Did the Trojan War Really Happen?

The Trojan War is one of the great foundational stories of Western literature - a tale of gods and heroes, betrayal and siege, immortalised by Homer in the Iliad. But was it mere myth, or did it spring from real events in a real place? Today we're joined by Eric H. Cline, a professor of ancient history and archaeology at The George Washington University in Washington, D. C.. He digs into the evidence, from ancient poetry to archaeological discoveries at Troy, to explain whether there’s historical truth behind the legend. Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore. We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on. You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Snow?

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• 0:32Speaker 01

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• 2:01Dan Snow?

  Welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Sing goddess, Achilles' rage. Black and murderous that cost the Greeks incalculable pain. Pitched countless souls of heroes into Hades' dark. And left their bodies to rot as feasts for dogs and birds, as Zeus's will was done. Begin with the clash between Agamemnon, Greek warlord, and godlike Achilles. That, as you all know, is the opening of the Iliad.

• 2:39Dan Snow?

  The opening, the beginning, of the first great piece of European literature. One that has shaped every word that has followed. The story contained in the Iliad, the epic account of the grinding siege of Troy. When the Greeks, led by Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, sailed to Asia Minor to seize back the beautiful Helen, his sister-in-law, queen of Sparta, who had been taken by or eloped with Prince Paris of Troy. It's a story that was told to me so early in childhood that I can't remember first hearing about it. A story that my kids have been raised on.

• 3:24Dan Snow?

  It's been imprinted upon so many imaginations by thousands of retellings. We know of Agamemnon's feud with his greatest warrior, the godlike Achilles. We know of the death of Achilles' beautiful, dearest friend, Patroclus, at the hands of Prince Hector of Troy, breaker of horses. We know of the wisdom of Odysseus of Ithaca, the great strength of warriors like Ajax and Diomedes. We know about the intervention of the gods on either side. The Iliad is a tale of war, and brutality, and heroism, and rage, and jealousy.

• 4:04Dan Snow?

  And the motivations of those characters, their hopes and anxieties, are so relatable that they melt the more than two and a half thousand years that sit between that time and our own.

• 4:28Dan Snow?

  It is attributed to a man called Homer, and we believe at first it was probably recited aloud, then it was eventually written down. It was once thought as well that it was entirely fictitious, it was a fairy tale. But now scholars believe it can shed light on the Aegean world at the very end of the Bronze Age. In this podcast, I'm trying to find out what we know about the Trojan War. Did it happen? Who was it between? When did it happen? And what can we be sure of? To help me answer that question, I'm very excited to say that I have got Eric Klein back on the podcast. He came on before, talking about the Bronze Age world and its collapse.

• 5:10Dan Snow?

  He's a professor of ancient history and archaeology at the George Washington University in Washington DC, and he's written the book, The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction. He's going to talk me through what the literature, the historical sources, and the archaeology are all telling us at the moment. What is the state of modern scholarship about the Trojan War? If, like me, you were raised with this story, well, this one's for you. Enjoy.

• 5:38Speaker 04

  T minus 10.

• 5:39Speaker 05

  The Thomas bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first some black unity.

• 5:47Speaker 04

  Never to go to war with one another again. And look, Doc, and the shuttle has cleared the tower.

• 5:57Dan Snow?

  Eric, thanks so much for coming on.

• 5:59Speaker 06

  My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

• 6:01Dan Snow?

  Let's do the top level first. Is this just complete myth? Is it just one story from one source, Homer? Or do we have any other evidence? Do we have any evidence for its historicity?

• 6:11Speaker 06

  Yes, yes, fortunately, we do. We've actually got two other sources. We've got archaeology and we've got the Hittite records. So we have the other side of the story. So I don't think it's a complete myth. There's a kernel of truth at the basis, and we have to figure out what that is.

• 6:28Dan Snow?

  Okay, well, that's very exciting. Let's first of all say, what kind of date do you think it might be? And then when was Homer's account? I know written down is tricky because it might have been recited for years, but when did it become sort of canonical, regularized, do you think?

• 6:45Speaker 06

  Yeah, good question. So Homer is pulling it all together, shall we say, in the eighth century B.C. So 750 to 700, somewhere in there. The Trojan War will have taken place probably 500 years earlier, 1250 to 1200 B.C., somewhere in there.

