1184 BC The Fall of Troy
Along with the Bible, the story of the fall of Troy provides the foundation of Western literature. As described first by Homer in his epics The Iliad and The Odyssey, the ten-year siege of Troy and its destruction was the basis for countless other legends, plays, novels, poems, operas, and films.
The events beneath the walls of Troy (Christopher Marlowe’s “topless towers of Ilium”) took place because of the kidnapping of a Greek queen, Helen of Sparta, by a Trojan prince, Paris. The city-states of the Greek world banded together under the leadership of Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, to recover Helen but despite the contribution of the almost-invincible warrior of Achilles, it took ten years to bring Troy down. Even after a decade of battles, it was a cunning ploy by the wiliest of the Greeks, Ulysses, that brought about the end of the Trojan monarchy — a hollow horse filled with Greek soldiers was brought into the city by unsuspecting citizens who believed their enemies had abandoned their siege. Once inside, the Greeks opened the gates and a general massacre and sack ensued.
For centuries it was believed that the Trojan war was entirely fictional but that was before the efforts of amateur archaeologist and Homer fanatic, Heinrich Schliemann (1822-90). With the money made from his career as a successful merchant, Schliemann excavated a site on the Troas peninsula which he believed fitted the description of the landscape described by Homer. He uncovered a series of cities built throughout the ages on top of each other and announced that one of these was the historic Troy. Unfortunately his crude techniques (which involved the use of dynamite) and his choice of archaeological layer have been criticized — Schliemann thought that Homer’s Troy was the city found on level II when modern researchers opt for levels VI or VIIa.
Today the existence of ancient Troy is taken as certain — its location would have allowed it to dominate the entrance to the Dardanelles and grow rich on tolls and trade — but the dating is uncertain. The genius Eratosthenes of Alexandria compiled an ancient chronology and place the destruction of Homer’s great city to 1184 BC.