The ancient clash between the Greeks and Trojans has captivated people for millennia. Danny Bird looks at its influence on the Romans, what archaeologists have found, and whether it was all just a myth
IS THE TROJAN WAR A MYTH OR A REAL HISTORICAL EVENT? Epic poem the Iliad is the most famed source for there ever having been a conflict between the ancient Greeks and Trojans. However, the historicity of the events depicted in this work – as well as those referenced in its sister epic, the Odyssey – are less certain, as is the identity of their author, Homer. The poems have been dated to the late eighth or early seventh centuries BC, during a time when writing was becoming widespread in Mycenaean civilisation (the Late Bronze Age Greeks), but the narratives allude to earlier incidents, suggesting there was an oral tradition behind the ‘events’ that would have been familiar to an ancient audience.
It follows that dating the Trojan War is problematic, although scholars tend to agree that Homer was writing about a heroic age that existed some four centuries before the Iliad’s conception. As a result, the texts are replete with anachronisms, such as references to the construction of temples – buildings that did not arise within the Greek world until the eighth century BC. But what is indisputable is that peoples during the classical era, and right through to the late medieval age, believed the Trojan War to have been an actual historical event.
WHAT CAUSED THE TROJAN WAR? The Iliad itself focuses on the conflict’s final year. But the war’s origins are said to lie a decade earlier on the Greek mainland when Helen, consort of King Menelaus of Sparta, eloped with the Trojan prince Paris after the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. Whether she was abducted or chose to abscond to Troy of her own volition is moot. According to myth, the goddess of discord, Eris, was not invited to the nuptials. Outraged, she threw a golden apple inscribed with “to the most beautiful” into the midst of the wedding feast.
Three deities, Hera, Athena and Aphrodite, entrusted Paris to judge which of them was most deserving of the fruit. Aphrodite, goddess of love, won the contest when she promised him the most beautiful mortal woman in the world: Helen. This divinely inspired mischief enraged Menelaus, who resolved to retrieve Sparta’s queen. Alongside his powerful brother, Agamemnon, and dozens of other Greek rulers, Menelaus sailed to Troy with a fleet of 1,186 ships.
WHERE WAS TROY? Since
