Myrgalen – homepage

Back to ancient texts, with The Iliad.  Archaeology provides little evidence that the Trojan War actually ever took place; it seems to be purely Homer’s literary invention, composed hundreds of years afer the purported events of a heroic Mycenaean age (c.1200 BCE).  Modern excavations at Hissarlik (Troy level VIIa) reveal a relatively small, primitive town at that time, not one capable of producing “Priam’s golden treasure,” famoulsly unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann. In The World of Odysseus, M.I. Finley convincingly argues the poem reflects Homer’s own contemporary society of isolated households and gift-exchange among rival warlords in the so-called “dark ages,” c. 800 BCE, a period which followed the invasion of Dorian tribes from north of Greece. Many of the anachronisms in the poem (creamation of the dead, fighting from chariots, the pantheon of Olympioc gods) are not Mycenaean, but Dorian in origin. I think there may have been memories of an ancient conflict with tribes in “Phrygia” (Asia Minor) which grew in the telling until they were set down in The Iliad, much as tales of an obscure warlord named Arthur eventually created the legend of a once and future king. Troy is probably just as mythical as Camelot, but I think The Iliad is a fascinating and revealing depiction of the values and society which later gave birth to the brillance of classical Greece.