Troy

[Kitsune]

Was watching a show on "Atlantis" and several supporters of finding an Atlantis (Ie: Edgar Casey not something more down to earth ) stated that people thought that Troy was just a legend.

My question is if we are actually even sure now that what was foiund was really teh city of the Illiad. The evidence seems pretty thin to me.

[Lonestar]

Probably so. Now, is it exactly as described in the Illiad? No, but neither is Jericho, and no one doubts it's existence.

[Bounty]

My question is if we are actually even sure now that what was foiund was really teh city of the Illiad. The evidence seems pretty thin to me.

It's almost certainly the city the Illiad was based on. However, to say that this validated the Trojan War is like saying Spiderman exists because New York is a real place.

The fact of the matter is that there is no layer within the city that fully corresponds with the myths, either because it has no traces of war, has traces of war but a wrong layout, or traces of war and a correct layout but at a wrong date. The evidence strongly suggests that the city, like many ancient towns, went through a cycle of wars and reconstruction, creating a variety of myths that eventually were combined into a single "war".

[Broomstick]

It doesn't help the Atlantis-wankers that there have been a couple of areas proposed as "Atlantis" that are a fairly good match in time/space/legend but are not accepted because these cities/islands would only have been "advanced" relative to others of the time, they aren't mystical uber-utopias with flying cars and magic-level tech capable of levitating the Giza pyramids into place in an afternoon.

The evidence for Troy stands up in part because noone ever expected Troy to be other than what it was, a city of it's historical time. Too many Atlantis-wankers want Atlantis to be an alien civilization or group of magicians or some such. Just ain't so, and never was.

[Big Orange]

Wasn't Atalantis coined in Greek fiction anyway and even in fictional accounts it wasn't really that advanced? I've seen fictional maps of Atalantis and it was always depicted as a circular island heavily divided with concentric city walls and canals, with a huge temple/palace complex at the very centre on the central circular island (like Tenochtitlan). I've heard acounts that the fictional Atlantis was very impressive as a Bronze age city, but there is nothing involving aliens, magic, Aryans or other bullshit (that gives the Atlantis legend a bad name).

[Broomstick]

Right - the magic bullshit is largely a late-19th/20th Century addition to the legends. The Greek original describes a nation advanced in the context of its time on a large island.

There are a number of city/state candidates that would qualify, including Minoan Crete and the island of Thera prior to a volanic catastrophe (which DID either sink or render most of the island uninhabitable). But they are clearly bronze-age cities, not magical-wank uber-civilizations.

[Surlethe]

Was watching a show on "Atlantis" and several supporters of finding an Atlantis (Ie: Edgar Casey not something more down to earth ) stated that people thought that Troy was just a legend.

You can tell someone's argument is weak when it's analogous to a creationist argument. This is essentially a red herring, pointing out that <biologists/cosmologists/historians> have been wrong before, and expecting you to assume that they're wrong now follows.

[DrMckay]

Oh please. We ALL know that Atlantis is REALLY a floating gigantic city/spaceship on a watery planet in the Pegasus Galaxy, and now populated by a team of international explorers...*cue theme music*

[DrMckay]

On a more serious note,

The entire Trojan war could have occoured on a much smaller scale, and was probably dramatized (by Homer) to make for good legend and storytelling.
It is possible that vagaries and differences in language and description over time could lead to any good-sized, walled city, as Troy, simply because it is one of the few mentioned (by name) in history and legend.


I mean, c'mon, who wouldn't want to be the Archeologist who discovered "Troy" possibly "mislabeling" it without sufficient evidence for the noteriety of the discovery.

[Nephtys]

Troy's an odd case, as a relatively great city that could be a thematic match for the war is a few hundred years too old for it to be the right one, while two cities on the site that are at the right time are really small and have been described as 'wretched', not really epic-worthy material.

It doesn't help that the Persians didn't even notice a 'grand and epic 10 year war' with their neighbors either. So eh. Most likely it was a minor regional war that got a lot of great press and became iconic.

[FTeik]

There is even a theory that the actual events that Homer wrote about in the Illiad took place somewhere in what is today Scandinavia and that the later Indo-germanic tribes that settled Greece took the stories of that war with them and the poet filled the blank spaces with new names (Odysseus, Agamemnon) and locations (Mykene, Sparta).

[Frank Hipper]

Right - the magic bullshit is largely a late-19th/20th Century addition to the legends. The Greek original describes a nation advanced in the context of its time on a large island.

