3
[A] divine race of heroes of whom part were destroyed by evil war and dread battle, some beneath the gates of seven-gated Thebes … others at Troy whither they were borne on ships over the great gulf of the sea.
Hesiod, Works and Days 161f.
The Mythology of Troy’s Foundation
At the heart of Homer’s poetry lies Troy, the mighty city that Achilles fights against in the Iliad and Odysseus returns from in the Odyssey. The mythical Trojans traced their ancestry back to Dardanos, who founded Dardania (or Dardanos) in the foothills of Mount Ida. His grandson Tros eventually inherited the kingdom and called the region Troia or Tro(i)as (‘the Troad’) – the part of present-day Turkey close to the Dardanelles (also named after Dardanos). Of Tros’ three sons, Ganymede was taken by the gods to be Zeus’ wine-pourer;1 Assaracus was the grandfather of Anchises, who had an affair with Aphrodite, who gave birth to Aeneas; and Ilos went to Phrygia, which is close to the Troad, and took part in some games where, in addition to his prize for winning the wrestling, he received a dappled cow and instructions to found a city in the place where the animal lay down. The beast reclined at the Hill of Ate (Delusion) in Phrygia, and here Ilos built his city. He called it Ilion, which is the normal designation (earlierWilion), not ‘Troy’, although its inhabitants are Troes (Trojans).
Ilos was the father of the Trojan king Laomedon. In mythology, the walls of Ilion were erected for Laomedon by Poseidon and Apollo, along with the mortal Aiakos, whose involvement was crucial, since with only immortal builders the walls would have been impregnable. In Laomedon’s reign, Ilion was captured by Herakles, after which Podarkes, later called Priam, ascended the throne. By his wife Hekabe (Hecuba) he had a prodigious series of sons (nineteen of his fifty sons were by her) and beautiful daughters, including Hector, Paris and Cassandra. Priam reigned during the Trojan War.
The Quest for Homer’s Troy
That is all mythology, but, for the Greeks, the Trojan War was an historical event the end of which was dated to 1334/3 BCE (Douris), c.1250 BCE (Herodotus), 5 June 1209 BCE (the Parian Marble), or 1184 BCE (Eratosthenes), and Homer’s Troy came to be identified with the ruins of a citadel in the Troad, located 6 km east of the Aegean coast and 4.5 km south of the Dardanelles. This entire area had been settled by Aeolian Greeks from about 800 BCE onwards. However, the fact that the Classical Greeks and Romans called it Ilion did not necessarily mean that it was the site of Homer’s Troy. In any case, in the sixth century CE the site was abandoned and, when the region finally came under Turkish rule, the smallish hill on which the citadel had stood came to be known as Hisarlık = ‘furnished with a citadel’.
The Homeric memories persisted: the Anglo-Saxon pilgrim Sæwulf had the ‘very ancient and famous city of Troy’ pointed out to him; peripatetic Renaissance antiquary Cyriac of Ancona walked the Trojan plain in 1444 CE, and when he set sail for Imbros and saw Samothrace peeping over the top just as Homer says, he remembered the passage in the Iliad where Poseidon watches the fighting from the ‘top of the highest summit of timbered Samothrace’. For him, this proved that Homer had told the truth. When Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453 CE, followed by much of Greece, Mehmet II the Conqueror visited the site and reputedly said: ‘It is to me that Allah has given to avenge this city and its people: I have overcome their enemies.’
The first real scholarly attempts to pin down the exact location of the events of the Iliad began in the eighteenth century: Robert Wood’s Essay … on the Original Genius of Homer (1769) established the premise that the location of Troy and the historicity of theTrojan War could be determined by field research; in a lecture to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1791, Jean Baptiste Lechevalier argued that the Trojan War was historical fact; Jacob Bryant retorted by denying that the war had taken place and asserting that Troy had never existed. Those opinions pretty much encompass the scholarly positions of today.
