From Myth to Mud: How a Dreamer Proved Homer's Troy Existed

The story often begins at the end: The great Trojan War concludes not with a clash of swords, but with a silent, wooden offering. After ten years of fruitless siege, the Greek army appears to vanish, leaving behind a colossal wooden horse dedicated to the goddess Athena. The Trojans, celebrating their apparent victory, pull the monument into their impregnable city. That night, Greek soldiers hidden inside emerge from its hollow belly, unlocking the gates for their returned army. Troy is sacked, its people scattered, and its glory extinguished. A few survivors, led by the warrior Aeneas, escape the burning city to begin a long odyssey that would, according to legend, lead to the founding of Rome.

This chronicle has captivated the Western imagination for millennia. Yet, for all its fame, a fundamental question lingers: Did any of it actually happen?

The Tale Woven by Gods and Mortals

The most famous account of the war, Homer's Iliad, plunges us directly into the heart of the conflict without much introduction. For its original Greek audience, none was needed. The story of Troy was the bedrock of their culture, a shared history passed down through generations.

The war, said to have raged in the 13th or 12th century BC, was sparked by a divine dispute. At a wedding of the gods, Eris, the goddess of discord, tossed a golden apple inscribed "To the Fairest" among the guests. A bitter rivalry erupted between three goddesses: Hera, the protector of marriage; Athena, the goddess of wisdom; and Aphrodite, the goddess of love. They chose the mortal Paris, a prince of Troy living as a shepherd, to settle the argument. Each goddess offered a bribe: Hera promised power, Athena offered wisdom, but Aphrodite pledged the love of the most beautiful woman on Earth.

Paris chose love and awarded the apple to Aphrodite. She, in turn, helped him abduct Helen, the wife of the king of Sparta. In response, the Greeks amassed a fearsome army, including legendary heroes like the swift-footed Achilles and the cunning Odysseus. A prophecy foretold that Troy was destined to fall in the tenth year of the war. With a fleet of over a thousand ships, the Greeks set sail, and the siege began.

A War of Heroes and Fate

For nine long years, the Greeks laid siege to Troy to no avail. The war was defined by moments of incredible heroism and profound tragedy. The most poignant of these is the duel between Achilles, the Greeks' greatest champion, and Hector, prince of Troy and the city's finest defender. Despite leading a smaller army, Hector’s brilliance had kept the invaders at bay for years.

The final confrontation was driven by vengeance. After Hector killed Patroclus, Achilles' closest companion, Achilles was consumed by a grief that turned into terrifying rage. He sought out Hector for a final battle. Overcome by a moment of fear before the seemingly invincible Greek hero, Hector fled, circling his own city three times before finding the courage to turn and fight. He was defeated and killed.

In his fury, Achilles desecrated Hector's body, tying it to his chariot and dragging it before the city walls. This was a horrific act, as a soul whose body was not properly buried was doomed to wander restlessly in the afterlife. That night, Hector’s elderly father, King Priam, snuck into the enemy camp alone and, humbling himself before his son’s killer, begged for the body. Moved by the old king's grief, Achilles relented and returned Hector for burial. Soon after, Achilles himself would fall, and the final chapter of the war—the trick of the Trojan Horse—would seal the city's fate.

The Dreamer Who Searched for a Myth

For centuries after antiquity, the Trojan War was dismissed as little more than a beautiful fairy tale. This was the prevailing view until the late nineteenth century, when one man’s obsessive dream proved that Troy was not just a figment of Homer’s imagination.

Heinrich Schliemann, a German businessman and self-taught archaeologist, led a life as adventurous as any hero's. Born into a humble pastor's family, he was captivated as a boy by an illustration of Troy in flames. Learning the city was considered lost, he made a promise to himself that one day, he would be the one to find it. Schliemann possessed a remarkable gift for languages and, after starting in a Dutch trading company, applied his talents to international commerce, eventually amassing a great fortune. With his wealth secured, he retired to pursue his childhood obsession.

Armed with a copy of the Iliad, Schliemann moved to Greece and began his search. He was convinced that Homer's descriptions were a literal guide. After surveying several potential locations in modern-day Turkey, he settled on a hill called Hisarlik. His excavation methods, however, were brutal by today's standards. Where modern archaeologists work with painstaking precision, Schliemann dug aggressively, creating great trenches in his hurry to find heroic artifacts. He was widely criticized for his amateurism, and it is impossible to know how much priceless historical knowledge was destroyed by his haste.

Unearthing a Complicated Truth

Despite his methods, Schliemann found a city. In fact, he found several, uncovering multiple layers of settlements built one on top of the other over thousands of years. Obsessed with finding the Troy of the Iliad, he dug straight past the layer that archaeologists now believe was the historical Troy (known as Troy VI or VIIa). He reached a much older layer, Troy II, and declared it the city of King Priam. There, he unearthed a magnificent collection of gold artifacts he named "Priam's Treasure," smuggling it out of the Ottoman Empire.

Though later analysis proved the treasure was a thousand years older than the supposed war, and Schliemann’s conclusions were often more fantasy than fact, he had done the impossible: he had shown that an ancient, powerful city existed exactly where Homer suggested it would.

Later, more careful excavations of the layer Schliemann had largely ignored, Troy VIIa, revealed something remarkable: clear evidence of a violent destruction, including fire and skeletons, dating to the correct time period, around 1200 BC. No evidence of meddling gods or invulnerable heroes has been found in the Hittite or Egyptian records of the era. The details of the Iliad remain myth. But it seems increasingly likely that a real and devastating conflict—perhaps a trade war or a regional struggle for power—did occur and became the historical seed from which the epic story grew.

The Trojan War has left an indelible mark on our culture. Even if the conflict never happened exactly as Homer described, the story of its heroes, their triumphs, and their tragedies remains one of the most powerful and enduring tales ever told.

References

• Cline, Eric H. The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2013.
  This concise guide systematically explores the different forms of evidence for the Trojan War—from literary and archaeological to geological and linguistic—offering a balanced overview of what we can and cannot know about the legendary conflict. The chapter "The Archaeology of Troy" (pp. 39-61) is particularly relevant, detailing the work of Schliemann and the significance of the city's different layers.
• Strauss, Barry. The Trojan War: A New History. Simon & Schuster, 2006.
  This book provides a vivid, modern retelling of the Trojan War, examining both the mythological narrative from Homer and the archaeological evidence from the site of Troy to argue for the historical reality of the conflict. The introduction (pp. 1-13) effectively frames the debate between fact and myth that has surrounded the story for centuries.
• Latacz, Joachim. Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery. Translated by Kevin Windle and Rosh Ireland, Oxford University Press, 2004.
  This is a detailed scholarly investigation that connects the archaeological discoveries at Hisarlik, particularly the layer known as Troy VIIa, with the world described in Homer's Iliad. It makes a compelling academic case that the epic poem has a firm historical basis, drawing on textual evidence from neighboring civilizations like the Hittites.