In Search of the Trojan War

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In Search of the Trojan War

• ART/CNE 430
• 10/28/04

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Gallery at Tiryns
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Excerpt from the Mycenae-Epidaurus tourist
guidebook
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Heinrich Schliemann the Rediscovery of Troy
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The Evidence for Troy

• Homeric epic
• Trojan War Cycle
• Wood recounts the story and introduces the major
  players.
• The Greeks believed in the reality of Troy.

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Homers Description

• Epithets of Troy/Ilios
• Well-walled
• Broad
• Lofty gates
• Fine towers
• Wide streets
• Sacred, steep, very windy

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Homers Account of the Layout

• Great city with strong walls, big enough to hold
  a large population. 4 gates, one with a tower.
• Palace of Priam at the top, with halls of state,
  a throne room, 50 marble rooms for his sons,
  royal halls for Hektor and Paris.
• Agora
• Temple of Athena in the higher city, temple of
  Apollo in the citadel.
• Sizeable acropolis with a lower walled town with
  a population in the thousands.

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Ilioupersis

• Greek tradition has it that the Greeks plundered
  and burned Troy, razing its walls before they
  left.
• The Rape of Cassandra Wood recounts the power of
  this legend over the Greek imagination. The
  Lokrians, descendants of the line of the Lesser
  Ajax, from c. 700 BCE sent girls to serve in
  Athenas temple at Troy their lives were akin to
  slaves. This custom continued through the 1st c.
  CE.

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History or Myth?

• Ancient Greeks pretty uniformly held the War to
  be historical. We saw the two early historians,
  Herodotus and Thucydides, rationalizing the
  story.

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Ancient Chronology

• In classical Greece, historical chronology went
  back to the first Olympiad, in 776 BCE, about the
  same time as the Greek alphabetic writing
  appears.
• The general prehistoric chronology was maintained
  in mythic tradition.

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Ancient Dates for the Trojan War

• Herodotus 1250 BC
• Ephorus 1135 BC
• Doulis of Samos 1334 BC
• Eratosthenes (librarian of Alexandria) 1184-1183
  BC
• These were computed by estimating the length of
  generations.

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Parian Marble King List

• 14th c. BC cult of Eleusis founded
• 1251 BC Sack of Thebes
• 1209 BC June 5, Sack of Troy
• 1202 BC Foundation of Salamis in Cyprus
• 1087 BC First Greek settlements in Ionia
• 907 BC Homers floruit

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Archaic and Classical Greeks Venerated Their
Heroic Past

• Hero cults
• Tourist visits to the ruins of famous cities of
  the past, like Mycenae
• See J. Boardmans The Archaeology of Nostalgia
  How the Greeks Re-Created Their Mythical Past
  (2002).

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Classical Pottery Fragment From Over Grave Circle
A I am for the hero
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The Afterlife of the Trojan War Myth

• Wood traces devotion to the myth from the archaic
  period on.
• C. 700 BCE colonists reinhabited the place,
  calling it Ilion.
• Xerxes (480 BC) desired to see Troy before he
  crossed the Hellespont, according to Herodotus.
  He sacrificed 1000 oxen to Athena and made
  libations to the great men of old.

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Afterlife

• Alexander the Great (4th c.) carried a copy of
  Homer with him and slept with it under his pillow
  (will Colin Farrell do this in the movie?). When
  he crossed over to Asia, he was the first to jump
  onto the ground, throwing his spear into it to
  claim it as his own. Dedicated his armor to
  Athena in exchange for that said to be from the
  TW. He then made an offering at Achilles Tomb.

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Achilles Tomb at Troy
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Afterlife

• Alexanders successors built a city wall.
• By Roman times, the town had almost died.
• Julius Caesar, fired up by the myth and his
  Trojan ancestry, visited the Sigeum promontory
  and the river Simois, looking for the wall Apollo
  had built. He was reportedly disappointed not to
  see more. He promised to rebuild Troy.
• Constantine the Great (4th c. CE) tried first to
  build his new capital on the Sigeum ridge at Troy
  before giving up (silted up harbor) and founding
  Constantinople.

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Afterlife

• The emperor Julian in a letter recounts his
  happiness at finding the shrines and cult sites
  of heroes at Troy still maintained by the
  Christian bishop (354-5 CE).
• The fall of the Roman empire resulted in a loss
  of culture and a loss of Greek literature such as
  Homeric epic.
• But the story of the Trojan war survived orally.
• Wood traces the transmission of accounts of the
  TW from Saxon stories up through WWI (Gallipoli).

