Homer’s Troy

Like the ruins of the city named Troy lay dormant under layers of earth, so did the epics Iliad and Odyssey, along with many other epics and songs, become forgotten with the decline of ancient culture, waiting for a rebirth. This rebirth happened during the Renaissance, when there was a renewed interest in all things ancient. After two thousand years, Homer’s epics were rediscovered. The cultural world witnessed the resurrection of the world of godlike heroes and humanized gods, waging war within the mighty walls of Troy. The Trojan War was sung about in the Iliad (Ilium being the older name for Troy), and the adventures of Odysseus came after in the Odyssey.

Although the Trojan War lasted for ten years, the Iliad only describes events from fifty days in the tenth year of the war, a war that was waged because of Helen, the daughter of Zeus and Leda, and Paris, the son of the Trojan king Priam. Paris had to judge which goddess was the most beautiful – Hera, Athena, or Aphrodite. He judged in favor of Aphrodite because she promised him the most beautiful woman in the world as a reward – Helen, the wife of the Spartan king. Menelaus. With the help of Aphrodite, he won over Helen and brought her to Troy. The Achaeans (Greeks) set out for Troy to retrieve Helen and avenge the disgrace. The gods themselves also became involved in the war, taking sides with one or the other warring faction.

The fate of heroes from both sides intertwine in the Iliad. Achilles, the greatest Achaean hero, quarrels with Agamemnon, the commander of the Achaean forces, while enjoying a wonderful friendship with Patroclus. Hector, the greatest Trojan hero, is one of the fifty sons of Priam. They will all die, including Paris, the culprit for starting the war.

The Iliad vividly describes individual duels and massive battles, scenes of bravery and cruelty, chaos of spears, arrows, shields, and chariots. The heroes fight alongside the gods, who use their divine powers, often resorting to deception: guiding arrows, deflecting spears, concealing their protégés in fog, carrying away their favorites from the battlefield to save them from danger. But the heroes also confront the gods. …they even wound them and drive them away from the battlefield.

Although the gods on both sides try to change the outcome of events, above all is Fate – relentless, unchanging, spoken through prophecies, and its outcome cannot be changed even by the supreme god Zeus himself.

Historical facts related to Troy, Homer, and epic poems

What is Troy and the Trojan War – poetic fiction or a historical city and event from the past? And Homer? Did he exist? Who was he, what did he look like? Was he really blind? Where was he born? In which time did he live? Was he the author of one or both epics, or maybe even of other poems, or was he even the author at all? Or were there “multiple Homers” and several songs cleverly composed into a whole? All in all, Homer and these magnificent epics attracted great attention and many have engaged in solving these puzzles, known as the “Homeric question”, which has lasted from antiquity until today – for almost three thousand years.

Trojan horse, VII – Klitemnestra kills Cassandra, 430 BC.
– Schliemann’s drawing of Troy.
– There are two most significant theories about the authorship of the epics: the analytical one (the epics are the works of various authors) and the unitary one (Homer is the author). In the late 1980s, linguistic research was conducted using computer technology, which showed that the unitary theory is more probable.
– Heinrich Schliemann said about this: As far as I’m concerned, I consider it unnecessary to solve the task on which so many have suffered a shipwreck, and I am satisfied with Homer’s immortal poems as they are – the first fruits of the most magnificent literature in the world and a source of poetic inspiration for all future times.
– However, it is certain that the Greeks had developed a rich poetry even before Homer: lyric, epic, lyric-epic, ballad. The songs were sung at feasts, funerals, and in honor of gods. Love and war songs were sung, as well as songs with mythological themes. The creation of the Iliad and Odyssey must have been stimulated by to actual events whose facts have changed and been lost over time, and historical events have become stories that have immersed themselves in a rich epic tradition.

The man who proved that Troy was a historical city was a person who, as a seven-year-old boy, enthusiastically listened to his father’s reading of the Iliad and exclaimed: I will find Troy! This man was Heinrich Schliemann. His whole life he was captivated by Troy and Homer. While he incredibly quickly learned a large number of languages, while he traveled through America and Russia, while he traded and grew rich, while he studied, while he befriended a Greek woman named Sophia who would become his wife, his guiding thought and obsession was Troy.

