The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction

Elementaire Deeltjes #25

by Eric H. Cline

The Iliad, Homer's epic tale of the abduction of Helen and the decade-long Trojan War, has fascinated mankind for millennia. Even today, the war inspires countless articles and books, extensive archaeological excavations, movies, television documentaries, even souvenirs and collectibles. But while the ancients themselves believed that the Trojan War took place, scholars of the modern era have sometimes derided it as a piece of fiction. Combining archaeological data and textual analysis of ancient documents, this Very Short Introduction considers whether or not the war actually took place and whether archaeologists have really discovered the site of ancient Troy. To answer these questions, archaeologist and ancient historian Eric H. Cline examines various written sources, including the works of Homer, the Epic Cycle (fragments from other, now-lost Greek epics), classical plays, and Virgil's Aeneid. Throughout, the author tests the literary claims against the best modern archaeological evidence, showing for instance that Homer, who lived in the Iron Age, for the most part depicted Bronze Age warfare with accuracy. Cline also tells the engaging story of the archaeologists--Heinrich Schliemann and his successors Wilhelm D?rpfeld, Carl Blegen, and Manfred Korfmann--who found the long-vanished site of Troy through excavations at Hisarlik, Turkey. Drawing on evidence found at Hisarlik and elsewhere, Cline concludes that a war or wars in the vicinity of Troy probably did take place during the Late Bronze Age, forming the nucleus of a story that was handed down orally for centuries until put into final form by Homer. But Cline suggests that, even allowing that a Trojan War took place, it probably was not fought because of Helen's abduction, though such an incident may have provided the justification for a war actually fought for more compelling economic and political motives.About the Very Short Introductions series offers concise and original introductions to a wide range of subjects--from Islam to Sociology, Politics to Classics, Literary Theory to History, and Archaeology to the Bible. Not simply a textbook of definitions, each volume in this series provides trenchant and provocative--yet always balanced and complete--discussions of the central issues in a given discipline or field. Every Very Short Introduction gives a readable evolution of the subject in question, demonstrating how the subject has developed and how it has influenced society. Eventually, the series will encompass every major academic discipline, offering all students an accessible and abundant reference library. Whatever the area of study that one deems important or appealing, whatever the topic that fascinates the general reader, the Very Short Introductions series has a handy and affordable guide that will likely prove indispensable.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Greece, Ancient History, Archaeology, Mythology, Classics

153 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

DR. ERIC H. CLINE is the former Chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and current Director of the Capitol Archaeological Institute at The George Washington University. A National Geographic Explorer, NEH Public Scholar, and Fulbright scholar with degrees from Dartmouth, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania, he is an active field archaeologist with 30 seasons of excavation and survey experience in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Cyprus, Greece, Crete, and the United States, including ten seasons at the site of Megiddo (biblical Armageddon) in Israel from 1994-2014, and seven seasons at Tel Kabri, where he currently serves as Co-Director. A three-time winner of the Biblical Archaeology Society's "Best Popular Book on Archaeology" Award (2001, 2009, and 2011) and two-time winner of the American School of Archaeology's "Nancy Lapp Award for Best Popular Archaeology Book" (2014 and 2018), he is a popular lecturer who has appeared frequently on television documentaries and has also won national and local awards for both his research and his teaching. He is the author or editor of 20 books, almost 100 articles, and three recorded 14-lecture courses. His previous books written specifically for the general public include "The Battles of Armageddon: Megiddo and the Jezreel Valley from the Bronze Age to the Nuclear Age" (2000), "Jerusalem Besieged: From Ancient Canaan to Modern Israel" (2004), "From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible" (2007), "Biblical Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction" (2009), "The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction" (2013), "1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed" (2014), “Three Stones Make a Wall: The Story of Archaeology" (2017), and “Digging Up Armageddon” (2020). He has also co-authored a children's book on Troy, entitled "Digging for Troy" (2011). For a video of his "Last Lecture" talk, go to http://vimeo.com/7091059.

Reviews

[Lili Kyurkchiyska · Rating 4 out of 5]

Добре, сигурно сте седяли на чиновете си и за пореден път сте проклинали "Илиада" в час по литература? Ето ви нещо по-интересно - Ерик Клайн, археолог и проучвател на бронзовата епоха, се занимава с въпроса състояла си е изобщо Троянската война. Не, съжалявам, няма да спойлна нищо - ако искате отговора, прочетете си го сами.

[Alex Pler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obra escueta que pone en orden todo lo que se sabe (y todo lo que no se sabe) de la guerra de Troya, analizando y comparando las fuentes literarias y las excavaciones arqueológicas. Interesante y ameno.

