Historicity of The Iliad - History

History

In antiquity, educated Greeks of the 5th century BC continued to accept the truth of human events depicted in the Iliad, even as philosophical scepticism was undermining faith in divine intervention in human affairs. In the time of Strabo topological disquisitions discussed the identity of sites mentioned by Homer. There was no break when Greco-Roman culture was Christianised: Eusebius of Caesarea offered universal history reduced to a timeline, in which Troy received the same historical weight as Abraham, with whom Eusebius' Chronologia began, ranking the Argives and Mycenaeans among the kingdoms ranged in vertical columns, offering biblical history on the left (verso), and secular history of the kingdoms on the right (recto). Jerome's Chronicon followed Eusebius, and all the medieval chroniclers began with summaries of the universal history of Jerome.

With such authorities behind it, the historic nature of Troy and the events of the Trojan War continued to be accepted at face value by post-Roman Europeans. Geoffrey of Monmouth's pseudo-genealogy traced a Trojan origin for royal Briton descents in Historia Regum Britanniae. Merovingian descent from a Trojan ancestor was embodied in a literary myth first set forth in Fredegar's chronicle (2.4, 3.2.9), to the effect that the Franks were of Trojan stock and took their name from King Francio, who had erected a new Troy on the banks of the Rhine. Even before the rational Age of Enlightenment these "facts" underlying the medieval view of history were doubted by Blaise Pascal: "Homer wrote a romance, for nobody supposes that Troy and Agamemnon existed any more than the apples of the Hesperides. He had no intention to write history, but only to amuse us." After the Enlightenment the stories of Troy were devalued as fables by George Grote.

The discoveries made by Heinrich Schliemann at Hisarlik reopened the question in modern terms, and recent discoveries have fueled more discussion across several disciplines. The events described in Homer's Iliad, even if based on historical events that preceded its composition by some 450 years, will never be completely identifiable with historical or archaeological facts, even if there was a Bronze Age city on the site now called Troy, and even if that city was destroyed by fire or war at about the same time as the time postulated for the Trojan War.

No text or artifact has been found on site itself which clearly identifies the Bronze Age site by name. This is probably due to the planification of the former hillfort during the construction of Hellenistic Ilium (Troy IX), destroying the parts that most likely contained the city archives. A single seal of a Luwian scribe has been found in one of the houses, proving the presence of written correspondence in the city, but not a single text. Our emerging understanding of the geography of the Hittite Empire makes it very likely that the site corresponds to the city of Wilusa. But even if that is accepted, it is of course no positive proof of identity with Homeric "(W)ilios".

The bilingual toponymy of Troy/Ilion is well established in the Homeric tradition. A name "Wilios" or "Troia" does not appear in any of the Greek written records from the Mycenean sites, however. The Mycenaean Greeks of the 13th century BC had colonized the Greek mainland and Crete, and were only beginning to make forays into Anatolia, establishing a bridgehead in Miletus (Millawanda). Historical Wilusa was one of the Arzawa lands, in loose alliance with the Hittite Empire, and written reference to the city is therefore to be expected in Hittite correspondence rather than in Mycenaean palace archives.