• 7:03Dan Snow?

  Okay. And what do we know about Bronze Age Greece? So 1200, what's going, well, I say Greece, but Greece and surrounding area.

• 7:10Speaker 06

  Exactly. So we're back in the late Bronze Age at that point. We're in the Mycenaean period. We're in, oh, time of Agamemnon, time of Menelaus, time of the Trojan War. Basically, we've got separate kingdoms in each place on the Greek mainland. We have a kingdom at Mycenae, another one at Tiryns, another one at Pylos, and so on. We've even got ones over on Crete, such as at Knossos. So it's a series of small kingdoms. Whether they're united into a bigger one, a bigger coalition, if you will, is a good question. We don't know that one way or the other.

• 7:45Dan Snow?

  And did these Bronze Age Greek statelets and kingdoms, would they project force into what, you know, Asia Minor, what we'd now call Turkey? Was this a, was that a bit of a fault line? Or were there Greeks living along that Turkish coastline into the Black Sea, as we get familiar with later in the ancient world?

• 8:02Speaker 06

  So we've definitely got contact and trade, that's for sure, between mainland Greece and, shall we say, the coast of Western Anatolia, what is today Turkey. Definitely traded interconnections. We've also probably got some Mycenaeans, if you will, living on that western coast at sites like Mytilus. Certainly, we're going to have that later when you've got Ionia there. But back in the Bronze Age, yes, they were back and forth. They actually were trading partners at one point. If you read the Iliad and the Odyssey and all that very carefully, you can see that they were friends before they became enemies.

• 8:39Dan Snow?

  And this was a world of maritime trade, presumably? Does the unique geography of that part of the world, the important metals available in Cyprus, I mean, is this a world where trading ships are crossing to and fro, elite people are doing gift giving, there's relationships between these kingdoms and statelets?

• 8:57Speaker 06

  Yes, absolutely. I mean, they are trading. They are interconnected. It's a globalized Mediterranean, if you will, which Susan Sheridan at Sheffield has called it. And yes, they're trading for all the raw metals, gold, silver, copper, tin, everything you might imagine. Also supplies like grain, wine, olive oil, all the usual. And we know that the Mycenaeans on mainland Greece and the Minoans on Crete are in contact with the great powers of that day: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, the Hittites, and so on. So it's not at all surprising that we wind up with the stories such as Homer gives us, because we know that there is truth behind

• 9:39Speaker 06

  it. There are contacts, diplomatic, commercial, even marital, between the people in the Aegean and those in the eastern Mediterranean.

• 9:49Dan Snow?

  And human beings being what they are, would it have been unusual for people to fall out, for there to be, if not ten-year total war, but raids, attacks, piracy, as well as this great global trading system? Is there the potential for violence?

• 10:04Speaker 06

  Oh, absolutely. There's always the potential for violence in human history, as you know. But yes, we actually have documented instances where they have fallen out after being trading partners. And this is not just with the Trojans, but it's also Hittites, Egyptians, and all of that. Things come and go as they do today. So this is not unexpected. Now, whether a war could last ten years, that's a whole nother kettle of fish. But on-again, off-again war over a number of centuries, I think that's probably what we're looking at, but we'll get to that.

• 10:39Dan Snow?

  And what does war look like in this period? Is there an emphasis on individuals, be they traveling in chariots or not? Is Bronze Age war different from the sort of ancient warfare that people might be a bit more familiar with from a couple hundred years later?

• 10:54Speaker 06

  Yes and no, and that's actually part of the problem. When we look at Homer, he's really describing warfare from his period, which is the Iron Age, which is where you would use a chariot as like a battle taxi. So you get in the chariot, it drives you up to the city or the front lines. You get out and you fight. That's what happened in Homer's day. Back in the Bronze Age, though, they are actually fighting from the chariots. They are tanks, they are divisions. And we know, for example, at the Battle of Kadesh, where the Hittites are fighting the Egyptians, that they had a couple of hundred chariots involved in the fighting. And they're not just Ubers of the day. They're actually the tanks of that day.

