Did the Greek-Trojan War of Homer Really Happen?

The Greek-Trojan war sung in Homer's celebrated poems of The Iliad and The Odyssey is the most well known set of battles in world history.

Whether the war actually occurred or is the flights of Greek poets' fantasies is not entirely clear, though Homer's version was read as real history and considered such for centuries. Many scholars have written that there may have been numerous conflicts between Greeks and Turks between 1500-1100 B.C. that were eventually honored with various heroic tales of mortals and immortals by Homer or a set of poets. The heroic deeds of Achilles, Ajax, Paris, Hektor, Menelaus, Agamemnon and many others have been read and dramatized for centuries without anyone really knowing if these characters were nothing more than super heroes of their day or real people embellished with extraordinary deeds by the imagination of poets.

In 1871, Heinrich Schliemann, an American citizen, followed clues left in Homer's tales and miraculously found the lost city of Ilium (Troy), home of the Trojans and the supposed center of the war, however a layer of ancient earth that indicated a cataclysmic fire in the city did not appear to be of the time period normally associated with the war. Until Schliemann's discovery there was serious doubt concerning the existence of any kind of city like Troy. Schliemann would go on to excavate Mycenae in southern Greece, the home of King Agamemnon, the leader of the assault on Troy and brother of the troubled Menelaus whose wife Helen was the crux of the problem.[i]

Of the nine cities found layered on the site, the seventh city was believed to be Troy, destroyed somewhere around 1250 B.C. The real war's cause is a mystery but may have occurred over control of an important water passage (Dardanelles) between the Aegean Sea and the Marmara Sea, which leads to the Black Sea. Or the source of the conflict may have been nothing more than a search for food and metals. Homer's version is now considered more a poet's fantasy than the recording of a real history, though the heroic saga is important in that it created a heroic myth of the Greeks that provided the Greek people a special identity and inspiration for subsequent generations not unlike the myth that Moses led the Hebrews from Egypt to the Promised Land establishing a heroic perception of the Jews.[ii] Two other similar myths are associated with the creation of Rome, The Eternal City: the two orphans of Romulus and Remus nourished by a she-wolf and the poet Virgil's epic poem The Aeneid (10. A.D.) that sings the founding of Rome by the Trojan prince Aeneas, a classic that built on Homer's tales.

Richard Lattimore, in the introduction to his translation of The Iliad, writes that the legendary war may have been nothing like Homer's poems or anything we have believed to be true concerning the battles at Troy. He believes that there is just cause to believe that the war may not have lasted ten years, been fought by Greeks and Trojans, happened at Troy, and the Greeks' celebrated victory may have been a defeat. He points out that the war could just as well been a "viking-raid, or several such combined into one." Though the particulars of the war may be forever debated, it seems certain, as Lattimore writes, that "something . . . justifiably or not, generated the story of Troy we know."[iii]

What did the poets tell us about the origin of this classic war?

The legend of the Greek-Trojan war started at a royal wedding between a great Greek king (Peleus) and a sea nymph (Thetis). Zeus's daughter, Eris, the Goddess of Discord, was not invited for she would surely cause trouble. Eris in her anger at being slighted threw a golden apple among the guests and declared it to be for the fairest among them. The goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, all undoubtedly beautiful beyond words, argued among themselves as to who deserved the prize. To arbitrate who would receive the apple, Zeus sent them to the son of King Priam of Troy, Prince Alexander (also known as Paris). Choosing Paris may have been a divine jest toward the bickering beauties since Paris was known to be a judge of good cattle. All three tried to bribe the prince but only the Goddess of Love, Aphrodite, won his favor when she promised him possession of the most beautiful woman in the world, the half-mortal daughter of Zeus, Helen. However, upon arriving in Sparta to take his prize, Paris found that Helen was already betrothed to Menelaus, brother of Agamemnon, the King of Mycenae. Paris was welcomed as a guest in Sparta but when Menelaus left Sparta and then returned he found that Helen was gone, either kidnapped by Paris or a willing participant in fleeing from Sparta. Menelaus with his brother's help launched a thousand ships and attacked Troy for years simply asking for Helen and the riches that Paris had stolen from Sparta. The Trojans constantly denied that Helen or the Spartan's riches were within their walls. Eventually the Greeks destroyed Troy after numerous battles filled with heroic deeds and classic military deceptive strategies.

The Greek historian Herodotus (484? - 430? B.C.) was as curious as we are today whether the Greek-Trojan war actually happened. He was known to travel throughout the Mediterranean and sought information concerning history. In his travels to Egypt, he asked Egyptian priests about their knowledge of the war. They told him that the Trojans were telling the Greeks the truth when they knew nothing of Helen or Paris. Paris had taken Helen and the Spartan riches deep into Egypt. Unlike the traditional Greek legend that had Menelaus return Helen to Sparta, the Egyptian priests said that Menelaus, after sacking Troy, traveled up the Nile to Memphis and found Helen and the treasure. Menelaus tried to leave but the wind was unfavorable for his ship. He abducted two Egyptian children and had them offered as a sacrifice. This angered the Egyptians and Menelaus and his wife were lucky enough to escape to Libya. What happened to Paris, Menelaus, or Helen was never revealed to Herodotus by the priests. Whether this is the truth, the Egyptian version of the legend, or merely a prank by the priests to irritate a Greek traveler, will never be known but it seems another embellishment on a story that poets cannot refuse their own say.

The veracity of the Homer account of a great war between the Greeks and Trojans will be forever a mystery along with the question of who really authored the original Iliad and Odyssey. Whether there was a single poet named Homer has been questioned by scholars for centuries. He is considered by some a real person who lived in the 9^th century B.C. who finally wrote the oral songs of the war - some say he was blind, some say that his name was just a metaphor for a poet "leading the blind" from darkness. Nineteenth century writer and translator of the Odyssey Samuel Butler believed that a Sicilian woman wrote the Odyssey. Butler cites numerous reasons for this strange claim. His argument convinced George Bernard Shaw and another translator of the Odyssey, Robert Graves. Alexander the Great carried copies of Homer given to him by Aristotle; Alexander believing the tales to be true and a model for how men should act in war. James Joyce used Butler's version of the Odyssey as a basis for his classic, twentieth-century novel Ulysses. [iv]

[i]Schliemann's great archaeological finds were tarnished when a 1972 study of his work by University of Colorado Professor William Calder found that Schliemann for the most part was a colossal liar; his most profound lie surrounding his claim that he had unearthed King Priam's treasure. Wilson, Colin and Wilson, Damon, The Mammoth Encyclopedia of the Unsolved, Carroll and Graf Publishers, New York, 2002, p. 219. For a fictionalized account of Schliemann's Troy discover see Stone, Irving. The Greek Treasure, Doubleday, New York, 1975.

[ii] Cantor, Norman. Antiquity - The Civilization of the Ancient World, Harper Collins, New York, 2003, p. 7.

[iii]Homer, The Iliad, trans. Richard Lattimore, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1961, p. 20.

[iv] Wilson, Colin and Wilson, Damon, The Mammoth Encyclopedia of the Unsolved, Carroll and Graf Publishers, New York, 2002, pp. 219-220.