[Matthew Lloyd]

I must admit from the start to having read this book for the precise reason of understanding how and why people argue that "The Trojan War" was a historical war and, moreover, what it actually means for "the Trojan War" to have been historical. I understand that it is a Very Short Introduction, not an academic tome, but it is by a scholar who also edited The Oxford Handbook of the Aegean Bronze Age , so one would hope for some kind of scholarly rigour. It certainly didn't help that I've recently been reading up on the notion of the "positivist fallacy", a term coined by archaeologist Anthony Snodgrass to describe the tendency to assume that what is archaeologically visible is historically significant. This is, broadly speaking, rarely the case and rarely provable, certainly in the prehistoric era like the Aegean Late Bronze Age.

Cline's agenda is pretty clear and well set up: he wishes to show that the Late Bronze Age wars around the area we now identify as the site of Troy, in north-western Anatolia, were the inspiration for the epics of Homer, which he explains are The Iliad and The Odyssey, with the other, lost, poems of the Epic Cycle having been attributed to other authors, but goes on to refer to the whole epic of Troy as if it were Homer's story, from Judgement of Paris to Nostoi. He gives no methodological grounds for assuming this to be the case, and at no point does he discuss how this epic poem was put together. Throughout there are references to the ideas which undermine his thesis - for example Ajax, believed to be a much older hero inserted into this epic as his the descriptions of his equipment resemble those of dates far earlier than his own, cannot have been a historical figure in these Wars through this argument. As an archaeologist whose focus in on the Aegean Early Iron Age - the time at which "Homer" composed his two epics (again - far from a certain historical event) - I found that Cline showed no evidence of knowing the context in which Homer was writing and how certain features of the epic, most obviously cremation, fit far better in this period than in the LBA.

Perhaps the greatest failing of this book and the argument that the "Trojan War" was a historical event is that the methodological basis of associating historical wars with a poem written half a millennium later is never presented. The reason for this is that there is no methodological argument for doing so. The only way to "prove" this to be an historical event is to believe that it must be.

It is clear from the introduction that Cline has his endpoint in mind. On page 4 he outlines the questions for exploration, all of which are leading: "What evidence do we have that the Trojan War actually took place?" Not "Do we have any evidence that the Trojan War took place?", nor "Did Homer believe he was writing history?" All subsequent questions rely on the assumption that the war did take place, without discussion for a moment what it means to be "the Trojan War". Will any war at Troy do? Or does it have to be between Agamemnon and Priam?

Chapter 1 is a good summation of the works in the Epic Cycle and discusses several interesting ideas about how the story came to be in the form in which it was known in the first millennium BCE. This summary includes discussion of the joining together of two separate traditions resulting in the double name of Paris/Alexander, the prince of Troy, but it does not discuss the chronology of composition, nor whether the writer of the Iliad (if that's even one person) knew the story as the writers of the Cyria and Iliupersis knew it. Still, this was a good chapter for a VSI.

Chapter 2, however, starts begging some questions. Opening with (p27) "If the Trojan War did take place, both ancient and modern scholars agree that it was fought towards the end of the Late Bronze Age, near the end of the second millennium BCE." No explanation is given for why, as this is not quite "agreement" - the ancient scholars had no conception of a "Late Bronze Age", while modern scholars have calculated the date the ancients believed the war to have happened, which places it in the thirteenth century (usually). But this is the basis for digging into whatever LBA wars can be assigned to the site we identify as Troy. In fairness, there are good linguistic grounds that "Wilusa" in the Hittite documents was Homer's Ilium, and several conflicts do take place there in the thirteenth century. But this is really where the (non-existant) methodology breaks down, because there is absolutely no way to connect these historical wars to the mythological war and Cline has given no real idea of what we need to identify a war as the "historical Trojan War".

Chapter 3 is where Cline's lack of investigation into the EIA really shines through. Putting aside my personal pet peeves - like the circular reasoning which forms the basis of identifying sites in the Catalogue of Ships as LBA sites and thus dating the Catalogue to the LBA (Oliver Dickinson has written eloquently enough on this for everyone) and the lack of attention paid to the fact that the best example of an exclusively LBA object, the boars'-tusk helmet, appears in Book X, also known as the Doloneia, and widely believed to not be an original part of the epic - there is a huge problem here of how Cline conceives of the epics coming into existence. Were they LBA texts transmitted flawlessly through the centuries to be written down in the eighth? Or were they compositions, based on oral tradition, which maintain elements of earlier epics and myth but are fundamentally compositions of the eighth (more likely seventh) century BCE? This is fundamental to understanding if the Iliad is "accurate" (although I have no idea what "accurate" here even means). The "verdict" on pp. 51-3, where Cline asks a bunch of questions including "was the war about one person" and "was there a Trojan horse", then states "The answer to all of the above questions is yes" before going on to explain that, actually, no to the ones about Helen and the horse is so audaciously obvious rubbish that it is almost beyond criticism.

The discussion of the Hittite texts in Chapter 4 was interesting. This is a subject about which I know little, so I was enlightened by their content and detail. The problem here is that nothing useful comes from looking at these texts in one hand and Homer in the other.

