TROY STORY
THE epic story of Troy was back on our screens at the weekend and will be on BBC1 for the next seven weeks. The last cinema blockbuster– Troy in 2004 – brought Brad Pitt’s Achilles, but do you remember a vintage Doctor Who when he gave the Greeks an idea for a wooden horse? Or the Star Trek episode when Kirk fell for an intergalactic Helen? “It’s no good, Jim,” said Bones, “you can’t change history: the Trojans are gonna lose!”
Troy is our ultimate story of war and passion. The tale comes from The Iliad – a poem by Homer, who lived a little before 700 BC – and the Greek’s account has never been surpassed in its depiction of destiny and conflict’s horror. That’s why scriptwriters keep going back to it.
But the story of Troy is not only about war, but love. At the heart of the tale, just like Game of Thrones, is a thrilling and irresistible mix of what the Greeks called Eros and Thanatos – sex and death.
THE EPIC STORY
On a trip to Greece, young Paris, prince of Troy falls in love with Helen, the beautiful queen of Sparta. Consumed by passion they run away together to Troy.
Trouble is, she’s married to King Menelaus of Sparta – the brother of Agamemnon, who is overlord of Greece.
Agamemnon assembles the Greek tribes, who agree that the breach of honour must be avenged. Troy must surrender Helen. Or burn. The Trojans could give Helen back and crave forgiveness but take the fateful choice to fight.
So Agamemnon assembles 1,000 ships and they sail for Troy. In the 10th year of the war, Trojan hero Hector kills Patroclus, the dearest friend of the Greek hero, Achilles who, insane with grief, kills Hector, mutilates his body and drags it round Troy’s walls behind his chariot.
Achilles dies in his turn, and the two armies slug themselves to a standstill.
Then Odysseus, the most cunning of the Greeks, suggests a ruse. The Greeks pretend to give up and sail away, leaving an offering: an enormous wooden horse.
Thinking they have won, the Trojans rejoice and drag it into the city. But Odysseus and a handful of Greek warriors are hidden inside the horse and, at night while the Trojans party, they slip down and open the gates. Troy is sacked: men are killed, women and children raped and enslaved, the city burned.
THE CHARLATAN
Was there a real Troy? Homer’s story is a poem, a piece of entertainment, but modern research has shown it contains memories of the heroic age around the time the war may have taken place.
In the ancient world it was believed that Troy lay by the Dardanelles – but that tale came to be viewed as a fiction.
Then in 1870 German businessman Heinrich Schliemann set out to prove it true. He hired gangs of Turkish
workers who gouged their way into a hill by the Dardanelles called Hisarlik. Within months they had unearthed an ancient citadel. Soon Schliemann had treasures to show, including a headdress of thousands of pieces of gold which he dubbed “the Jewels of Helen”. Schliemann thought he had discovered Troy.
THE REAL TROY?
Schliemann never found the historical Troy but it was under his nose. Certain Homer’s city must lie deep in the mound, he smashed through layers when war may have taken place. Remains of the real place – if it existed – lay back in the upper layers. Luckily, though he had destroyed one side of the citadel, enough was left for those who followed to piece history together. Further campaigns in the 1890s and the 1930s uncovered finely built walls, and noble houses. There was now no question this was a royal citadel of the late Bronze Age and one which had suffered at least two violent destructions.
But still there was no proof that the Trojan War had taken place. This was so when I made the In Search of the Trojan War documentary series for the BBC in 1985. But then, in the 90s, a new excavation began and among finds were cremations of Greek warriors by the seashore.
A lower town was traced, which could have housed several thousand people, much more like the city Homer imagined. At the same time new interpretations of Bronze Age archives preserved on clay tablets in central Anatolia made it virtually certain Troy is named, and one letter is from a king of the Greeks, maybe Agamemnon. There is broad consensus Troy was capital of a Bronze Age kingdom at the mouth of the Dardanelles and the Greeks attacked it in 13th century BC.
A TRUE TALE?
Achilles, without the heel of legend, may have existed. His name, “Grief-bringer”, comes from the Bronze Age, and stories of his deeds were told long before Homer. In one clay tablet in the Hittite archives, the King of Troy is named as Alaksandush close to Homer’s other name for Helen’s lover Paris – Alexandros. Some of the heroes were stock characters in epic storytelling. Ajax for example was a much more ancient hero. Odysseus, the trickster, was also surely an old favourite. Did Helen exist? The seizure of royal women is an old cause of war in ancient epics but whether the war was about love it is impossible to prove. And what about the wooden horse? Could it be the memory of a mobile battering ram with men inside it? Or a thanksgiving gift to the god Poseidon, whose emblem was a horse? The Brad Pitt film, missed the tale’s heart when Paris and Helen ran off together into the sunset. Let’s hope the BBC stay true to Homer. ■ Troy: Fall of a City is on BBC1 on Saturday, 9.10pm. ■ An updated version of Michael Wood’s bestseller In Search of the Trojan War is published by BBC books.