Introducing Troy

Beauty of Helen, her daunting affair with Trojan prince Paris, heroics of Achilles and Odysseus (thanks to Bradd Pitt !!!), a decade of bloody war, a great impenetrable wall encircling a rich city, and finally, the ingenious huge wooden horse pregnant with armed soldiers, all these and more has earned immortality of the ancient city of Troy (thanks to hollywood also). Troy, however was a real city and not merely a myth. Homer's Iliad describes Troy as a impenetrably fortified city that rested upon a hilltop overlooking the plains of Scamander, where the fierce Trojan war had taken place. According to myth, the Trojan royal family owes its origin from Pleiad Electra and Zeus, the parents of Dardanus. It was the fourth generation of Dardanus, a person named Ilus, who found the city of Troy and named it after his father Tros. According to myth, the Trojan defensive wall that kept the Greek at bay for a decade, was designed by Poseidon and Apollo.

Troy or rather the Trojan war and events related to it had a great impact on the ancient greek literature, scholarly research and popular ast and architecture as well. Not only Homer, but many scholars that followed him considered Trojan war with due importance. Herodotus, in his Histories mentioned about that Homer's description of Trojan war was not accurate as herodotus claimed that Helen was not present in Troy during the decade long war as she was rescued from Paris by an Egyptian king while Paris was fleeing from Greece with Helen. To quote Herodotus: "It seems to me that Homer was acquainted with this story, and discarded it, because he thought it less adapted for epic poetry"

Later, scholars like Strabo, Eratosthenes etc also mentioned about Trojan war in their writings. Trojan war and events related to it formed an integral part of popular art and architecture in ancient Greece. Often, the archaeologists unearthed vases and articles of domestic use with depicitionof those events. Thus these suggests that the story of Troy and the heroes like Achilles and Odysseus etc were a household name even at that period. This also highlights the immense importance that the victory over Troy was to the Mycanean Greeks as, when everything of Mycanean age was destroyed by intervening dark age, the story of Troy survived evn during the dorian periodand well into the classical Greece and throughout the Roman era and to the modern day.

Representation of the fight between Hector and Achilles from a 7th c. BC vase

In my next article, I would discuss the historiography of the quest for Troy and several claims of its true locations. This will be followed by an article on the important place of Troy in the eyes of the people in ancient mediterranean.