In Chapter 5 Cline takes aim at the broad side of the barn and spends a good deal of time assassinating the character of Heinrich Schliemann and the quality of his excavations at Troy. He presents this as if it is some kind of moral tale where an evil man realises his wrong-doing too late to repent, rather than the parable against excavating with a trowel (or rather JCB) in one hand the Iliad in the other. Cline's pleasure in this assassination is most clear when he discusses "Priam's Treasure", the late third millennium possible hoard Schliemann claims to have uncovered, because it dates more than a thousand years before Cline thinks Priam was king of Troy - not because excavating looking for Priam was a terrible idea in the first place. The biggest problem with this chapter and the next, though, is that they are more concerned with the history of excavations than with the archaeological evidence. As a history of the excavations, they are interesting, but it's not really what this VSI is supposed to be about.

Chapter 6 is a better written version of what chapter 5 was trying to do, as it contains no figure so easy for an archaeologist to hate as Heinrich Schliemann. Thus, there is much more of the archaeological basis for the assumptions about the destructions at Troy and their relationships to the "Trojan War" than in the previous chapter. It runs hard up against the positivist fallacy, with the exception of Korfmann, who did not talk about who destroyed the site, only that it was destroyed by human hands, for which there is good evidence. This chapter is probably the best in the book, although it doesn't really have much to do with what the book purports to be about.

By the Epilogue, I largely just sighed through Cline's attempts to justify a belief that Homer knew about the LBA in great detail (although this information somehow failed to reach Herodotus, Thucydides et al a few centuries later) and based his epic in history. I agree with Susan Sherratt's assertion, quoted on p 103, that the motif was not "invented out of nothing" by the poet of the Iliad, but I see no reason why this precludes the epic being fantasy - The Lord of the Rings has a basis in Anglo-Saxon history and epic, but it remains fantasy. Cline concludes "there is a historical kernel of truth" to the epics, but no explanation about what this means or why it is helpful. Is this conclusion meant to help us understand the history of the thirteenth century (where the Hittite texts have already fulfilled this role) or the composition of the epics (where we already know that there are Bronze Age remnants and that the Trojan War becomes history by the time of Herodotus). The only point this conclusion serves is to validate the belief that the conclusion is true.

I came to this book to try to see why people argue that the Trojan War is history and their basis for doing so. I come away thinking that they do so to support their faith in these texts (and perhaps other, eastern Mediterranean, Iron Age texts concerning the Bronze Age) and that there is no basis for doing so. I remain hopeful that there is some use for the epics in the Iron Age, but more convinced that it should be kept at some distance from the Bronze Age. However, an unexpected consequence was that I do now believe that there is a useful book to be written on the Trojan War as putative history, and with some flexed muscles about how one can write archaeology and history in this way – although it would be very different to the way Cline does.

[Vendedor de rápida · Rating 3 out of 5]

Durante un reciente viaje a Grecia, en plena visita a Micenas, me di cuenta no sólo de que lo desconocía casi todo sobre la Guerra de Troya, sino que el poder evocador de las ruinas era tan fuerte que la imaginación completaba la información de los paneles informativos. No obstante en pocos lugares de hace mención a Homero y a Troya. Este breve volumen divulgativo es perfecto para tener un compendio del argumento del ciclo troyano y de la búsqueda en el yacimiento de dicha ciudad, de pruebas de que se trata de la misma del poema épico. La claridad de la exposición de Cline es estupenda, sobre todo cuando contrasta datos puramente arqueológicos que pueden resultar pesados al lector medio. La conclusión es que la Guerra de Troya tuvo lugar más de 1.000 años antes de Cristo y que ya sólo imaginarlo estremece tanto como a Homero y a todos los escritores, arqueólogos o meros viajeros que han pensando en ella.

[Seydaghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

İnsanların dünyayı anlama çalışması, hatta ona anlam verme çalışmasıyla oluşmuştur bir çok mit. İçinde bulunduğu tarihi, insanları da içine alan çok geniş bir alandan bakan ortak bir kültürdür. Nitekim Homeros, İlyada ve Odysseus 'da hem kültürel birikimini konuşturmuş hem de o dönemin insanlarını, olaylarını anlatmıştır. Herhalde burada sorulması gereken soru şu :
Kurmaca gibi görünen bu öykünün ne kadarı gerçektir ? Dahası Homeros gerçekten yaşamış mıdır ? Ya da Akalar gerçekte kiminle savaşmışlar ?
Bu kitap Troya savaşına, onun hakkında yazılan eserlere kurgu, tarih ve mitoloji açısından bakıyor. Hem tanıtım amaçlı, hem de bilgi verici diyebilirim. Hisarlık 'ta yapılan Arkeolojik kazılar, çıkarılan hazinenin Priam'ın hazinesi olup olmadığı tartışması ya da Homeros'un İlyada'da ki savaş sahnelerinde silahlar ve zırhlar için kullandığı metallerle (Demir Çağı ya da Bronz çağı ya da ikisinin ortasında) Troya savaşının gerçekte olmuşsa hangi zaman diliminde olduğunun sorgulanmas,ı dahası yapılan kazılarla ortaya çıkan birden fazla Troya'nın neden ve nasıl yok olduğuyla ilgili bilgiler var. Hatta İlyada destanının ozanlar tarafından ağızdan ağıza anlatılıp en son Homeros tarafından yazıya geçirildiğine dair bir olasılıktan da bahsetmiş yazar. Dönemi düşünürsek bunun gayet normal olduğunu söyleyebilirim. Mitolojik tarafı bir yana Helene'in kaçırılışının aslında bir tetikleyici olduğunu, Akaların öyle ya da böyle Troyalılarla savaşmak istediğini bunu bir bahane olarak kullandıklarına dair bir görüş belirtmiş yazar. Bir kadın için yapılan 9 yıllık savaş ona yeterince ikna edici gelmemiş.(!) Benzer bir durumun Hititler ve Mısırlar arasında gerçekleştiği, Hitit Prensinin ölümünün aynı görevi yaptığını belirtmiş. Keza I. Dünya savaşı da aynı şekilde,savaşı başlatan o meşhur olayı hatırlarsınız.
Bu kitabı okurken ilgimi çeken bir diğer şey Hititlerle ilgili kısımlar oldu çünkü Mikenler/Akalar Hitit kaynaklarında adı geçen bir millet. Hititler, Mikenlere, Ahhiyawa diyorlarmış ayrıca Troya için Wilusa ya da Wilusiya'yı kullanmışlar. Burada ilginç olan şu ki Hitit kaynaklarında adı geçen Wilusa yani (W)ilios ve Alexander/Paris için kullanılan Aleksandu'nun aynı yer ve kişi olarak kabul edilebileceği gibi farklı yerler ve kişiler olarak kabul edilebilme olasılığının olması yani benzer zamanlarda aynı isimde iki yer ve iki isim vardı ya da İlyada destanının asıl kahramanları Hititlerdi?Bu kısmı okuduğumda hem merakımı uyandırdı hem de biraz canımı sıktı. Bilinen bir gerçek ya da addedilen bir gerçeğin değişme ihtimali insanın moralini bozuyor biraz. Tabii bu burada bahsedilen bir ihtimal. Aynı şekilde birden fazla Troya'nın oluşu ve bunların sadece savaş yoluyla değil doğal felaketlerle de yok olduğu gerçeği var. Mesela 6. Troya'nın depremle yok olduğu, 7. Troy'un savaş sırasında yok edildiği gibi.
Okurken büyük keyif aldığım, hem dönemle, hem arkeoloji ve tarihle ilgili yepyeni şeyler öğrendiğim bir kitap oldu. Troya ve Homeros meraklılarına kesinlikle tavsiye ediyorum. Hatta Anadolu eski çağ uygarlıklarını merak edenlerde mutlaka göz atmalı bence.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short and good. It will stuff your brain. Good companion to Wood.

[Michael Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve read maybe twenty of the volumes of the perhaps 350 now available in this excellent, inexpensive series and have all of them to be well above average in accuracy and quality of writing. Cline is chairman of the Classics Department at George Washington University and a well-regarded author in that field.

I read the Iliad as an undergraduate many years, and while I had to struggle with both the “oral epic” style and the translation, I was fascinated by the story. My professor apparently was not a believer and cautioned us to approach Homer’s work only as literature, not as in any way a historical account. I couldn’t help it, though, and I’ve read a good deal about the Mycenaeans in the years since, and about the scholarly debate surrounding the great poem.

Was there such a person (or persons) as Homer? Is the story a plausible account of an actual event? If so, when did the war take place? Is Hisserlik the historical site of Troy/Ilium? Is there any other, non-Greek source? And what about the archaeology? Cline tackles all these issues, dividing his overview into three sections: An overview of the story and what does and does not appear in it (Hollywood notwithstanding), a discussion of the textual evidence (especially regarding Hittite texts, in which great strides and new discoveries have been made in recent years), and a history of the archaeology of the site (including some fascinating finds in just the past decade or so).

Though he seems to accept the most likely parts of the story, in whole or in part, Cline is careful not to try to sell a particular position. His own style is clear, comprehensible, and not too academic, and he makes a point of noting those questions that still have not been (and may never be) fully answered. And he includes an excellent and up-to-date bibliography for further reading. Anyone with an interest in ancient history or the origins of Western literature will enjoy this one.

[Emanuela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quello che conosciamo della guerra di Troia viene soprattutto dall'Iliade, ma ci sono altri testi postumi che richiamano, ampliano e, a volte, stravolgono il racconto. Gli stessi Ittiti hanno lasciato fonti scritte su guerre che si sono svolte nella zona con la presenza degli "Achei". Il libro espone tutti questi documenti e pone alcune questioni di natura temporale, geografica, oltre alla reale figura di Omero.

Al termine non si hanno certezze, ma una serie di dati che contestualizzano il più possibile le vicende narrate anche in base alle scoperte archeologiche della/e presunta città di Troia.