Byron was a true believer:
I’ve stood upon Achilles’ tomb,
And heard Troy doubted; time will doubt of Rome.2
In his diary for 11 January 1821 Byron wrote:
We do care about the authenticity of the tale of Troy … I venerate the grand original as the truth of history … and of place; otherwise it would have given me no delight.3
It also mattered to Frank Calvert (1828–1908), who began to excavate at Hisarlık in 1863. The British Museum considered sending him £100 for preliminary work, but dithered and lost the opportunity. The man who stole the glory was Heinrich Schliemann, who obtained permission to excavate, and exploited his personal fortune to do so. His first campaign at Hisarlık began in April 1870, and his hunch that Priam’s Troy was to be found there seemed to be corroborated by his finds of impressive masonry and, thanks to the alleged help of his beautiful Greek wife Sophia, fabulous jewellery:
In the name of divine Homer, I baptise (this sacred locality) with that name of immortal renown, which fills the heart of everyone with joy and enthusiasm: I give it the name of TROY and ILIUM.4
These finds made him an international celebrity.
Schliemann initially thought he had discovered five prehistoric forts/settlements and, contrary to what is now standard archaeological practice, he numbered them I to V, from the bottom (oldest) up. Above these prehistoric settlements, he identified two more, one Greek, one Roman, from the historical period. In 1882 Schliemann was joined by the great excavator Wilhelm Dörpfeld, who was able to discern nine major levels. These were dubbed ‘Troy I’ (the oldest) through to ‘Troy IX’. Dörpfeld continued to work for two seasons after Schliemann’s death, supported financially by Sophia.
American archaeologists from the University of Cincinnati resumed excavations between 1932 and 1938, under the direction of Carl Blegen. He maintained the essence of Dörpfeld’s nine layers, but refined them into more than forty different strata (e.g. Troy IIId, VIh, etc.). The main building material – dried mud bricks – had a limited life, and needed constant renovation. Old structures were levelled and new ones were built on top of them, so a man-made mound arose, expanding both vertically and horizontally. Blegen was both an excellent archaeologist and a committed ‘Homerist’:
It can no longer be doubted … that there really was an actual historical Trojan War, in which a coalition of Achaeans, or Mycenaeans, under a king whose overlordship was recognized, fought against the people of Troy and their allies.5
The most recent excavations have been carried out since 1988 by an international team, initially directed by Manfred Korfmann from the University of Tübingen, and, after his death in 2005, by Ernst Pernicka. The ‘Troia Projekt’ is a multidisciplinary venture financed by state and private funding, but its excavations have generated considerable controversy and criticism, particularly as Korfmann believed that Homeric tradition reflected a specific historical event.
From Foundation to Destruction: Myth and Archaeology
Troy’s oldest three levels comprise what Korfmann christened the ‘Trojan Maritime Culture’ (2920–2200 BCE6), which spread into both the Aegean and the Sea of Marmara, and whose commercial and cultural influence can be discerned as far as Malta, Bulgaria, Asia Minor and Afghanistan. Troy I (2920–2350 BCE7) was less than 100 m across, fortified by a wall approximately 2.5 m thick (renovated several times), containing the foundations of spacious ‘long-houses’, with some fine herringbone masonry (in which alternating stone courses are set in opposing diagonals), and one outstanding structure of the ‘megaron’ type: one long rectangular room, with a hearth at the centre, and a forecourt created by extending the long side walls. Troy I’s economic life was built on animal husbandry, agriculture, trade, fishing, hunting and weaving. The cemetery has not been located, but infant burials were found beneath house floors. The settlement was ultimately destroyed by fire.
Troy II (c.2550–22508), which contained seven different levels (Troy IIa to IIg), began its existence about the same time as Babylon. The citadel is 125 m in diameter, surrounded by a 6 m high stone wall surmounted by a mud brick superstructure, and accessed via two monumental main gates, one of which was approached by a ramp paved with limestone slabs. Inside was a complex of courtyards and large buildings, dominated by the Great Megaron, a columned rectangular building with a central hearth that was entered via an open portico, which gives the impression that the citadel was the preserve of a powerful and wealthy elite. Outside the citadel lay a lower city of about 90,000 square metres, possibly surrounded by a wooden palisade the foundations of which are preserved as a negative impression cut into bedrock near one of the gates.
The economy was similar to Troy I’s, although with further-flung trading partners. The development of the potter’s wheel led to the manufacture of new ceramic forms, including tall drinking vessels with big double handles and round bases like the depas amphikypellon of Homer,9 and we see the first use of bronze. An abundance of sheep and goat bones, spindle whorls and traces of a loom indicate wool production, which the Trojans may have grown rich on, because more than twenty ‘treasures’, including what Schliemann called ‘The Treasure of Priam’, were unearthed in Troy II. These comprise weapons, ornaments of gold and electrum, various silver, copper and bronze finds, and the iconic ‘Jewels of Helen’ that were worn in a famous photograph by Sophia Schliemann: earrings, a golden diadem and other jewels from the hoard that Schliemann claimed to have found on 31 May 1873, which are now mainly displayed in the Pushkin Musem in Moscow. There are those who doubt whether the Treasure of Priam is authentic, and certainly Schliemann’s claim that Sophia was at his side when he made the discovery is bogus: we know that she was in Greece at the time. However, the general consensus is that the hoard is probably genuine.
