"The Trojan War - Just a Myth?" Topic

9

9.5

Something to think on is the name "Helen".
In the Greek mind this is a very important name as it has never been just the name of Menaleous's wife also refers to the integral Greekness of everything important to Greece. Even the name of Greece in Greek is Hellenika.

So the kidnap of Helen could be a metaphor for the theft of something more akin to national pride (humiliation etc.). This is something that in those times was considered far more important than it is in our era and could possibly be the impetus needed to drive a long and drawn out war of ideals (although I'm sure trade and colonisation of the Asia Minor coast played a huge part).

I am of the opinion that the Trojan war is fact, but that it was fought within a generation or so of Homer's time, which is why he can so accurately describe the arms & equipment, as well as the major combatant's names.

The basis of the war was probably more to do with a combination of economic pressure, and the arrival of various new groups of peoples into the area.

I would put the Trojan War closer to the 7th/8th century BC.

I'll give it a 7. There may well have been a conflict at the time, but the account was grossly exaggerated. The time frame was probably closer to 10 days than 10 years. Troy may have been sacked, but it wasn't completely razed to the ground. Legendary and historical figures (whose stories have also been embellished) may have been drawn into the tale, the way Lancelot, Galahad, etc. were incorporated into the Arthurian cycle.

I've always been a big fan of trojans … wait, what's this discussion about anyway?

A myth? Possibly just a moth.

(modern sculpture called 'The Trojan Hammer')

A myth is a female moth.

9

So the Wooden Horse didn't happen? But I sawa picture of it in Look and Learn when I was a child

I liked the way Parzival parsed it (no pun intended!), albeit, I'd rate a few of the "bits" slightly differently:

1) The 2004 movie -- 4 (mostly for Sean Bean and Rose Byrne -- although given a pix I saw of her recently, she needs to FIRE her fricking hair stylist!). Frankly, there were better movies made about Troy in the 1950s!

2) The city -- 10 (see below);

3) The war -- 10 (arguably, "WHICH" war; e.g., read the Hittite archives! Also, see below);

4) The participants -- 8 (see next);

5) The Iliad, in order, 10 (artistic style) & 5 (the "sagas" about/of what were very probably real people, grafted onto elements of the superhuman & the supernatural to please "Geometric Age" Greek audiences who probably knew 'sketches' of the "fables" told by parents and grandparents of their ancestors' "heroic" past; but see next);

6) Homer, 8+/- (okay, hedging a bit here, but from reading about ancient authors' critiques of man & myth, on the whole the evidence suggests "he" was probably a real person, as Parzival says, "probably the greatest contributor to the poem's "guts" and style, but probably not the sole author or originator, or even the [maybe] creator of its final state known to us"). To which I would have to say, I think he (I do come down on the side of one man) did Western Literature a great service by artfully collecting together many Greek "myths" as well as the "fact" of a "Great Achaean 'Chevauchée'," that over the course of a "long time" so weakened the main "redoubt" and "entrepôt" of the Troad region that it eventually fell to the "Greek" marauders (a "long time" of at least several seasons, if not "10 years;" I mean, even if HE could, Achilles' men could not march on towards, or sail to '21 towns' in the region, and raid/burn them, just in one summer!).

7) Xena? Sorry, in my book, it was Evelyn Renée O'Connor who, in the TV series, was the 9.

8) As to Bettany Hughes, Kingmaker -- IMNSHO, in her prime she was a 9+! But while still "handsome," 20 years and two children later, she's gotten more… "matronly," if you've seen some of her latest work on UK TV (that occasionally airs in the US)?

Finally, as to Troy (how did Michael Wood style it back ca. 1985 when quoting some German critic of Schliemann? "Priam's Pigsty?")? Quoting from the U-W (Madison) website (2012): "In its heyday, Troy's citadel, with walls 12 feet thick and more than 30 feet high, was about 6 acres in size. A walled lower town covered an expanse of 50 acres, much of which is unexplored. Mysteries abound. Ancient Troy's royal cemetery, for example, has yet to be discovered and archaeologists are eager to add to the single example of prehistoric writing known from Troy, a small bronze seal from the Bronze Age.

"'Major gaps in our knowledge involve the identity of the prehistoric Trojans, the location of their principal cemeteries and the nature of their writing system,' says [Prof.] Aylward. 'The enduring question of the historicity of the Trojan War is also worthy of further exploration'."

In closing, I would stress "wars," of which I assert the Iliad recounts the fact & myth of only one. The archeo-types have argued for nearly 100 years that several of the Level 6 & 7 "cities" (at the time they had not realized they were actually only digging in the citadel) had EITHER fallen foul of Poseidon (eeerrrrr, uumm, been hit by earthquakes), OR had been sacked… As for e.g., if you will recall, in the Iliad, brief mention is made in three books that Heracles had ALSO sacked the place about a generation earlier, with Priam being the only royal survivor (because he bribed Heracles! see, 7.451–453, 20.145–148, 21.442–457). Additionally, Heracles did it with far fewer ships and men than that "upstart puppy" Agamemnon needed! They still made REAL heroes in "those stirring days of yesteryear!" [Que: "William Tell Overture"].