Alcune informazioni sono state riprese nel libro "La Torcia" di Marion Zimmer Bradley che ho appena letto, che ne ha fatto un gradevole romanzo.

[Derek Frasure · Rating 4 out of 5]

This VSI gets deep into the weeds of the Trojan War, and is in-depth enough to serve as a graduate-level introduction to the topic. Cline, who has published widely in ancient archeology, brings us the story of the Trojan War largely through the lens of archeology, and the history of archeology on the site of Troy. In addition, Cline surveys the entire epic cycle related to the Illiad for literary evidence, and he mines the written historical records of the Hittites and other tribal peoples from Anatolia and the Aegean. Balanced throughout, this volume offers little conjecture and keeps us strictly to the facts about what can be known of the nine iterations of the city known to us as Troy.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent overview of the background; literary, historical and archaeological; to the war or wars that supposedly happened at Troy. It has certainly whetted my appetite to explore this area in more detail.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank goodness this is not a primer on Homer, but something much more valuable – especially considering how brief it is. This smart little book it a pocket size treatment of the Epic cycle; the series of now lost or fragmentary epics that tell the story of the Trojan War and its aftermath, of which the Iliad and Odyssey were a part. Not to suggest that all of these epics were composed at the same time, let alone by the same individual. The book considers textual and archeological evidence in turn and does a good job of summarizing the scholarly debates that have raged in this field since the 1800s. The author raises many compelling questions that will be interesting to those who only know the Iliad and The Odyssey: were there many Trojan wars? Do the plethora of names and characters like Ajax (with his shield) and references to other Achaean conquests in NW Asia Minor point to a telescoping of multiple epics? Was there a “Williad” as Hittite texts possibly suggest?
The discussion of how the Hittites relate to Troy and Mycenaean civilization is very thought provoking. If the Ahhiyawa are not the Mycenaean Greeks then we are left with a textual entity without an archeological context, and a civilization without a place in the annals of that time. Take 3 hours and read this book!

[Sean Sullivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title says it all. This introduction is focused on the history of the war itself, and the changing nature of our knowledge of it, and doesn’t spend much time on the literary aspects of the works (Iliad, et al) which have arisen around the conflict. What we really know about the war is scarce and contradictory. We’re not even sure there was a single war. We are sure, today, that Troy existed, and we are sure wars were fought around it, but beyond that, its mere conjecture.

Incredibly, even that level of understanding of the war is of a very recent vintage. Before Schliemann’s discovery in the 1860s, most viewed the stories of the war, and of ancient troy, as legend. Turns out, as with most things about the classics, the story of Troy is much more complicated.

This book gives us a nice, brief overview of those complications looking at the archeological record of troy and ancient Greece in general as well as the stories and histories of the Greeks (i.e. the Iliad and other Homeric epics) as well as the stories and myths of the Hittite and other cultures.



A great starting point for someone (like me) looking to get into the Trojan War and the Iliad. Worth it for the bibliography alone.



Recommended for the enthusiast.

[Nathan Trachta · Rating 5 out of 5]

A growing interest of mine has been the late Bronze Age and a friend had recommended that I read 1177BC by Professor Cline. i decided I wanted to read a different piece by him prior to ordering 1177BC so I could sample his work. Because this piece would be a foundation toward 1177BC and would provide a good sample of his writing style I decided to order The Trojan War: A very short introduction.
I'll open by saying this is great introductory piece; welly thought out with good divisions for presenting to readers. Each section is its own complete story that build upon the previous section to provide a complete introduction to the Trojan War. Professor Cline is very good at presenting the the various sides of a story and while some readers might not like this I do because it provides addition input for the reader to think on to provide their own conclusions (yes, Professor Cline does lead us to some degree but I feel the leading enables the reader to draw their own conclusions about deciding if they want to learn more about the Trojan War or not). Readers should remember this book is not designed to provide you with all information but rather to open a door and leave you with new/additional thoughts or desires to learn more on the Trojan War.

[Andrew Imrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eric H Cline is an excellent writer and this book was quite a nice read. However, it was nowhere near as good as his book in the same series (Oxford, Very Short Introductions) on Biblical Archaeology (which is fantastic). At the end of the day, I’m really none the wiser - after reading this book - about what we really know about the Trojan War and whether it happened in the way Homer describes. This book was really a much too brief look at the whole Troy saga. And the author’s love of the late Bronze Age was not really given the chance to shine through. So I’m left rather unsatisfied, wanting to know a lot more. I will therefore have to turn to other books and other authors to bring the subject to life and throw light on what is admittedly a complex subject.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

Summary of the history of the Trojan Question, and our current state of knowledge regarding the various "Troys" at Hissarlik. And those of use who grew up worshipping Schliemann as the revealer will be disappointed to find that he was, well, a scoundrel, who didn't hesistate to just make things up.

[R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A better title would be the archeology inspired by tales of the Trojan war as most of the book covers that instead of the literature.

[⋆⭒˚ Ali ☾⋆.˚ · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the title states, it is a very short introduction to the Trojan War. It was well written, and provided a good basis for in-class discussions.