• 11:37Speaker 06

  So part of the problem is we have to figure out when Homer describes things, is it from his period or is it actually Bronze Age? 500 years difference between the two. And I actually think that what we're looking at here in the Trojan War is Bronze Age fighting, that they are fighting from chariots and all of that. It would make sense from the other battles that we know from that time period.

• 12:01Dan Snow?

  And is Homer right to put so much emphasis on these high status, seemingly pretty proud warrior elites, these kings, these princes, these big men, who had a bit of a hair trigger when it came to fighting others who might well have taken part in single combat between the lines? Is that a sort of battle that you think might have occurred in this period?

• 12:24Speaker 06

  As possible, yes and no. I would say again, that's probably reflecting more Homer's period than the Iron Age and that you had less of that back in the Bronze Age. But bear in mind that we do have all of these individual little kingdoms or city-states in Greece. And so you would have had, if not Agamemnon, somebody like him at Mycenae and similarly at Tiryns and Pylos. And we know, in fact, that there was a grave recently found dating to the 15th century at Pylos, the so-called Griffin Warrior. So there are individuals like that. But whether we have something that Homer depicts that is accurately in the Bronze Age, it's kind of hard to say.

• 13:07Speaker 06

  Let's put it that way. We don't have evidence really one way or the other.

• 13:11Dan Snow?

  Because the impression I get from Homer, talk about coalition building today. I mean, the impression I get from Homer is a bunch of independent minded, impossible to corral, hyper violent dudes. You can sort of try and get them all pointed in the right direction, seeing it from the same hingsheet, but it would have been pretty challenging.

• 13:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, good luck with that. It's kind of what, what do they say, herding cats? It would be kind of like that. Yes. And can you imagine trying to tell Achilles what to do? I mean, this is where it's timeless, is these are things that that appeal to us now as well as them back then.

• 13:42Dan Snow?

  Yes, and they are drawn from a pretty wide area, a big expanse of that Eastern Mediterranean world, that Greek world. They were united by language, were they? What about religion? There's a lot of gods that we're familiar with appearing in Iliad and the Odyssey. Would religion have been uniform in this period of the Bronze Age?

• 13:59Speaker 06

  Yes, it looks like it. Dealing from the Linear B tablets that we've got, the tablets that we've got from the Maasenians, yes, it does look like they're united by a common religion, common language, all of that. And some of those gods and goddesses survive the collapse. And so we've got Zeus and Hera and Poseidon and all of that. So yes, they are united that way, but are they united politically? That's the $10,000 question. Do we have something like the Delian League that they had in later Greek history, where you've got a bunch of independent city-states, but united in a common cause? Do we have that back in the Bronze Age? Good question. Homer does call Agamemnon king of kings,

• 14:41Speaker 06

  and that might be some sort of indication of what we've got back then. But you really do have a series of independent kingdoms. And whether they could be united in a common goal, like trying to get Helen back, is a very good question.

• 14:55Dan Snow?

  A common goal of securing martial valor and perhaps booty, it might have been a unifying principle.

• 15:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think. I mean, it's almost always a unifying principle over time, but and you can see it happening back then. And a lot of the details fit back then. I mean, fighting over a single person, could you go to war? Absolutely. We have a detail that we know about the Hittites going to war because one of the princes that was being sent to Egypt to marry the Egyptian queen was assassinated en route. And as a result, the Hittites went to war because that one kid was killed. So going to war over one person like Helen, certainly conceivable.

• 15:34Dan Snow?

  Wow. Tell me more about the specific archaeology of Troy itself.

• 15:41Dan Snow?

  And it's so-called sort of discovery by Heinrich Schliemann.

• 15:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, so this is a fascinating story. It actually goes back to almost the beginning of archaeology because Schliemann is one of the earliest people that we know that is trying to do archaeology, if we put it that way. So he's excavating at a site that is now today known as Hysolik, which we think is ancient Troy. There's actually no real evidence that it was, but it's the best candidate up there. And Schliemann comes along in about 1870, digs there on and off, 1870, 1890. Bear in mind, at that time, most of the classical scholars did not think that the Trojan War had happened, and therefore there was no Troy

• 16:23Speaker 06

  to be found. But Schliemann, who was an amateur, was convinced that it had taken place. And so he gets together with a guy named Frank Calvert, who was the consul general to Turkey at that point, and Calvert owned at least part of Hysolik. And so he and Schliemann, Calvert says to Schliemann, "Look, you're looking for Troy. I own the site that I think is Troy. I don't have any money. You don't have a site, but you've got money. Let's put two and two together." And so they went in and Schliemann starts digging and very soon announces to the world that he has found Troy, but conveniently leaves any mention

• 17:03Speaker 06

  of Calvert out of the equation and takes all the glory for himself. So that's where we get the discovery of Troy by Schliemann.

