Carlos Schrader (Professor of Greek at the University of Zaragoza)
Thanks to Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, are well known throughout the development of the Trojan War: the abduction of Helen, the crossing of the Greek fleet, the epic battles on the plains outside the city, reaching to its conquest by the famous wooden horse trick. This story has fascinated generations of readers, but has also raised serious doubts about its veracity. Should we believe what to Homer? Are your poems a reliable account of a historical event? Or will the Trojan War is nothing more than a figment of the imagination of the poet?
Great importance was, for the way the answer to these questions, the sensational discovery made in 1871 Heinrich Schliemann. This archaeologist and German businessman located on a hill in the northwest of Anatolia, six miles from the Aegean Sea and over five miles from the Dardanelles, the remains of an important city of the Bronze Age. To Schliemann and archaeologists have continued digging at the site until today, no doubt about it: this was the Troy of the Iliad , city, therefore, was not a poetic creation, but it really existed.
Finally, deciphering the mid-twentieth century of clay tablets in cuneiform script in the archives of Hattusa, the capital of the Hittite Empire, allowed to know the political context in which the conflict was narrated by Homer. It was learned that during the reign of the penultimate monarch Hittite Tudhaliya IV (1250-1220 BC), there were great upheavals in Asia Minor. Tudhaliya had to face an alliance of towns and cities led by ASUW (hence the Greek name for Asia) and includes, among others, the Luqqa (or Lycian) south Truisa (plausibly identified with Troy) to the north and in the center, Wilusa perhaps Hittite equivalent of Ilium. The epic tradition have merged into one city with two names (Troy and Troy), two different cities. Mentioned in the tablets also the Mycenaean kingdom Ahhiyawa (identified with the Achaeans, perhaps installed in Rhodes) and its location in Milawata (possibly Miletus).
Evidence that the core of the Homeric poem goes back to the time of the Trojan War is that it preserves the memory of Mycenaean objects not to be used again after the collapse of that civilization, and whose acquaintance was impossible for an eighth-century BC Greek
Traditionally, the outbreak of the war is blamed for the abduction of Helen, wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta, by the Trojan prince Paris (also called Alexander), son Priam and brother of the heir to the throne, Hector. We are facing a pre-rational trait: the justification of a conflict for personal reasons. But the issue of Helena may be a reflection of the importance in the Bronze Age women were granted to build or destroy alliances. In any case, the insult must be avenged, like stealing real treasure of Sparta when Paris and Helen took with them to Troy.
Speculation estimate that the effective modern Greeks could have scored a total of 15,000 men, which would have required some 300 ships. The population of Troy, according to the results of recent excavations, must lie somewhere around 8,000, so the number of men in the age of bearing arms would at some 2,000, to which must be added partners from other parts of the Troad and surrounding regions, which could move to Troy periodically.
The citadel of Troy was hard to take, as it stood on a hill 20 meters high, surrounded by a wall of 350 meters in circumference, 10 height and four thick. The gates were built in the form of <>, so that a possible assailant forced to enter a corridor bounded by two walls before having to turn around to access the door itself. The lower city was protected by a wall of stone and adobe 1.5 kilometers in circumference, with a gap of two meters wide and three deep. The Trojans, therefore, decided to remain on the defensive and do not face their opponents in the open, unless you present a good opportunity. The Greeks would have to take the city by assault, by a siege, for which they did not have enough men or some ploy.
Although the epic tradition holds that the war lasted ten years, many were the heroes who died and Troy just fell through the wooden horse trick devised by Odysseus things can be interpreted in different ways. The ten-year may reflect a long process of clashes between Trojans and Mycenaean which lasted for several decades and on several expeditions. As Troy VI was destroyed by an earthquake and Poseidon was the god to which attributed the earthquakes, the trick of the horse can be a metaphor for what happened, because that was the animal sacred to God. It is also envisaged that the horse in which the Greeks entered Troy was actually a siege engine (in Assyrian relief can see a machine with these characteristics in the form of sickness), which would explain the traces of fire and looting at the site.
We can not, in short, to speak with certainty for any of the scenarios: if there were one or more "wars of Troy, how the city was taken, who took part in the conquest, and so on. We can only conclude that, through the work of archaeologists, linguists and researchers, the last narrated in poetry has become a historical fact.