The reason why so much treasure was deliberately buried seems to be fear. Troy II was destroyed in a fire that left a 2 m-deep layer of ashen remains. Schliemann calculated: treasure + impressive monuments + conflagration = Homer’s Troy. Yet this proved to be a premature conclusion. Firstly, we do not know what, or who, caused the destruction, although in around 2300 BCE various parts of Anatolia were undergoing traumatic events. But if alien ‘sackers of cities’ (as Odysseus is called) perpetrated this violence, we need to explain why the inventory of finds of Troy III (2250–2200 BCE10) generally resembles those of Troy II, indicating cultural continuity. Did the people who sacked the city just move on? Did they mingle with the original inhabitants and assimilate their culture? Were they from the same region and culture? The fortification wall of Troy II was probably reused, and the structures on the citadel grew smaller and more numerous during Troy III, which implies that many people lived within the walls and that the citadel was no longer the preserve of an elite ruling class. Does this indicate that the destruction was linked to local regime change? If Troy’s destruction was due to a natural disaster from which the population fled, later to return, why was the treasure not retrieved? We can but speculate.
Secondly, Troy II is about 1,000 years too old to be Priam’s Troy. At this period there were no ‘Greeks’ in Greece11 to launch an assault from Mycenae as described in the Iliad. Schliemann probably (and reluctantly) came to accept this just before he died. Dörpfeld persuaded him that there was a better candidate in a more recent level, which would fit the chronology and the archaeology much better.
Troy III also ended in fiery destruction, and it could be that some of the ‘treasures’ belonged to this period, but this level seldom enters the running to be Priam’s Troy, and neither do Troy IV and V (c.2200–1740/30 BCE12). The settlement became something of an isolated, insignificant backwater in a period that saw the emergence of new forces in the Near East, notably the Hittites. Its living conditions were irregular and quite crowded, and it was eventually destroyed in another serious fire. However, this marked the start of a new era; the most celebrated phase of its history was about to happen.
Troy VI (1740/30–1300 BCE13) really represents the zenith of Troy. A new fortress, with a cultural layer of 5–6 m deep and eight sub-phases (Troy VIa-h14), now surrounds a much larger settlement. The fortification walls, constructed by expert masons, have a slight glacis on the exterior, vertical interior faces, and are made from beautifully laid limestone ashlar blocks (without mortar) that form one solid mass, like in an Egyptian pyramid. The walls are divided into sections by distinctive vertical offsets, the function of which is enigmatic, and they are mighty: more than 4 m thick, up to 9 m high in places, originally surmounted by a mud-brick superstructure, and with impressive projecting towers, particularly near the major gates. Tower VIg also enclosed a 10 m deep artesian well or cistern. The gates themselves were well fortified, and at the main gate in the south a drain runs down the centre of the road under the pavement.
Inside the walls, independent buildings were constructed on rings of concentric terraces going up towards the city centre. No identifiable palace survives, but the foundations of houses reveal large, rectangular structures: some are of the megaron type; the ‘Pillar House’ (27 × 12.5 m) had two large pillars in its main room, presumably supporting a second storey; House VI F preserves evidence for half-timbering, and traces of an interior stairway suggest it had two storeys; and House VI M has an L-shaped plan with an open court occupying the space between its two wings. Extensive storage provision on the ground floor of many of the houses implies that the residential areas were on the upper floor.
Archaeological campaigns at Hisarlık have also focused on the area beyond Troy’s citadel wall, with interesting results. A cemetery revealed more than 180 cremation urns dating to Troy VIh, most of which contained the remains of more than one individual, sometimes adults and children together. The grave goods were generally poor, which might indicate lowly social status or reflect a massive burial programme for large numbers of victims of the earthquake that shattered Troy VIh, to stop the bodies becoming a source of disease. On the other hand, this might have been the normal mode of burial.