• 17:12Dan Snow?

  And just before we look at, get to the remains themselves, Alexander the Great made a big play, didn't he, as he passed the site of Troy? I mean, did the ancient Greeks feel they knew where Troy was? What was Schliemann going on here?

• 17:25Speaker 06

  So Schliemann's going on a number of things, including the description of Troy that Homer gives. He has to have a city that's small enough for Hector and Achilles to be running around, hot and cold springs, all of that stuff. But he's certainly not the first to explore. There were a number of explorers and there were probably three or four sites at the time that had been potentially identified with Hysolik being one of them. So he's basically Moving in on known ground at that point. But he is using some of the descriptions at that time and is convinced. Now, you ask about Alexander the Great, a very good point. He and Julius Caesar and a whole mess of people from the ancient world stopped by this area. And they did think it was ancient Troy.

• 18:10Speaker 06

  And indeed, the later Greeks and Romans thought it was too. And they continued building at the site and basically called it New Troy. If you want to call it that in English. So they were convinced that this is where it was. But one of the problems that we've got is there's actually no writing that's been found at Troy. This one little seal that's been found about an inch across with some Louvian written on it. But no tablets, no nothing like that, no archives, nothing that actually identifies it as Troy. So some people have suggested that we're looking in the wrong place. And for example, one guy has said that we should be looking in England, that that's where Troy is located. But to my mind, this Hysolyc is the best candidate.

• 18:55Speaker 06

  There is no other good one. And it really does fit the chronology and the archaeology works as well. So I think this is it, even if we don't have any really smoking gun.

• 19:08Dan Snow?

  You listen to Dan Snow's History. Don't go anywhere, there's more to come.

• 19:18Dan Snow?

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• 20:00Dan Snow?

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• 22:02Speaker 02

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• 22:42Dan Snow?

  Tell me more about how and why that chronology fits, because there is a version of the city on that spot, which has seen many different incarnations, that was violently destroyed and burned, wasn't there?

• 22:52Speaker 06

  Yes, absolutely. In fact, what we've got now, what we know looking back from today, there are nine separate cities, actually maybe 10, because another one's just been discovered, usually called Troy 1 through 9. Now we've got a Troy 0, which puts the founding of the city back to about 3,500 B.C., about 500 years earlier than we thought. And it goes then straight from the early Bronze Age, right through the Roman period. Troy 9 is in the Roman period. And what we've got there, we're interested particularly in what we now call Troy 6 and Troy 7. Number 6 at the site, number 7 at the site.

• 23:35Speaker 06

  What you have to realise is this is a human-made mound, and there are cities built one on top of another, destroyed in many cases, and then rebuilt after that. So Sleeman thought it was the second city from the bottom. We now know that that's 1,000 years too early. So Sleeman misidentified the site. Now, not Troy 2 that we're looking at, but Troy 6 and 7. And those are the ones you're referring to. Troy 6 is dramatically destroyed, but we think probably by an earthquake. And then Troy 7, which is split into Two parts, seven A is what we're interested in. That is also destroyed and probably by humans. We've got arrowheads embedded in the walls.

• 24:20Speaker 06

  We have bodies in the streets. So the big question for, at least for me and for most of the scholars is not, was there a Troy that was destroyed at the site? But which one is the one we should be looking at? Is it Troy six, the very last phase, Troy six H? And it's an earthquake and the Greeks take advantage of that? Or is it a slightly later one that's definitely attacked by humans? Part of the problem is that they're in the same time period, which works. The first one, the earthquake, is about thirteen hundred B.C., so that pretty much works. And the other one is seventy, eighty years later, twelve thirty to twelve hundred B.C.

