wars, and it’s all in the way the narratives are told and sold to their people. The Pretext and the Real Prize: Troy’s Wealth Wasn’t for the Soldiers, and Neither is Iran’s In 2026, “imminent nuclear threats” was the pretense given for the United States bombing Iran, a threat that has somehow remained “imminent” for 47 years. What is sold to American citizens and the world at large is that US soldiers are fighting for our (read: American) security and freedom, but any critical questions about who really benefits show that this isn’t the case. Selling a war as a benefit for the common people is a tale as old as time, or at least, as old as the Iliad and the Trojan War. That war began when the Trojan prince Paris abducted the King of Sparta’s wife, Helen. The king went to his older brother Agamemnon for help. What followed was a decade-long war that killed and enslaved, devastating thousands. The armies of the various Greek city-states set out under the pretense of getting Helen back, but the war was really to sack the city of Troy (known for its wealth) and to give the other kings a chance to gain glory. Though a common soldier would have no hope of his name being remembered by history, he left his home for promised riches. The US military relies on patriotism to distract from who profits from a war with Iran and what is truly lost. As soldiers pay the cost of war with a precious form of currency that could never be repaid: their time and lives. It’s worth looking at who gains the riches of war: defense contractors, Qatar, with their $400 million bribe plane, and Saudi Arabia and the UAE after the billions of dollars they put into the Trump family crypto schemes. The government officials certainly won’t say who benefits, but will repeat platitudes about how their “hearts are broken by the death“ of soldiers in the war with Iran, and how they “gave the ultimate sacrifice to secure freedom and peace.” Died securing freedom and peace? Or as pawns for the president to repay favors to other groups and countries? The soldiers of the Trojan War didn’t benefit from Helen returning to the King of Sparta; they didn’t share in Troy’s vast riches—though they sure had a ball of a time sacking and pillaging the city—and they didn’t earn the coveted kleos, or glory, that their elite kings did. Neither do the soldiers in this war with Iran receive shares of the financial wealth generated by another war in the Middle East. Though the reasons modern soldiers join the armed forces vary, and they certainly look much different than the fighters in the Trojan War, one thing remains the same: the ones who lose their lives in the carnage are not the ones truly remembered; the leaders and the wealthy are. In fifty years, when children learn about the 2026 US/Israeli war with Iran, who knows if they’ll hear about the six American service members who have died for it. In the story of the homecoming of the Greek kings and soldiers, the wealth wasn’t dispersed to the poor farmers who carried the fighting, but instead stayed with the elites. If we’re thinking of The Odyssey, none of the laypeople even came back from the war, but Odysseus’s name is remembered to this day. Kleos: Glory That Only the Elite Could Keep In the Iliad and The Odyssey, male honor and glory (kleos) are worth dying for, as it was thought that it would follow them after death. When given the choice between a long, but uneventful life, or a short life with the promise of his name to live on eternally, Achilles, the Greek’s most elite fighter and King of the Myrmidons, died in the Trojan War, chose the latter. In modern-day America, the various elements of kleos are reframed as patriotism to rally soldiers and stir the hearts of potential recruits. Instead of pointing out the real reasons the US continues to start conflicts in the Middle East (oil, foreign influence, holy wars, etc.), the government will tell its soldiers that it is their individual duty to fight. In a briefing about the strikes in Iran, the Department of Defense (a title the current administration has restyled Department of War), Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “This is your moment. This is the generational turning point America has waited for since 1979… History doesn’t care if you’re tired, if you’re scared, if the fight feels big. It demands warriors who rise anyway.” The need to validate a man’s honor and virility in kleos necessitates that his glory come from external sources, such as military titles and accolades; it cannot come solely from within, a notion that remains problematic and continues to influence our society today. As Emily Wilson writes of the warriors of the Trojan War in the introduction of her translation of The Iliad: > “Status is built out of language (kleos, a noun cognate with the verb kaleo, ‘to call’ or ‘name’).” No need to look further than the name of the current operation in Iran to see that this is still evident today. In Hegseth’s attempt to use hypermasculine names for military operations, “Operation Epic Fury” is one the ancient Romans would have scoffed at. In Greek mythology, the Furies, or Erinyes, were