Geomagnetic imaging has shown that Troy VI was surrounded by quite an extensive settlement, leading Korfmann to estimate a population of between 4,000 and 10,000. A wide U-shaped ditch cut into the bedrock was found about 450 m outside the citadel, and parts of a second ditch 150 m beyond that, which Korfmann interpreted as defences against chariot attacks. This is pure guesswork, however, and others argue that they might be part of a water drainage and reservoir system. There is certainly a water cave dating back to the third millennium, with underground tunnels extending some 160 m in length, which served Troy VI. Korfmann identified this with the ‘subterranean passageway’ of the god KASAL.KUR, who was invoked to witness a treaty sworn between the Hittite king Muwattalli II and King Alaksandu of Wilusa (c.1280 BCE). Korfmann’s critics dismissed the proposed fortification system and suggest he has overestimated the site’s significance and extent. Many think he has been too imaginative in his reconstruction, aiming for spectacular ‘results’. However, arguing that the original fortress of Troy VI would be the royal citadel, with a lower settlement attached, is eminently reasonable.
Troy’s economic power came from intensive trade with Central Anatolia (the Hittites), and with the Mycenaean cities of continental Greece, the Aegean islands and Cyprus, besides sustenance through agriculture, animal husbandry and weaving. Artefacts made of gold, electrum, bronze and lead, although relatively scanty, are good quality; the textile industry was thriving; ivory now appears in quantity; intensive use of horses occurs for the first time, giving echoes of Homer’s description of the Trojans as ‘tamers of horses’ to those who want to hear them; and standing stones (menhirs) in front of Tower VIi have tempted some to postulate a cult involving pillars and columns (or baetyls) on the Minoan model.
The pottery remains are fascinating: ninety of the ninety-eight different shapes identified are new, indicating a definite break in the cultural tradition. A highly distinctive, lustrous wheel-made pottery called ‘Grey Minyan Ware’ now appears. It gets its name from its resemblance to the Grey Minyan pottery of Middle Helladic (MH) Greece, but the two should not be confused: Troy’s ‘Grey Minyan’ is a local ware; the shape ranges of the two types are very different; and MH Grey Minyan pre-dates Troy VI. Nevertheless, the interchange of pottery between Troy and the Mycenaeans provides crucial information for establishing chronology: pottery from the southern Aegean begins to appear in Troy VIb; Mycenaean Late Helladic I (LH I) pottery begins in Troy VId; and in Mycenaean terms, the destruction of Troy VI happened during the LH IIIB period – just after c.1300 BCE.
So Troy VI coincides with Mycenaean culture in a way that Troy II does not. Could this be the city that Agamemnon sacked? Dörpfeld persuaded Schliemann that it was, and this settlement has become known as ‘the Homeric city’, although we must be aware that this convention prejudges the issue: conclusive evidence as to whether or not the Mycenaeans attacked Troy at all, let alone in a single operation, is lacking in the evidence so far. The walls were destroyed at the end of Troy VIh by what many authorities think was a massive earthquake, but there are no convincing signs of a general conflagration,15 and, although aspects of Troy VI certainly match Homer’s descriptions, so can the Hittite acropolis of Hattusa, and the citadels of Mycenae and Tiryns. Neither are these architectural features confined to the Late Bronze Age: Homer’s description might dovetail with Troy VI, but it is still a poetic vision of what the city might have looked like.
Another fundamental question is: ‘Who were the Trojans anyway?’ In Greek literature from Homer to the fifth century BCE we see no ethnic or cultural opposition between Greeks and Trojans. Both sides worship the same gods and speak Greek, and it is only after the Persian invasions of Greece that Troy started to acquire an incredibly negative image and the Trojans came to personify generic barbarism. Historically speaking, Homer was wrong: Troy was only ever a relatively minor player in a world dominated by the superpowers of Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt and the Hittites. As the Hittites expanded their influence in c.1400 BCE, they imposed vassal status on several western kingdoms, and letters and treaties show that they had contact with Troy.
Schliemann took the swastika motifs that he found on artefacts from Troy as proof that the Trojans belonged to the Aryan race. The rather chilling overtones of this observation have to be taken in context: ‘Aryan’, derived from Sanskrit arya (= noble), was used in the nineteenth century as a synonym for what we now call ‘Indo-European’, and during the Early Bronze Age quite a lot of Indo-European speaking newcomers arrived in Anatolia, including the Hittites and the Luwians.
