The Historical Significance of Troy in Greek Mythology

Troy was a city situated in the far northwest of the region known as Asia Minor, now known as Anatolia in modern Turkey, near the southwest mouth of the Dardanelles Strait and northwest of Mount Ida. There were up to 20 cities around Troy. The present-day location is known as Hissarlik. It was the setting of the Trojan War described in the Greek Epic Cycle, in particular in The Iliad, one of the two epic poems attributed to Homer. Homer is a master of narrative. He is the greatest author that has ever lived. His work is classical, but he had some things that are incredibly modern.

The Troy of Homer is Troy 7. It came to a violent end around 1270 BC; houses were burnt, and the city was sacked. The king of Troy was Priam (non-Greek). He was the first hero. Luwian is an Anatolian language that is a dialect of Hittite, the language of Troy.

In Archaic Greece, it was called Ilion. A new capital called Ilium was founded on the site in the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus. It flourished until the establishment of Constantinople and declined gradually in the Byzantine era.

Many people doubted that Troy existed and thought that Homer's histories were false. The basic theory of Homer was proved by the German Schliemann.

In 1865, English archaeologist Frank Calvert excavated trial trenches in a field he had bought from a local farmer at Hissarlik, and in 1868, Heinrich Schliemann, a wealthy German businessman and archaeologist, also began excavating in the area after a chance meeting with Calvert in Çanakkale. These excavations revealed several cities built in succession. Schliemann was at first skeptical about the identification of Hissarlik with Troy, but was persuaded by Calvert and took over Calvert’s excavations on the eastern half of the Hissarlik site, which was on Calvert’s property.

In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans (Greeks) after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology and has been narrated through many works of Greek literature, most notably through Homer’s Iliad. The Iliad relates four days in the tenth year of the decade-long siege of Troy; The Odyssey describes the journey home of Odysseus, one of the war’s heroes.