There are a number of city/state candidates that would qualify, including Minoan Crete and the island of Thera prior to a volanic catastrophe (which DID either sink or render most of the island uninhabitable). But they are clearly bronze-age cities, not magical-wank uber-civilizations.

More than that, I've only seen one, ONE Atlantean moron attampt to place Athens at 9,000 BCE, and if I recall that particular thread correctly, all he could come up with was charcoal at campfire sites, not the powerful city-state related by Plato's Egyptian priests.

As to taking Troy's existance as an implication of Atlantis existing, well, welcome to non sequitur land.

[Darth Wong]

My question is if we are actually even sure now that what was foiund was really teh city of the Illiad. The evidence seems pretty thin to me.

It's almost certainly the city the Illiad was based on. However, to say that this validated the Trojan War is like saying Spiderman exists because New York is a real place.

Unfortunately, that kind of logic is commonplace, particularly in religious discussions.

[DrMckay]

there is a saying relating to history;

"when the legend becomes fact, then print the legend"

I think it definitely applies to this situation, especially with so many crazy-assed theories.

[Sam Or I]

Really weird thread for me. Almost like Deja Vu. I found a really cool essay online comparing Troy to Atlantis. I just looked it up yesterday.

http://www.csicop.org/sb/2001-09/atlantis.html

Schliemann's archeological verification of Homer's Trojan War is an inspiring example of how an intelligent layperson can make a significant contribution to professional scholarship. Unfortunately Schliemann often serves as the poster child for isolated cranks who draw hope from his success.

There are important distinctions between Homer's Troy and Plato's Atlantis: the obvious one is that the ruins of Troy have been found where Homer said they were: the proof is in the pudding. Also, the Iliad and its heroes are part of a mythic tradition that suffused Greek art and culture. Pottery shows scenes from the Trojan War and depicts heroes like Achilles, Ajax, and Odysseus. Long-standing local legends and religious myths also allude to many of the characters. Many of the places mentioned in the Iliad were recognized by Greeks of Plato's time. There is even solid evidence that Iliad (and its companion work, the Odyssey) themselves have deep roots into the past. Milman Parry's landmark work in the 1930s analyzing the structure of Homeric poetry and comparing it with oral poetry among the Serbs, demonstrates that the Iliad is essentially an oral poem woven from conventional phrases and lays handed down through generations of Greek bards. Though committed to writing, the poetry itself is a product of oral mnemonic and metric composition.

Plato's Timaeus and Critias, by contrast, are non-traditional: his dialogues are original prose compositions. Atlantis is mentioned by no one before Plato, and was never part of the broader interconnected traditions of ceramic art, poetry, literary allusions, local legends, or monumental architecture. There is no evidence to show that tales of Atlantis were handed down through generations from an age long before Plato.

Just what makes all this weird to me, I never heard the quote:

"when the legend becomes fact, then print the legend"

until today at work when some one sent me an Article on Jeremiah Weed, telling where the tradition came from in the US Air Force. (I can't find the page, and I am to lazy to look through hundreds of google pages.) Just a weird coincedince.

Anyways hope this clears up a few thing with the Troy debate.

[Wyrm]

It doesn't help that the Persians didn't even notice a 'grand and epic 10 year war' with their neighbors either. So eh. Most likely it was a minor regional war that got a lot of great press and became iconic.

Actually, they were Hittites, not Persians. And they did know something was going on at Troy, which was at best a client of the Hittites. The Tawagalawa letter, a letter written to the king of "Ahhiyawa" (presumably the Acheans/Greeks) from a Hittite king (thought to be Hattusili III), mentoned a war flaring up between the two powers at "Wilusa" (Illios, Troy), but settled 'amicably.'

Ahhiyawa is identified with Mycenean Greece from the fact that the Greeks controlled Miletus, Ahhiyawa controlled Millawanda, and the identification of Miletus with Millawanda. And whoever controlled Millawanda, Miletus is definitely on the edge of Hittite territory and uncomfortably near Hittite interests.

So the Hittites and the Greeks were almost definitely in conflict, and the Hittites did take notice of a war with one of their clients at Troy. I like to think of the Trojan War as one war in a whole campaign of Greek expansion into Anatolia.

[Braedley]

If memory from my grade twelve English class serves, all but two Trojans were killed by the end of the war. The two survivors were Romulus and Remus, who went to Italy and founded the Roman empire. I'm not positive, but I believe there is a Roman epic that deals with the Trojan war (although the wiki makes no mention of it, so I could be wrong, grade twelve was a while ago). This could help to explain the lack of mention in other cultures.