female underworld deities who dispensed justice by punishing oath-breakers and murderers. As much as the modern world might think that these female justice bringers are bad ass, the Ancient Greeks feared them, and the Romans associated them with female unrestrained rage. Fury was not a term of endearment, but a way to disparage a leader for madness and a lack of the masculine value of restraint. As the ancient Roman poet, Lucan, described Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt, “Egypt’s disgrace, to Latium a lethal Fury, her unchastity damaged Rome as much as the Spartans’ harmful face and figure battered Argos and knocked down the homes of Ilium…” To the Romans, a hyper-patriarchal society, Egypt and Greece were part of the unrestrained, effeminate “East” while Rome and “the West” prided themselves on organized, refined violence. And so here we are, in 2026, listening to the US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, use a difference in culture between the East and “Western Civilization” as grounds for killing civilians in Iran and sending soldiers to die. As justification for the strikes in Iran, Hegseth said, > “For 47 years, the Iranian regime has actively and intentionally facilitated the killing of Americans…seeking to destroy the United States and all of Western Civilization.” Here, “Western Civilization” does the heavy lifting that kleos did for Ancient Greek fighters; it elevates the government’s cause into something meaningful and worth dying for. It’s not the first time Hegseth uses the “West” to vilify any group of people he deems as “other.” “The other side [Democrats] is fueled by godless and toxic ideologies, foreign to the Western way of life, with intolerant hearts filled with rage and hate,” rich words coming from the man who named what is happening in Iran as Operation Epic Fury. But we know that kleos is not worth dying for, as the once glorious shade of Achilles tells Odysseus in the underworld. As a man who lived only for his honor and then paid tenfold for it in the end, for Achilles, he didn’t realize while he was alive that external validation found in kleos is a finite resource. It eventually runs dry without others to sustain it, and it isn’t worth losing your life over. In Book 11 of the Odyssey, Odysseus tells the dead Achilles, “…no one’s luck was better than yours, nor ever will be… now that you are here, you have great power among the dead. Achilles, you should not be bitter at your death.” (11.482-487 Wilson translation) But Achilles, who no longer cares for his own glory, responds to Odysseus: > “I would prefer to be a workman, hired by a poor man on a peasant farm, than rule as king of all the dead.” (11.489-491 Wilson translation). To be alive, even without any glory to his name, is preferable to being glorious amongst the dead. And dying for “Western Civilization” in the Middle East? It’s deathly ironic how the “West” views Iraq, Iran, and other Central and Western Asian countries and cultures, considering that Western Civilization was born there. The oldest cities and foundations of civilization (like Uruk) are found in modern-day Iraq, and the oldest epic stories and law codes, like the Epic of Gilgamesh and Hammurabi’s Code, are found in Mesopotamia, Greek for “between two rivers,” the Tigris and Euphrates. The Elite’s Delusion and the Common People’s Grief The one in power, whether it be an ancient king or the current president of the United States, cannot afford to be wrong at any moment, and those who surround the leader will do anything to protect the ego of the king. A quote from ancient literature I always come back to when thinking about the deadly effects of the brittle egos of powerful men is from Anne Carson’s translation of the Greek tragedy, Agamemnon, by Aeschylus: > It is delusion that makes men bold, knocks them sideways, causes grief. This line refers to the Greek ships attempting to sail to Troy to start the war, but they are stuck in the port town of Aulis because there is no wind to fill their sails. The cost of good sailing wind? Agamemnon’s daughter. After essentially doing a pro and con list of whether or not to sacrifice his own daughter for wind, Agamemnon ultimately decided to ritually kill his daughter so the Greek army could get going. As horrifying as this is, doing a cost-benefit analysis of lives lost vs. war effort still happens today, and the delusion of current leaders is on full display just as Agamemnon’s was thousands of years ago. Ancient or modern, the people who pay the true price of war are rarely those who profit from it or are the key decision makers. When U.S. soldiers began to die in this new war with Iran, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, said: > “We have three, but we expect casualties, but in the end, it’s going to be a great deal for the world.” He went on to say that there will be more deaths, and “That’s just the way it is.” Of course, the criticism ensued, but the government officials who surround the president were quick to protect their boss, with Hegseth saying that the press was “focusing too much on the dead soldiers in