Because Troy VI shows a major break with the preceding culture, it has been suggested that the Luwians took it over. The earliest written document from Troy is a seal written in Luwian hieroglyphics found in level VIIb1, but this does not prove that the Trojans spoke Luwian: it was the language of the Hittite political elite, and just because the seal was found at Troy does not prove that it came from there – seals are portable. The kingdom of Troy may have been created by a dynasty of Luwian ethnic origin ruling a multi-ethnic population, but, if Luwian was Troy’s official language, Homer’s identikit Greeks and Trojans start to look like a literary construct: in reality their languages were probably mutually unintelligible.
The term ‘Luwiya’ was ultimately replaced in the Hittite texts by ‘Arzawa’, and these Arzawa lands became Hittite vassal states. The records of the Hittite king Tudhalija I, who ruled during the Troy VI phase (although not during Troy VIh, the destruction level), mention hostilities with places that could have Homeric relevance: the land of Wilusiya and the land of Taruisa. Wilusiya features in the Hittite archives as a western Anatolian Arzawan kingdom. Could it be (W)ilion, the Ilios of Homer? ‘Taruisa’ might be pronounced Taruwisa, Tarwisa, Truisa or Troisa. Could this be Troia, Troy? Not if the normal rules of Greek phonology apply, but the juxtaposition of Wilusiya and Taruisa is certainly enticing, although possibly coincidental, and some academics see it as evidence that Troy was the capital of the Arzawan kingdom called Wilusiya in the Troad.
The last level that has a bearing on the Homer debate is Troy VII (1300–950 BCE16). The finds from sub-level Troy VIIa are almost indistinguishable from those of Troy VIh, implying that Troy VIIa’s inhabitants survived the earthquake that levelled Troy VIh. Remains of houses outside the walls also show that a lower city still extended beyond the citadel just as it had in Troy VI. The fortifications themselves were reconstructed, protecting water supplies consisting of a well in a paved courtyard and the refurbished cistern/well in Tower VIg.
Some of Troy VI’s houses were reused, but many were simply built over by far more densely packed, irregularly planned, one-storey, multi-roomed structures. The floors of many houses contain pits for large storage pithoi, and the excavators have argued that this indicates a population preparing itself to face some external threat. But this could be as much down to a radical decrease in floor space of the average Trojan dwelling as evidence for a Homeric siege, and the encroachment of common dwellings into the citadel might equally indicate that the ruling elite had been ousted in a revolution. The Mycenaean palaces on the Greek mainland cease to function around this time, and contemporary Hittite texts also indicate local uprisings in the area.
The date of Troy VIIa’s destruction lies between 1250 and 1180 BCE, with the latter being the more likely on the basis of LH IIIC Mycenaean sherds in its ruins. For those who seek to make the Trojan War of Greek myth into an historical event, Troy VIIa is a good bet as it perished in a general conflagration. In addition, all the postulated preparations for siege had failed; there are a few spearheads and arrowheads embedded in the walls, plus some mutilated skeletons that were not found in burial contexts. Finally, Troy VIIa imported far less Mycenaean pottery. Might this mean that the assailants were Mycenaeans? Possibly, but the quantity of Mycenaean ceramic imports was diminishing elsewhere, which may signify a more general decline in Mycenaean trade: this hypothetical slump is as likely as a hypothetical siege as an explanation for the dearth of Mycenaean imports.
Furthermore, if the dating of the LH IIIC sherds is correct, then Troy VIIa’s destruction was practically coeval with that of the Mycenaean palaces, when the Mycenaeans would have had problems assembling a coalition of the sort described by Homer. Unless, that is, the Mycenaean destructions occurred in the absence of large numbers of potential defenders who were away besieging Troy. But many other cities apart from Troy fell in Anatolia, possibly at the hands of the so-called Sea Peoples. It has been mooted that displaced Mycenaeans might have been among the Sea Peoples, but there is no proof of this. And, at the end of the day, Troy VIIa is a patched-up, earthquake-damaged city in economic decline: it does not look like a home for heroes.
