Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics: November (2005)
Abstract
This is a review of Joachim Latacz’s book Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery (2004), focusing on the archaeological issues.
This is an excellent book by one of Europe’s leading Homerists. In the 1840s, well before Schliemann set spade to soil at Hisarlik, George Grote suggested that while Homer’s epics were excellent sources for the customs of eighth-century-BC Greece, we would never know whether the Trojan War he described really took place. Schliemann and Dörpfeld shocked classicists out of this view, but since the 1980s positions like Grote’s have returned to favor. The Trojan War itself dropped out of historians’ analyses of Homer, because it seemed that there was really very little we could say.
Joachim Latacz argues to the contrary that the late Manfred Korfmann’s excavations at Troy since 1988 have changed the equation. Korfmann was the first archaeologist to explore Troy’s lower town. Against those who insisted that Troy VI (c. 1700-1200 BC) was basically just a castle on a hill, inconsistent with Homer’s account of windy Ilion, Korfmann concluded that the city covered some 20 hectares, with a population of 7,000-10,000 people. Its lower town was fortified, and its rulers grew rich by controlling trade between the Aegean and Black Seas. Korfmann insisted that there really was a Trojan War, although it was these trade routes, not the beautiful Helen, that the Achaeans came to seize.
Ian Morris
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics: November (2005)
Abstract
This is a review of Joachim Latacz’s book Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery (2004), focusing on the archaeological issues.
This is an excellent book by one of Europe’s leading Homerists. In the 1840s, well before Schliemann set spade to soil at Hisarlik, George Grote suggested that while Homer’s epics were excellent sources for the customs of eighth-century-BC Greece, we would never know whether the Trojan War he described really took place. Schliemann and Dörpfeld shocked classicists out of this view, but since the 1980s positions like Grote’s have returned to favor. The Trojan War itself dropped out of historians’ analyses of Homer, because it seemed that there was really very little we could say.
Joachim Latacz argues to the contrary that the late Manfred Korfmann’s excavations at Troy since 1988 have changed the equation. Korfmann was the first archaeologist to explore Troy’s lower town. Against those who insisted that Troy VI (c. 1700-1200 BC) was basically just a castle on a hill, inconsistent with Homer’s account of windy Ilion, Korfmann concluded that the city covered some 20 hectares, with a population of 7,000-10,000 people. Its lower town was fortified, and its rulers grew rich by controlling trade between the Aegean and Black Seas. Korfmann insisted that there really was a Trojan War, although it was these trade routes, not the beautiful Helen, that the Achaeans came to seize.
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