• 25:02Speaker 06

  So either one could be the candidate for the city that Homer is describing.

• 25:08Dan Snow?

  Wow, and the evidence that destruction is weapons found, bodies found. Are we able to work out whether the city was truly sacked? I mean, completely destroyed and then they start rebuilding or was the damage less dramatic?

• 25:21Speaker 06

  Hmm, good question. Definitely that second attack, Troy seven A, when it's destroyed by humans. The city is looted, it's burnt to the ground and they have to rebuild. The second half, what we call Troy seven B, is a completely new culture. Looks like they moved down. But the earthquake one, it looks like they might have just rebuilt. And so actually, and we get a little into the weeds here, but the Troy six H and Troy seven A, it's actually the same city that's rebuilt. So we have called it the wrong thing. Seven A should actually be six I. It should be the next phase where they just rebuild. So I think it's an earthquake that hits the first.

• 26:06Speaker 06

  And it may be that that's what. Schliemann's Trojan Horse is, and that's a metaphor, an earthquake equals the Trojan Horse, but definitely to answer your question, the one that's burnt to the ground and completely destroyed is the second one, around about 1200 B.C., when we know that it's attacked by humans.

• 26:27Dan Snow?

  And that coincides with your estimate of the events that Homer's describing as well in the literature.

• 26:32Speaker 06

  Yes, absolutely.

• 26:33Dan Snow?

  I'm really struck by, so when Troy is rebuilt after that one, it's different people, it's not like Trojans have taken refuge in the hills, they come back and rebuild their city, it's evidence of a sort of different culture, different peoples coming in.

• 26:45Speaker 06

  Yeah, basically, and here again, we get kind of a little muddled because there seem to be now new evidence that there are squatters living in the aftermath even so, but really Troy VIIb, as we're calling it, which is finally rebuilt in about 1150 or 1100, seems to be new people coming from the north there, so there really is a change. And that change actually fits into the larger picture of the collapse at that time, because we definitely have a difference between late Bronze Age and Iron Age. The Trojan War, I think, should be seen as part and parcel of the larger overall Bronze

• 27:27Speaker 06

  Age collapse, so having new people come in and resettle the city makes sense.

• 27:32Dan Snow?

  You've been on the podcast before talking about that, but I might just quickly get you to enlarge on what you mean by the Bronze Age collapse, but before we do, could you fill us in on those Hittite records you mentioned, that there was further evidence for Troy and its demise?

• 27:44Speaker 06

  So, the Hittites are in central Anatolia, what is today modern day Turkey, ruling from a city called Hattusa, which is to the east of modern day Ankara, the capital today. Discovered in about 1906, by 1916, their tablets had been deciphered, turned out to be a new language called Hittite, and they are ruling in central Anatolia at almost exactly the same time as the Mycenaeans are on mainland Greece, so they're both around from about 1700. 1200 B.C. The Hittites eventually take over most of Anatolia, most of modern day Turkey, including the western coast.

• 28:29Speaker 06

  So Troy actually seems to become a vassal at one point. And that's where it gets kind of interesting because Troy, it turns out, is going to be in what we call the contested periphery. It's on the periphery of the Mycenaean world, but it's also on the periphery of the Hittite world. So in the Hittite records, once they were deciphered, it turns out that there is not a Trojan War. There isn't. There are four of them. They mentioned four different Trojan Wars. So from the Hittite point of view, the question is not, was there a Trojan War? The question should rather be, which of the Trojan Wars is the one Homer is talking about?

• 29:11Speaker 06

  We've got one as early as the 15th century, about 1420 B.C. We've got another one in about 1280. We've got another one in about 1250 B.C. And then we've got a final one that is maybe about 1210 B.C. So those last three all fit into Homer's time period. Any one of them could be the one Homer was talking about. It's actually the early one in the 15th century that's even more interesting, though. It's something the Hittites called the Osuwa Rebellion. And there was a Mycenaean-style sword that was found at the capital city with an inscription

• 29:52Speaker 06

  from the Hittite king saying, "Captured during the rebellion of Osuwa." And it's a Mycenaean sword. So it definitely looks like the Mycenaans are engaged on the western coast of Anatolia for like 300 years, both trading and fighting. So the Hittite records, as I said at the beginning, give us a whole nother level of evidence. And I, as an ancient historian, usually want three different types of evidence before I'll believe that anything happened. And so here we have Homer, we have the Hittite records, and we have archaeology. So I'm quite sure that something happened. It might not be quite the way Homer described it, but there was something.