[Alejandro Cerón · Rating 4 out of 5]

Son más las preguntas que quedan una vez terminada la lectura y eso sigue siendo lo valioso, porque permite seguir soñando con el mito, permite que sigamos siendo creadores de una historia hermosa que ha sido presentada principalmente a través de las epopeyas griegas. Al que lee, le es válido imaginar, le es válido pensar la forma de las cosas que le son presentadas. Así que, mientras esas cientos de preguntas queden sin resolverse, podremos seguir imaginando sobre la belleza de Helena, las capacidades de Aquiles, la imponencia de las murallas y la inteligencia de Ulises.

El libro lo que hace es confrontar esas fuentes. Es un ensayo para nada difícil, en el que se tiene en cuenta, además de lo señalado en las epopeyas griegas, algunos documentos provenientes de los archivos hititas y de la poesía luvita, así como el estudio de restos arqueológicos y de las conclusiones que sobre esos restos realizaron quienes emprendieron las excavaciones. Pero esa confrontación de las fuentes ha complicado mucho más las cosas, porque lo que se pensaba que había acontecido de una manera, ha llevado a concluir que no era así. Se vislumbra, por ejemplo, que en la poesía de Homero hay descripciones de elementos que eran de una época anterior de la que se piensa acaeció la Guerra de Troya y, con las distintas excavaciones, se ha podido establecer que el lugar en el que se encontraba la ciudad ha sido reconstruido al menos nueve veces, y que no ha sido solamente la guerra lo que ha conllevado a que tenga que ser reconstruido. Es más, se piensa que el caballo de Troya no fue un elemento material generado por la inteligencia de un griego, sino que hace referencia a un terremoto producido por el dios de los caballos.

En el texto se pretende contestar muchas de las preguntas que se han generado como consecuencia de la confrontación de las fuentes, pero debe resaltarse dos de las preguntas más importantes que plantea el autor: La primera, ¿Realmente existió Homero? Y no se otorga una respuesta contundente, porque, al parecer, Homero pudo ser simplemente una profesión, la de poeta oral; o porque Homero pudo haber sido dos personas distintas, como quiera que se establece que la Ilíada y la Odisea pudieron haber sido escritas por dos personas diferentes; o que sí existió, pero que su arte consistió en organizar las distintas poesías que había sobre la Guerra que hubo en Troya, de ahí que mezclase elementos y personajes de otras épocas, tal como sucede con Ajax y su escudo. Ahora, qué importa si Homero habló o no sobre lo que realmente aconteció, lo que es relevante es ese legado que dejó a través de sus dos libros. Homero, si existió, fue un poeta, un soñador, un artista, y al artista le está permitido soñar para crear. El mismo poema habla sobre la intervención de los dioses y no nos consta que exista uno o varios. Es la fuente que nos gusta porque se desprende del arte.

La segunda pregunta: ¿Realmente se llevó a cabo la Guerra de Troya? Y la respuesta parece ser que sí, porque en el lugar en el que se encontraba la ciudad se ha podido determinar que hubo una guerra importante, se pudo establecer que se trataba de una ciudad prospera, que, incluso, tenía comercio con Grecia. También se determinó que fue destruida, pero no una sino varias veces. Que sí hubo una guerra con los aqueos, de ahí la importancia de los documentos hititas. En consecuencia, la guerra sí existió, pero no se sabe si lo que se narra en las epopeyas sea lo cierto o no. Y eso a mí qué me importa. Las epopeyas son para soñar, para imaginar, para creer, al que quiera creer. Son para disfrutar el arte. Frente a las epopeyas les pido: “Cuidado con los griegos que traen regalos”.

[Peter Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...

I just finished the Iliad as assigned reading for the "Online Great Books." I was amazed at how enjoyable and accessible the Iliad was; it was quite the page-turner.

Naturally, I was drawn to investigate the history and backstory of the Iliad. So, I turned to the ever-reliable "A Very Short Introduction" series and the equally reliable Eric Cline. Professor Cline is the author of "1177: The Year Civilization Collapsed," which is another great book for scratching the curiosity itch with respect to the question of why Civilization 1.0 collapsed at the end of the Bronze Age.

Cline delivers the goods with a review of the background of Home, his epics, the Troy cycle of epics, the surrounding cultures, the archeology identifying the site of Troy, and the archeological investigations of Troy.

OGB wants its students to read the text of a great book before they read commentary or supporting information, which I did. Nonetheless, I confess to missing some of the name-doubling. I got "Argive/Achean/Danan" and
"Troy/Ilios" and "Trojan/Darden," but I missed the fact that Paris was also named Alexander. I thought that the naming conventions were more for poetry, but it turns out that it may have represented Greek and Hittite cognates for the same words. Thus, the Hittites mention "Wilusa" in their records, while the Greeks and Latins dropped the initial "W" and mention "Ilios." Paris's other name - Alexander - may - underscore may - be attested to in Hittite records as a ruler of Troy in the 13th century BC.