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British Poet Rupert Brookeon Fighting Near Troy

• They say Achilles in the darkness stirred . .
  And Priam and his fifty sons
• Wake all amazed, and hear the guns,
• And shake for Troy again.

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Patrick Shaw-Stewart

• Achilles came to Troyland
• And I to Chersonese
• He turned from wrath to battle,
• And I from three days peace.
• Was it so hard, Achilles,
• So very hard to die?
• Thou knowest and I know not -
• So much the happier I.

• I will go back this morning
• From Imbros over the sea
• Stand in the trench, Achilles,
• Flame-capped, and fight for me.

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Why Homer?

• The popularity of Homer in Victorian and
  Edwardian English imagination perhaps reflects
  the role of the Iliad in the public school
  system. On the fields of war, Homer evoked the
  most powerful images in those brought up to see
  themselves as the new Athenians.

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20th - 21st Centuries

• The story still holds us - scholars such as
  Bernard Knox reread their Homer and Vergil on the
  fields of World War II, and the popularity of
  books such as Achilles in Vietnam attests to the
  power of the story as a lens through which to
  view the modern experience of war. In the war in
  the former Yugoslavia, images of the Trojan Women
  came to the minds of many observers.

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The Searchers

• Troys general site was never forgotten.
• Wood recounts travelers accounts from the Middle
  Ages on.
• In the 15th - 16th centuries, the spread of
  printing allowed the dissemination of Homer in
  translation for the first time, triggering a
  continous stream of Western visitors to the
  Troad.
• 18th c. First scholarly attempts to discover the
  exact location of Homeric Troy detective story.

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Robert Wood

• In the mid 1700s, he laid the foundations for
  the modern topographical study of the Trojan
  problem.
• His premise that Troys location and the
  historicity of the Trojan War could be determined
  by patient field research set the tone for the
  future.
• His book was wildly popular, issued in 5 editions
  and translated into 4 languages.

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Wood

• It is precisely its power as a myth which has
  excited belief in its historicity - the story
  moves us so much that it must be true. Many
  archaeologists, professed scientists, have
  neverthless been able to encompass this within
  their scientific truth! (p. 36)

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Frank Calvert

• Has a claim to be called the discoverer of Troy.
• His family had lived in the Troad since Byrons
  day until WWII. He served as the American consul
  in the Dardonelles.

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Calvert Hisarlik

• All three Calvert brothers talked to Schliemann,
  who was perhaps influenced by Franks fascination
  with Troy.
• Before 1864, Calvert felt that Hisarlik was the
  site of Ilion he went by topography and physical
  remains such as potsherds. In 1863, hed tried to
  interest the British Museum in excavating the
  site. In 1864, he bought the north part of
  Hisarlik, and the next year did trial excavations
  in 4 places. Discovered deep stratifications (50
  ft), but needed lots of money to excavate further.

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Schliemann Hisarlik

• Schliemann made his own myth, in his publications
  of his excavations and other arenas.
• According to this, it had been his childhood
  dream, his destiny, to excavate Troy.

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Schliemanns Search

• Most likely it was Schliemanns meeting with
  Calvert in 1868 that triggered his interest in
  Troy.

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New Ilium
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Excavation of Hisarlik

• Schliemann obtained permission and began a
  preliminary excavation in 1870 over 1871-3 he
  conducted 3 major campaigns with 80-160 workmen
  on site. He drove vast trenches into the ground,
  removing hundreds of tons of earth rubble.

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Methodological Disagreements

• Calvert had recommended a network of smaller
  trenches by 1872 Calvert withdrew from the
  excavation and fallen out with Schliemann, who
  was perplexed by the mounds stratigraphy.

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Schliemanns Homeric Troy

• Identifying 4 prehistoric levels in the
  stratigraphy, Schl. Selected Troy II as his
  Homeric Troy, with its burnt layer and rich goods.

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Troy II

• This site was only 100 yards across.
• Calvert wrote an article in 1873 pointing out
  that no relics of the intervening 1000 years
  having yet been discovered between prehistoric
  stone implements archaic style pottery.

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Treasure of Priam

• Stung by Calverts criticism, Schliemann soon
  thereafter discovered the Treasure of Priam.

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Treasure of Priam
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Treasure of Priam