an effort to make Trump ‘look bad.’” There are countless examples of Trump defending himself and his words, or simply deflecting when a reporter asks for clarification, by calling the reporter “terrible” or telling them to smile more. In all the years Trump has been president, he has never taken responsibility for any of his mistakes or actions that have caused harm to others. This isn’t just a modern issue with a political leader; even Agamemnon was unable to take any responsibility for the countless deaths of Greek soldiers thanks to his spat with Achilles at the beginning of the Iliad. Instead, Agamemnon blames the goddess, Delusion, for his actions against Achilles, which ended up killing many of his men. In the Iliad, in Book 19, Agamemnon says, > “The Greeks have often spoken to me about the things I said and blamed me for them. It was not my fault! … Deadly Delusion ruins and deludes all men. She is the eldest child of Zeus… She passes through the minds of human beings and damages them all, and puts in shackles one man in two.” (11.85-96 Wilson translation) Agamemnon had a tenuous grip on power, and his glory or kleos (like any leader of a patriarchal culture) was like a house of cards that could fall apart at any moment. With Trump’s approval ratings in free fall, his grip on power is just as tenuous and unable to withstand the consequences of admitting failure or wrongdoing on his part. Elite men are unable to take responsibility for their mistakes. The brittle egos of powerful men have consequences for everyone in a world of patriarchy. Of course, they aren’t the ones who suffer the most in war. As the Greek army is trapped in their ships in Aulis, the tragedy Agamemnon describes the conditions of the army, unable to go anywhere, not just to Troy. In all that time they waited, they faced “hunger, [and] painful anchorage,” and the stranded armies became “worn to fragments.” Fast forward a few thousand years to reports of the now deceased US soldiers who were assigned to a post with woefully inadequate protection described by CNN as a “makeshift operations center.” The White House, eager to move on from the deaths of six US soldiers and hundreds of Iranian children killed in this war they started, posted a video to X/Twitter, hyping up the strikes with clips of popular movies from Marvel, Gladiator, Braveheart, and others to show how cool war is. (Screenshot pulled from White House Twitter account) The video in the Tweet ends with the narrator from the video game Mortal Kombat, saying, “Flawless Victory.” I’m sure the families of the dead soldiers would disagree with the statement. While the White House will try to gloss over the grief that war causes, that grief is the one constant from ancient times until today. In the same Greek tragedy, the Chorus sings of the grief of the spouse left behind during war (in Ancient Greece, this would have been women): > “But grief sits at the hearth of every house where a man sailed off to war. Many things pierce a woman’s heart: in place of the man she sent out, she knows she’ll get back a handful of ash.” From an ancient Greek woman sitting by her hearth expecting a handful of ash, to the six families waiting for the remains of their loved ones, the cost of war remains the same, and yet, it is a cost that always falls to the common people and never on the elites. How much longer are we willing to pay the cost of war that the wealthy and the powerful start? Who Gets to Tell the Story? Too many times in this current president’s administration, I find myself reflecting on how evil is portrayed in ancient Greek tragedies about the Trojan War. > “Evil that calls itself virtue is the paranoia of men whose minds have broken down.” From the tragedy, Orestes, by Euripides. Hegseth loves to wrap his warmongering obsession up in Christianity, pretending that he is doing God’s work by bombing Iran and killing hundreds. But he’s not the only Christian doing this. The use of religion and the utter glee that some Christians have at the idea of war with Iran is utterly sickening. While soldiers die and hundreds of Iranian children are killed, there are vile people who celebrate. But as soon as I begin to feel so overwhelmed with revulsion at the celebrations being had with this war, at the cost of so many lives, I think of another quote from antiquity: > “Oh my friends, in times like these, self-control has no meaning. Rules of reverence do not apply. Evil is a pressure that shapes us to itself.” from the tragedy, Electra by Sophocles Evil may be a pressure that tries to shape us to itself, but that doesn’t mean it will win. When we stand firm in our values and protect one another, then we are not so easily pilable. Yours in staying strong against the pressures of Evil, Monica --- ✨ Felt a spark? If something in this piece stirred something in you—made you think, feel, or see the world a little differently—and you’d like to support the work, and you’d rather not subscribe monthly, you can leave a one-off tip or buy me a coffee. I keep all my posts free, so your support helps me keep this space shared, not gated. Thank you for reading!