On which point, it is stunning to think that archeologists have managed to uncover Hittite records, lost for nearly three-thousand years, that attest *maybe* to characters and events that figure in Homer.

As to Homer, there are as many questions about him as there are about Troy. Cline suggests that Homer lived in the 8th century BC and was writing about an event that happened four-hundred to five-hundred years before him. Homer gets some details about the Late Bronze Age ("LBA") right but mixes in things that happened either long before the LBA or during the early Iron age. For example, he mostly gets the cities correct in the "List of Ships" from Book 2 of the Iliad despite the fact that many of those cities had disappeared hundreds of years before his time. (Parenthetically, if you have read that book, you should be impressed with the detail and length of information that was conveyed orally for hundreds of years.)

Cline points out that there were other poets writing in the Trojan epic cycle around the time of Homer. Most of these epics have disappeared, to be remembered only in references in other texts. Some of those other epics provide some background information, such as how Achilles came into the possession of Briseis, who figures prominently in his rage at the beginning of the Iliad.

Cline's prose is very accessible. He provides a lot of background that results in an appreciated "gosh-wow!" effect. This is a short book that can be consumed in one or two reading sessions. I was inclined to knock off a star because I wanted more, but that would be unfair. The book accomplished what it set out to accomplish by being a "very short introduction," and is valuable for that purpose.

[Szuwaks · Rating 4 out of 5]

W zeszłym roku przeczytałem doskonałą książkę Cline'a o upadku epoki brązu, więc postanowiłem sprawdzić też inne jego tytuły. Tym razem padło na tomik z serii "A Very Short Introduction" Oxfordu, poświęcony wojnie trojańskiej.

Książka składa się z trzech głównych części. W pierwszej "The Trojan War" przedstawia historię tytułowego konfliktu według dzieł literackich - Iliady, Odysei i reszty Cyklu Epickiego, a także osadza ją w kontekście późnej epoki brązu, okresu w którym (zakładając że nie jest zupełną fikcją literacką) miała mieć miejsce oraz wymienia ludy, które mogły brać w niej udział (cywilizacja mykeńska, Hetyci, mieszkańcy Troi, Ludy Morza). Część druga, "Investigating the literary evidence", omawia dostępne źródła pisane. Cline zajmuje się w niej kwestią istnienia (bądź nie) Homera, tego na ile wydarzenia z Iliady mogą się odnosić do rzeczywistych, a także co o tym regionie w tamtym okresie mówią teksty hetyckie. W ostatniej części, "Investigating the archaeological evidence", relacjonuje historię wykopalisk archeologicznych na wzgórzu Hisarlik (które zostało zidentyfikowane jako Troja), poczynając od Heinricha Schliemanna *tfu!* aż po lata 2000. oraz co mówią nam na temat historyczności (lub nie) wojny trojańskiej).

Książka jest rzeczywiście bardzo krótka, ale dobrze spełnia swoją rolę wprowadzenia i streszczenia tematu. Jest historia badań tematu, zmian poglądów w ich sprawie i najnowsze ustalenia. Cline stoi na stanowisku, że wojna trojańska rzeczywiście miała miejsce, czy raczej, miały miejsce wydarzenia, które stały się podstawą dla opowieści przedstawionej w eposach (jak sam stwierdził w jednym z wykładów, jego żona uważa że nie było czegoś takiego jak wojna trojańska i "Normalne pary kłócą się o raty hipoteki, my kłócimy się o wojnę trojańską" :v). Swoje stanowisko argumentuje w przejrzysty i ciekawy sposób, ale jednocześnie, bez lekceważenia, przedstawia argumenty przeciwników tezy o prawdziwości wojny trojańskiej.

Podsumowując, bardzo ciekawa, chociaż krótka książka. Myślę, że osobom zainteresowanym starożytnością, epoką brązu i wojną trojańską zapewni miłą lekturę na 1-2 wieczory ;)

[Victor Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

These "very short introduction" books are hit-or-miss for me. I put down two other related ones (Classics & Ancient Greece), but this one was much more engaging. The Trojan War is one of those events that lives in the liminal space between history and pre-history that came to us via myth. Extracting useful historical facts from myth (and linguistics, etc) is both stupidly unreliable and unexpectedly useful. Did Troy actually exist? Well, yes, we found it in 1868 and determined (after years of digging) that the Troy of the Iliad was probably "layer 7-ish" of the nine distinct cities that had been built on this site, then fell into ruin (or were destroyed), then rebuilt upon over the course of thousands of years. Did the Trojan War really happen? Well, probably. The Bronze Age was a violent time to be alive, and the basic descriptions of the book match the broader cultural backdrop of a specific time (types of armor, styles of fighting, etc). But the specific facts (Helen, Ajax, Odysseus, the Horse) are probably just an amalgam of many myths and misremembered historical wars and skirmishes passed down orally. To me, it's really remarkable how little we actually know, but I live in a time of Google and Wikipedia, with the latent assumption that "absolute truth" just kind of hangs in the air like a fine mist, accessible at any time. And sure, 1200 BCE may sound like a long time ago, but it wasn't that long ago. People had cities and farms and government and horse-drawn carts & chariots and metal armor. It never fails to catch me offguard, to read about how humans have been around for two hundred thousand years (or two million, depending how you count), and how little we know about our own history until a mere four to six thousand years ago.