The contemporary Hittite documents, however, do provide further exquisite teases for the ‘Homerists’. One comes from King Muwattalli II (1296–1272 BCE = Troy VIIa):
I, My Majesty, will not abandon you … and I will kill the enemy on your behalf. If your brother or someone of your family withdraws political support from you, Alaksandu … and they seek the kingship of the land ofWilusa, I, My Majesty, will absolutely not discard you, Alaksandu.17
Could Alaksandu = Alexandros, the alternative name of Paris? Another document from Muwattalli II mentions a bandit called Piyamaradu (= Priam?) and Wilusa on the same tablet. It tells how Gassus, the Hittite commander, arrived with his Hittite troops:
[And whe]n [they … ] set out again(?) to the country of Wilusa in order to attack (it), [I, howe]ver, became ill. I am seriously ill, illness holds me [pro]strated.
[A paragraph divider occurs here] When [Piyam]aradu had humiliated me, he set Atpa [agai]nst me(?)18
However, it is not clear that the Hittite troops were in the area to liberate Wilusa from Piyamaradu, and the paragraph divider may indicate that his activities had nothing whatsoever to do with Wilusa. Even if the mythical tradition has preserved the name of a genuine ruler of Troy, it does not confirm the historicity of the Iliad.
Another aspect of this debate concerns the fact that Homer’s Greeks are called Akhaioi (‘Achaeans’). Some Hittite texts refer to a place called Ahhiyawa (with an earlier form Ahhiya), which is phonetically close (although not necessarily identical) to ‘Achaea/Akhaia’. Hattusili III (1265–1240 BCE), and Tudhalija IV (1240–1215 BCE) called the kings of Ahhiyawa ‘Great Kings’, as they did the rulers of Babylon, Syria and Egypt. We know from the ‘Tawagalawa Letter’ to the King of Ahhiyawa that Hattusili III was involved in a dispute with Ahhiyawa concerning Wilusa around 1250 BCE. Piyamaradu had turned to insurgency, operating out of Millawanda (Miletus?), which was under the indirect control of the King of Ahhiyawa. Hattusili wanted the King of Ahhiyawa to hand over Piyamaradu, and notes that the people he was harassing had already appealed to Tawagalawa (‘Eteokles’?), the King of Ahhiyawa’s brother.
Tell Piyamaradu that in the matter of Wilusa over which we were at enmity, he has changed my mind and we have made friends … for war is wrong for us [Later he says] Now we [i.e. Hattusili and the King of Ahhiyawa] have reached agreement on the matter of Wilusa over which we fought. 19
This might suggest that the Hittites fought with Ahhiyawan (Mycenaean) aggressors over Troy, but alternatively this could just have been a diplomatic crisis, or the fighting might have been about the control of Wilusa without the city being directly involved in the fighting. Whatever the case, this falls woefully short of anything resembling a conflict on a Homeric scale, and the theory remains unproved.
There probably was a war at Troy; whether or not it was the Trojan War is an open question. The archaeological evidence does not tell us that the attackers were Mycenaeans, and may well imply that they were not. The fact that ‘Coarse Ware’ pottery (Buckelkeramik), which is closely related to pottery that appears in more-or-less contemporary contexts at sites in Greece, appears immediately after the destruction of Troy VIIa, may identify the sackers of Troy VIIa as coming from the Danube region. However, the trouble with this theory is that the quantities of Buckelkeramik are relatively small, and otherwise there is cultural continuity between Troy VIIa and VIIb1.
Frustratingly, literary evidence is almost entirely non-existent. The first evidence for writing that we have comes from Troy VIIb1: a lentoid bronze seal in Luwian hieroglyphics, with the name of a male scribe on one side and the name of a female on the other. Such seals were used by kings and bureaucrats throughout the Hittite empire and its vassal states, and it has now become the logo of the Troia Projekt.
The cause of the end of Troy VIIb1 is another unsolved mystery. There is no sign of any general destruction preceding Troy VIIb2, although this settlement, in its turn, was probably destroyed in a conflagration after a century or less of occupation, c.950 BCE.
A hiatus followed. Aeolian Greeks occupied the site in the late eighth century BCE, roughly when Homer’s epics were being committed to writing. The preceding oral tradition is less interested in recording historical fact than in presenting a version of the past that legitimizes the present. In that context, the tale of the Trojan War justified Greek military movements into Asia Minor – it was a ‘Just War’, and therefore became a crucial tale for Greek colonists moving into the region. If the Trojan War was an historical event (and Herodotus makes the telling point that Priam would never have risked the devastation of his kingdom, family or people for the sake of a female foreigner), and if Hisarlık was the site of this conflict, then the bards who sang about it between c.950 and 750 BCE could only have known an unimposing heap of rubble there. Homer clearly knew the Trojan topography pretty well, except that the Bronze Age coastline had altered significantly by his time, and his understanding of the Mycenaean world is sketchy.