[Gaidin]

If memory from my grade twelve English class serves, all but two Trojans were killed by the end of the war. The two survivors were Romulus and Remus, who went to Italy and founded the Roman empire. I'm not positive, but I believe there is a Roman epic that deals with the Trojan war (although the wiki makes no mention of it, so I could be wrong, grade twelve was a while ago). This could help to explain the lack of mention in other cultures.

Aeneus(spelling?) was his name. I can't remember the names of his family members and his best friend. But I do know there were enough unnamed trojans left to fill a few ships and it was a few hundred years before Romulus and Remus.

[Lonestar]

If memory from my grade twelve English class serves, ....

Sure doesn't! Go look up the Aenied[/]i(sic) on wiki.

Reme and Romulus were the Traditional Roman Founders, Aenied was written to revise Roman history to describe how civilized their ancestors were(as opposed to a pair of crazies raised by wolves)

[Bounty]

If memory from my grade twelve English class serves, all but two Trojans were killed by the end of the war. The two survivors were Romulus and Remus, who went to Italy and founded the Roman empire.

That's from the unauthorised sequel, written centuries after the oral tradition was canonised. A sequel which was as much about politics as it was about drama - Octavian wanted an epic about the early days of the city, so Virgil pasted together a couple of vague folk tales about a man called Aeneas and tied it in to the early history of Rome.

(Face it, saying your city was founded by a legendary hero from a rich, sophisticated civilization sounds a hell of a lot better then it's true origins as group of filthy farmertowns full of uneducated hilbillies)

[Bounty]

EDIT: Romulus and Remus weren't the survivors, they were the illegitimate offspring of one of Aeneas' granddaughters and Mars. So much for historical plausibility...

[Braedley]

I stand corrected. I guess not taking a single classics course in the three and a half years since high school can mess with some of your facts.

[Big Orange]

Troy, Atlantis and the mythical founding of Rome sound like the fictional over exaggeration of real events and places, but of course wildly blown out of proportion due to epic stories selling better amongst the crowds of peasants - the Old Testament pretty much arose in similar circumstances.

[Bounty]

Troy, Atlantis and the mythical founding of Rome sound like the fictional over exaggeration of real events and places, but of course wildly blown out of proportion due to epic stories selling better amongst the crowds of peasants - the Old Testament pretty much arose in similar circumstances.

Have you been reading the discussion?

Atlantis was not an overexaggeration of an existing city. It was a thought exercise, a means of conveying an idea, that for some reason became the holy grail for conspiracy nuts and lazy documentary filmers.The founding of Rome, likewise, was a fiction, based on fictional stories, because the Romans had no written record of that time; they simply wanted something better than "pigfarmers". Note that the Aeneid was written, and read, as a fiction even in antiquity.

The Bible is a whole other kettle of fish, a mix of myths, oral tradition, vague historical references and allegories pasted together over a span of centuries by various authors without any sort of coordination and with no clear goal in mind.

The idea that Troy, Atlantis and Romulus were created for "peasants" is absurd. These works were written for the elite, by the elite.

[Big Orange]

Have you been reading the discussion?

Yes I have.

Atlantis was not an overexaggeration of an existing city. It was a thought exercise, a means of conveying an idea, that for some reason became the holy grail for conspiracy nuts and lazy documentary filmers.

Well Atlantis is a purely fictional account and there are reasonably theories that the author (or authors) were inspired by the destruction of the Crete civilisation that had occurred in recent history at the time (Atlantis sounds like fictional Mediterranean city state on steroids).

The founding of Rome, likewise, was a fiction, based on fictional stories, because the Romans had no written record of that time; they simply wanted something better than "pigfarmers". Note that the Aeneid was written, and read, as a fiction even in antiquity.

Yes, they wanted a more romantic account of the founding of Rome that would be more suited to a respectable capital city of a young republic, not some large farming community. I can imagine the growing Roman urban middle class would find the story of Rome being founded by Troy survivors more appealing.

The Bible is a whole other kettle of fish, a mix of myths, oral tradition, vague historical references and allegories pasted together over a span of centuries by various authors without any sort of coordination and with no clear goal in mind.

That's where the Bible's tall tells and contradictions came from.

The idea that Troy, Atlantis and Romulus were created for "peasants" is absurd. These works were written for the elite, by the elite.

Romulas was obviously spun for peasants if it originated from early Rome, which was a glorified collection of farms and villages. But Troy and Atlantis were written by upper class scholars, but people unable to read or write legends spread them through word of mouth.