[Marino · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like all of these very short introductions this little book gives a rather good overview of some of the more important aspects of the topic at hand.
The author first lays out the literary and archeological evidence about the Trojan War and follows this up by describing the torturous process of archeological excavation at the site in Turkey from the 1870's up to the early 2000's.

This is all in the service of his broader thesis about the believability of the Trojan War as a real conflict. While he makes quite a solid case for the existence of some version of the Trojan War(s) his attempts to argue that the Iliad should be taken (almost) literally feel, frankly, fanciful. The problem with the book is that he seems to want to make this near-literalist argument knowing that the evidence does not entirely back it up. As a consequence of this he pussyfoots around his thesis at times, playing both sides. If I were to be cynical I would say that he does this to retain some plausible deniability.

[Avalon1224 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Con tanta información que existe hoy en día sobre Troya (libros, películas, documentales, etc.), es muy común dar por hecho que hablamos de acontecimientos históricos comprobables y documentados por diferentes culturas a través del tiempo; pero la realidad es que solo tenemos información literaria muy detallada (por ejemplo La Iliada y La Odisea) que presenta contradicciones con la información comprobable mediante restos arqueológicos y documentación de la época.

Eric nos lleva a un viaje que inicia contando la historía de Troya mediante la múltiple información basada en los textos literarios que hoy se conocen, después entra a detalles técnicos (la parte aburrida) sobre la naturaleza de las excavaciones que han realizado reconocidos Arqueólogos, y termina con una teoría muy convincente y original que no quiero adelantar.

Recomendable para los amantes y/o aficionados a la Arqueología, y quienes quieran descubrir la realidad detrás de esta mítica historia.

[Sofie Sieling · Rating 4 out of 5]

An extremely educational read while also being enjoyable. I was quite glad that the book was not all about the stories and myths of the Trojan War, but more a critical theory regarding the homeric questions for better understanding of the reliability of Homer. The book also concluded archeological research at Hisarlik to find Priam's Troy. There is no doubt that I shall use this academic line for further historical studies for my education. Though, before you read this one, it would be better to have a general knowledge of the war beforehand, which I personally had, even though it is meant to be an introduction, which is why I lowered it to 4 stars instead of 5.

[Alberto Martín · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me he leído este pequeño volumen histórico paralelamente a La Odisea, con la esperanza de que me diese un buen contexto sobre la Guerra de Troya y los acontecimientos narrados en la Iliada.
Recomiendo especialmente los primeros capítulos, centrados en contar el Ciclo Troya desde la tradición griega clásico. El resto del libro, pese a tener un tono divulgativo, se me ha hecho un poco pesado al incidir demasiado en arqueología y en cómo se ha ido perfilando la consideración histórica de Troya. Imagino que será muy interesante para estudiantes de historia o para gente más preocupada por las fuentes.

[Meenakshisankar M · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is quite a brilliant short introduction to the Trojan War, capturing many interesting information in summarized form. Firstly, there is an excellent summary of the entire "epic cycle" collection of stories related to the Trojan war, of which Iliad and Odyssey by Homer are only a part. Secondly, it articulates the archaeological evidences regarding relevant topics such as when the epics were composed, where the city of Troy existed, were there more than one Trojan war, etc. Very useful book to get a holistic view on some fundamental concepts.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some more background reading before I hit Homer, for the first time in about 40 years.
Another very good volume in this series. Cline is an outstanding scholar of the period, and subject.
Brings to our attention non-Greek material and history. And, a stress on the archealogical digs through the past century plus.
Good intro on the city, and the books, and if they existed in the real world. And if they did, where and when.
As is usual in this series, a valuable Bibliography.

[Eleanor! · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cline has created a clear & remarkably concise introduction to a very uncertain & complicated archaeological topic: the historicity of the Trojan War. He acknowledges well the difficulties of the subject & treats fairly all aspects, from the literary evidence to the archaeological—particularly the dubiousness of taking poetry as given fact & the nightmare that is the poor archaeology of Heinrich Schliemann.

[John Desain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like a lot of Cline's books he sets the stage really well and puts everything in perspective expertly. He's an expert in his field and manages to make the study of the historical past readily accessible to the average reader. My only problem is...I want more:) It's a short read that could be a little more verbose in details.

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything I hoped for, presented with clarity and style.

After finishing Pat Barker's 'The Silence of the Girls' I wanted to know more about it's background; what was real, what myth, and how much fiction. What very little I knew of the Trojan Wars stemmed from my first term at grammar school, me an all round unwilling pupil. This explained it all. Thank you Eric H Cline.