So if we want to argue for the historicity of the Trojan War, we must prove when and where it happened, and that Mycenaeans were the aggressors. There are many places where Mycenaeans might have made pirate raids, and various scholars want the Trojan War to be a conflation of these activities. Others separate Troy from Hisarlık altogether, and locate it, for instance, in northern Greece, Egypt, Karatepe in south-east Turkey, or even in Britain, just outside Cambridge. Essentially, belief or disbelief in the historicity of the Trojan War seems like a leap of faith.
The great classicist Moses Finley concluded that ‘we are confronted with this paradox that the more we know, the worse off we are’, and argued that ‘Homer’s Trojan War must be evicted from the history of the Greek Bronze Age’.20 Peter Jones made the apt analogy of someone reading a James Bond novel 3,000 years from now, finding that Dunhill, Martini, White’s and Boodles all actually existed, and concluding that You Only Live Twice was history.21 The Iliad portrays what Homer thought the heroic world should look like, and in the end Troy’s magic is nothing to do with ‘history’, but all about a great poet’s imagination. At the conclusion of Euripides’ tragedy Trojan Women, the women call out to Troy:
Soon you will fall and lie
With the earth you loved, and none shall name you! …
All has vanished, and Troy is nothing!22
Not so. Troy has not vanished; Troy is not nothing.
Notes – Chapter 3
1. Homer, Odyssey 20.232–5. Ganymede’s abduction is sometimes said to have been perpetrated by Zeus himself, by an eagle on his behalf, or by Zeus in the form of an eagle, but Minos, Tantalos and Eos (Dawn) are also mentioned. Ganymede usually pours nectar into Zeus’ cup, rather than wine.
2. Don Juan, Canto IV, stanza 101.
3. T. Moore, Life of Lord Byron: With his Letters and Journals, Vol. 5, new edn., London: John Murray, 1854, 70.
4. Report of 4 August 1872, in Schliemanm, H., Troy and its Remains, London: John Murray, 1875, p. 211.
5. C.W. Blegen, Troy and the Trojans, London: Thames & Hudson, 1963, 20.
6. C.3000–2100 BCE on other scholars’ datings.
7. Or c.3000–2500 BCE.
8. Or c.2500–2300 BCE.
9. See above, p. 23 f.
10. Or c.2300–2100 BCE; or 2300–2200 BCE.
11. See above, p. 18.
12. Or c.2100–1700 BCE. Together Troy IV and V comprise what Korfmann calls the ‘Anatolian-Trojan’ culture.
13. Or c.1700–1250 BCE.
14. There is a move to recategorize Troy VIIa as ‘Late Troy VI and Troy VIi, formerly Troy VIIa’, because of the cultural continuity between these levels. However, Dörpfeld’s original designation is generally kept to avoid confusion.
15. Some writers have seen the myth of the Trojan Horse as a metaphor for this earthquake, in that the horse was sacred to Poseidon, the Greek god of earthquakes. This seems an unconvincing rationalization: Poseidon built Troy’s walls, and he backed the Trojans in the war.
16. Or c.1250–1000 BCE.
17. Trans. F. Stark, quoted in J. Latacz, Troy and Homer: Towards the Solution of an Old Mystery, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, 106–7.
18. Trans. P.H.J. Houwink ten Cate, ‘Sidelights on the Ahhiyawa Question from Hittite Vassal and Royal Correspondence,’ Jaarbericht Ex Oriente Lux 28, 1983–4, 40.
19. Trans. O.R. Gurney, in J. Garstang and O.R. Gurney, The Geography of the Hittite Empire, London: British Institute of Archaeology in Ankara, 1959, 111–14.
20. M.I. Finley, J.L. Caskey, G.S. Kirk and D.L. Page, ‘The Trojan War’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 84, 1964, 1–20.
21. ‘Peter Jones reviews The Trojan War: A New History by Barry Strauss (Hutchinson)’, Sunday Telegraph, 25 February 2007.
22. Euripides, Trojan Women, 1319 ff., trans. P. Vellacott, in Euripides, Three Plays: Alcestis; Hippolytus; Iphigenia in Tauris, Harmondsworth: Penguin, rev. edn, 1974.