How Many Homers?

Troy 39 57 26.29N
26 14 21.44E 		The outline of walls and buildings can be clearly seen. The large white shape is a temporary cover over excavations.
Bust of Homer
A bust of Homer in the British Museum.

For the Greeks, Homer held a somewhat more exalted position than Shakespeare does for the English or even Robbie Burns does for the Scots. Poetry - the ability to compose lines according to the strict rules of rhyme and metre - was considered to partake of divine inspiration, for after all, the prophecies of the oracles were delivered in verse. As a result, every phrase in Homer was analysed and revered as a message from the gods.

Heinrich Schliemann, a wealthy German businessman who had made his money in Russia, shared something of this same attitude towards Homer and, taking a literal reading of the great poet as his guide, discovered and excavated Troy. On the same basis he also made startling discoveries at Mycenae.

In the early years of the Twentieth Century, when scepticism reigned supreme and the German fad for textual criticism affected everything, Homer underwent somewhat of an eclipse. Once more the Iliad and the Odyssey were dissected and analysed, this time by unfriendly savants, and not only was the whole thing declared to be myth and legend, but these same experts claimed to have detected a dozen or more authors and declared that there was no such person as Homer.

(A few years ago I read an ingenious book by a gentleman called Cassuto who compared the progress of literary criticism in both Homeric and Biblical studies. First two authors were detected in Homer, then in the Pentateuch. Then multiple authors were sniffed out in one and then in the other. Next evidence for a long process of oral tradition was unearthed, first in one, then in the other - and so it went on. Clearly fashion had more to do with the "assured results" these scholars claimed than the actual texts.)

Schliemann's trench
Schliemann's trench at Troy reveals the different cities he discovered.

Regrettably, sceptics do not make great discoveries outside of the artificial worlds they inhabit. Although archaeological work continued at Troy, unlike Schliemann and his successors Wilhelm Dorpfeld and Carl Blegen, these people were not looking for fabled Ilium - in fact, they rather doubted that it had existed - and you will not be surprised to learn that they didn't find it.

That is not to say that their work was entirely without value. A more scientific approach to excavation than Schliemann possessed resulted in many problems being solved - relationships between buildings, better understanding of levels, more accurate dating of pottery, and so on. Perhaps the most important result of this later work was the appreciation of Troy as a city rather than as a mere appendage to a Greek tale. Not only was Troy discovered to be much larger than Schliemann ever dreamed, its position at the mouth of the Dardanelles, which gave it control of the lucrative Black Sea trade, indicated possible sources for its wealth and for Greek antagonism.

Perhaps the most significant discoveries, however, were made not at Troy but in the Hittite archives. As the lost languages of the Hittites were deciphered and translated, it became possible to identify Troy with the city of "Wilusa" mentioned in their texts. (Wilusa is probably the origin for "Ilion" in the Greek texts in much the same way as Peking and Beijing refer to the same city.) The Hittites also refer to the Achiyawa, the Achaeans of Homer's text.

Troy's
The modern "wooden horse" at Troy. Last time I was there the woodwork had decayed so badly it was closed.

Based on the archaeological evidence, scholars now say that if there ever was a Trojan War, it must have happened around 1200 BC, either as the last gasp of rivalry between Mycenae and Troy or as part of the collapse of order as the mysterious Sea Peoples rampaged across the Mediterranean world. Oddly enough, the ancient Greeks, reverently taking the genealogies handed down to them by their poetic sources, dated the Trojan War to 1250 BC, though Eratosthenes, the 3rd century BC Greek philosopher, prefered the date of 1183 BC.

Since 1988 Professor Korfmann has been excavating at Troy in a campaign he calls "Project Troia". Initial results were put on display two years ago but have been given new impetus by a recent Hollywood movie. Hedged about with all sorts of scholarly cautions, they conclude that Troy VI was destroyed about 1180 BC as a result of enemy attack. Not only have they found human remains in the debris of burned houses, but along the walls of the city were piles of sling stones, made ready for defence but never used - presumably because the city fell to a band of warriors concealed inside a wooden horse, though it is more than Professor Korfmann's reputation is worth to suggest any such thing.

He does, however, say, "Everything currently suggests that Homer should be taken seriously; that his story of a military conflict between Greeks and the inhabitants of Troy is based on a memory of historical events - whatever these may have been." (Archaeology, vol 57.3, 2004)

His conclusion is hardly surprising, for when you consider the very strict rules that governed Greek poetry, it would take a redactor of remarkable skill - or, of course, divine inspiration - to go messing around with the text. Names, places and events may not have been precisely as Homer described them - there is such a thing as "poetic licence", after all - but it is highly unlikely that his work underwent any substantial change once it had been composed. After all, "once upon a time there was a tramp who lived on a bend in the river" just does not pass muster as the first line of Australia's favourite poem.