• 30:36Speaker 06

  He didn't just make up the entire war.

• 30:39Dan Snow?

  And it's not evidence, but it's interesting. The Dardanelles, that little passage of water that connects the Mediterranean with the Black Sea, where Troy sits astride, that has been a fault line, a frontier, a battlefield throughout history, hasn't it? So it's not surprising that a settlement in that place is able to derive enormous wealth and opportunities from being there, but does attract the gaze of various people from South East Europe to Western Asia. You know, it is a tough neighbourhood.

• 31:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's not surprising at all, especially when you think that directly across the Halles Mont, directly across the Dardanelles from Troy is Gallipoli, where the famous battle was fought in World War I. To go back for just a second, also add into the Hittite records, there is one further point which is fascinating. One of the battles, one of the wars that the Hittites mention, in about 1280 B.C., they say that the name of the ruler of the city, which they didn't call Troy, they called it Willusa, but the name of the ruler is a guy named Alexandu, which is very close to Homer's other name for Paris, Alexander, right?

• 31:48Speaker 06

  Alternately, in the Iliad, he's called both Paris and Alexander. So to have Alexander of Ilios and Alexandu of Willusa, one wonders if that's the same guy, and that's how it comes down to Homer. So again, it's a little extrapolation, but it's really interesting from that respect.

• 32:10Dan Snow?

  Fascinating stuff. Tell us how it might be a symptom of this wider phenomenon called the Bronze Age collapse. How do the timings work out, first of all, on that?

• 32:20Speaker 06

  So the larger Late Bronze Age collapse takes place from overall about 1250 to 1150 B.C. In my book, 1177 B.C., I pointed to the second time that the sea peoples invaded Egypt, because these unknown groups that we call the sea peoples who are usually blamed for the collapse. But in fact, it's a whole combination of things. There's drought, there's famine, there's disease, and yes, there's war. So I think- I think the Trojan War fits into the general pattern of collapse there. What we end up with just after 1200 B.C., the Mycenaeans go down for the count, the Hittites go down for the count. Other peoples have trouble surviving, but some do. The Cypriots do okay.

• 33:06Speaker 06

  The Assyrians and Babylonians do okay. But basically, the culture that they had known, the connection, the network of trade that we talked about, that had been happily going on for 500 years, suddenly collapses in just a couple of decades. And so I think, again, that that's where the Trojan War fits in. But that's where we also get a bit problematic, because if the Mycenaeans are collapsing back on mainland Greece, there's no way that they would have spent 10 years over at Troy fighting there. Unless, of course, that's why everything collapsed back home, is because they picked the wrong time to be gone. But overall, it does fit. We've got collapse absolutely everywhere.

• 33:49Speaker 06

  And the Trojans are just one of the other groups that collapses at this time. So to me, that's another reason why the whole Trojan War makes sense, because it fits into the general calamity that's going on in about 1200 B.C. And bear in mind, even the ancient Greeks didn't know when the Trojan War had taken place. There's something like 13 different suggestions by ancient Greek and Roman historians as to when it took place. But the one that most people accept is about 1184 B.C., which would make sense. That fits into the general pattern.

• 34:28Dan Snow?

  Was Homer as popular and important as we now think him? Or is it like these plays by Sophocles, where there are loads of Homeric stories around at the time, and bard's wandering village to village telling heroic tales, but that happens to be the one that's been transmitted to the present day? Was Homer as big a text in ancient Greece as we might think it is?

• 34:52Speaker 06

  Yes, but bear in mind, his epics are not the only ones. There's an entire group called the epic cycle, of which the Iliad and the Odyssey are just two of the many epic plays, if you will, epic stories from this time period. The vast majority of them are now long gone. We have them summarized in a couple of places, but a lot of the details that we get, such as about the Trojan horse, are from these missing other epics. I hope that we'll find some of them some days, like the Cypria or one of the others. But Homer, albeit extremely popular and well-known, was just one among many of the epics

• 35:36Speaker 06

  that were circulating that dealt with the Trojan War cycle.