Although the public mocked his belief in the truth of the epic, considering the Iliad to be only a collection of legends, invented stories, and Troy a mere fiction, Schliemann succeeded, using the Iliad as a “tour guide” and believing in every detail of Homer’s descriptions, to finally achieve his goal – to find Troy in Asia Minor, near the Dardanelles and the hill of Hisarlik. But who What about Troy? He believed in Homer. By excavating a trench and going deep into Hisarlik, he discovered, among other findings, a treasure of great value – around a thousand golden objects. He named it “Priam’s Treasure” after the king of Troy. However, when architect Wilhelm Dörpfeld joined him in the excavations, they started to doubt the existence of only one Troy. It was later determined that the treasure belonged to the cultural layer of Troy II, which is about a thousand years older than Homer’s Troy. To this day, the existence of nine main cultural layers, nine Troys, has been confirmed, and further studies have shown that it is possible to distinguish up to forty different phases. Homer’s Troy is identified as Troy VI and Troy VII A. Despite being criticized by modern archaeology for amateurism, incompetence, and the destruction of younger layers, it should be taken into account that archaeology was taking its first steps at that time, and Schliemann rightfully carries the title of its father. Serious and extensive revisionist research, conducted from 1932 to 1938 by professional archaeologists, led to a better understanding of Troy and its history. Led by C.W. Blegen from the University of Cincinnati, the team brought order to the jumbled layers. In 1992, equipped with state-of-the-art equipment, teams from the University of Cincinnati and Tübingen made new discoveries. In the Troy VI layer, a deep trench was discovered encircling the lower city, 400 meters away from the fortress. This discovery is significant because Troy VI was considered too small to be the Troy of Homer. With its enlarged size, deep trenches, and thick high ramparts, it could indeed be the Troy that the Achaeans unsuccessfully besieged for ten years. In the Troy VII layer, arrowheads destroyed by fire were found – evidence that it perished in a war-induced fire, and the conquest of Troy by means of the Trojan horse was interpreted as an earthquake.

Homer

Heinrich Schliemann

Homer’s Heritage

Homer’s influence in the ancient world, with interruptions until the Renaissance and up to the present day, is simply amazing. Homer is the most read poet of all time, and the Iliad and the Odyssey are the most translated literary works in history. There are books after the Bible. Before the invention of printing, 188 manuscripts of these epics were discovered.

In ancient times, Homer was the poet of poets, the “educator of the Greeks,” as Plato says. Homer’s poems were recited by rhapsodes called Homerids, sometimes in front of an audience of over twenty thousand people. Plutarch wrote: Homer has triumphed over the fickleness of human taste, he is always fresh and full of youthful beauty, which always gives pleasure and satisfaction.

Dr. M. Sironić writes in his essay: Homer’s vivid storytelling, clear expression, and vivid portrayal of the psychological characteristics of people from ancient times captivate us even today. This poetry is always fresh and full of life’s dynamism. There are no works in world literature that have had such an impact as Homer’s epics.

In addition to stimulating the development of various scientific fields, Homer’s Troy particularly influenced art. Inspired by Troy, Sophocles wrote the tragedies Ajax, Electra, Philoctetes; Euripides wrote Iphigenia in Aulis and Iphigenia at in Tauris; Aeschylus’ Orestia; Virgil’s Aeneid; Racine’s Iphigenia in Aulis; Corneille’s Andromaque; Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida; Genet’s there will be no Trojan War.

Famous and anonymous artists inspired by Troy painted on vases, amphorae, jugs, and cratera, on coins, on trays, on Roman sarcophagi and Brabant tapestries. Phidias, inspired by a verse from the Iliad, sculpted his Zeus.

Both music and film art drew their motives from the Trojan War. Numerous paintings by great painters were created, inspired by Homer’s epic: El Greco, Rubens, Renoir, Gauguin, David, and many others.

And every person of the 21st century is offered the opportunity to draw from that great source in line with their desires and inclinations.