The author also believes that the story about Homer's Trojan War story is pretty fictional.
I guess when you get right down to it Homer was what we would describe as a media person today and was spinning a good tale in support of his side.
Ticking off a bucket list item. Will be in Troy in a little over a week during a trip o Istanbul.
Everybody knows the gods were right there fighting away...
The Trojan horse later won the Derby...
Within my lifetime, Troy was considered by many experts to be a myth, until it was found. I think it is safest to assume that these things are historical at the core, with the same amount of embellishments used in modern war movies to tell a good story, and to compel support for the right side ( which in those days meant a generous helping of gods). Homer was too good to make it one sides propaganda, though.
It’s all Greek to me.
What is important is that the legend of the brave Greeks who besieged Troy and conquered it by using the Trojan Horse inspired generation upon generation, as does Homer’s Iliad, which remains one of the greatest works of world literature and a masterpiece of our intangible cultural heritage.
Are we still allowed to have heroes?
As I remember heinrich Schliemann used the Illiad to find the city he discovered...so he says.
Others dug into the mound before him I read too
The Iliad is a masterpiece in a lot of ways. My first reading in high school (back when we read that sort of thing in high school) led me to believe that it was a case of the winners writing the history; later readings convinced me that that was only partially true, for in the Iliad the Greeks aren't the good guys, at least not by the standards of later Greek morality. They are presented as violent, vengeful, squabbling, barbaric, and generally with a sense of honor mitigated strongly by vanity. Consider the real beef of Achilles with his king - it was over the possession of a slave girl. He pouted, Patroclus borrowed his armor and went to his death at the hands of the Trojan hero Hector, who was by our own lights today and that of the Greeks of the fifth century B.C., a far more civilized individual than Achilles: a family man whose relations with wife and son are among the most tender passages in the Iliad, whose death at Achilles' hands causes the latter to change into something better. The scene of the Trojan king Priam humbling himself before Achilles to beg for the recovery of his beloved son's body is central to the development of the character. It would have been very much in character for the prior Achilles to haughtily refuse; instead, he relents, agrees, and becomes a finished man. The fall of Troy (no, the silly Trojan Horse is NOT in the Iliad) is presented in tragic language, not in triumph, as Hector's bride throws their son from the walls and goes off to her own enslavement.
This is brilliant, subtle, complex stuff, far from a chest-thumping campfire recitation it may resemble and is often accused of being. The victors (or putative victors) of the literature may have written it, but not with themselves as irreproachable heroes.
Sounds a lot like today's Rats, saying history is irrelevant.
"What difference at this point does it make?"
It’s always real.
It’s always fake.
Somebody did something.
Somebody else embellished it.
Fight On!
Then there’s the idiot with a whole string of YouTube videos “proving” that the Roman Empire never existed.
Not willing to read a book for “breaking news” of an ancient war.
Historian Josephus did tell of the Trojans.
Heinrich Schliemann considered that the stories about Troy contained a lot of fact. Then he went looking with shovels and other heavy equipment.
This is well-known and established.
BTW, HS found lots of stuff that mostly proves the reliability of Homer’s story.
Fascinating.
I’m struggling with the description of 75 acres being a “large city”. Unless I’m terribly mistaken, that would be a square about 0.3 miles on each side...
Helen, the most beautiful woman, for instance, is the daughter of Zeus who disguised himself as a swan and raped her mother, Leda.Aside from beauty and swans, the Iliad does offer distinct warnings about modern Hollywood and DC morality.
The author also believes that the story about Homer's Trojan War story is pretty fictional.