• 35:41Dan Snow?

  Okay, so the Trojan War itself was the source of so much art and poetry, even in the hundreds of years that followed.

• 35:49Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 35:49Dan Snow?

  It's reasonable to think the Greeks thought it was a huge deal.

• 35:53Speaker 06

  Yes, and not just the Greeks, but also the Romans, because then you've got the story of Aeneas fleeing Troy and making his way over to Italy and his descendants founding Rome. So the Romans thought it was a big deal as well.

• 36:08Dan Snow?

  So it's not unlike a lot of the sources around the World War II, the Second World War disappear. But in 500 years' time, there's a dominant artistic trend and current, which is about singing the praises of poetry about the Second World War.

• 36:24Speaker 06

  Yes, absolutely. And you had that with World War I as well. And in fact, you had some of the soldier poets from World War I that were fighting in the area of Gallipoli actually comparing themselves to the Greeks and the Trojans.

• 36:37Dan Snow?

  Yeah, so it's reasonable to think that the Greeks themselves in Homer's times still regarded the Trojan War as an absolutely essential...

• 36:46Dan Snow?

  Moment phenomenon in their story.

• 36:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, and that explains why, for example, Alexander went to go visit the site. And in fact, the story is that Alexander the Great slept with a copy of the Iliad under his pillow, along with a dagger because he was afraid he was going to be assassinated.

• 37:05Dan Snow?

  But that's not just because the Iliad happens to be a particularly great bit of art. The point is, it's a piece of art that reflects the fascination generally that existed in this great war that had gone on just out of memory.

• 37:17Speaker 06

  Yes, absolutely. And of course, the themes in the Iliad are universal. I mean, that's why it still appeals today, you know, with translations like Emily Wilson's, just bring it back to life.

• 37:29Dan Snow?

  So that sounds like it's probably, if it did happen, it isn't just one of many, many raids and little wars that went on through that period that affected the Greek world. It felt like a magnitude bigger. It feels like it was an important event for that period of late Bronze Age history.

• 37:45Speaker 06

  I would say yes, but we may be influenced by Homer there. I mean, it may have been much smaller than one would think. And bear in mind that the battles back then, if you have a hundred terriots, that's a huge army, you know, if you've got a dozen men, that can be big. We've got letters from about a hundred, 150 years earlier, where people in Canaan are asking for reinforcements from the Egyptians. And they're saying, can you send me up 10 men? Can you send me up a dozen troops? So it may have been a much smaller war than we generally think of, but for its day and age, yes, it was a pretty hefty accomplishment.

• 38:27Speaker 06

  And of course, the ripple effects and the ramifications were fairly large because, as you mentioned earlier, Troy commands the entryway into the Black Sea. So if you're trying to get up there, you're going to have to stop in at Troy. It was a very wealthy city, but it was also politically important, commercially important. So control of Troy was more than just control of a normal city. Troy was one of the big prizes. So I'm not at all surprised they went to war over it. I'm not sure it was really because of Helen. I have a feeling Helen was an excuse for a war that was going to be fought anyway.

• 39:07Dan Snow?

  Imagine that, just seizing on one small human instant to ignite a much, much wider conflict that engulfs nations. We've seen a fair bit of that in the last few generations as well.

• 39:18Speaker 06

  Yes, yes.

• 39:19Dan Snow?

  Thank you very much for coming on the podcast and taking us through that extraordinary story.

• 39:24Speaker 06

  My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

• 39:29Dan Snow?

  Thank you so much to you for listening to this episode of Dan Snow's History Hit. We could not make this podcast without you. That's actually true. So make sure, if you want to keep it going, that is, to hit follow in your podcast player right now. You'll get new episodes dropped into your podcast library automatically by the power of tech. You can listen anywhere you get your pods, Apple, Spotify, even BBC Sounds. Imagine a world, just imagine, where you never miss an episode of this podcast. I mean, it's there. The technology makes that possible. That could be your reality right now if you hit follow. See you next time.

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• 41:02Dan Snow?

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