I know Troy is real, but did the Trojan War actually happen as described in Homer? Or were all the characters made up after the fact?
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I know Troy is real, but did the Trojan War actually happen as described in Homer?
I can refute the entire Iliad with a few paragraphs
Well come on then, bigshot
Ok
The Iliad really happened, but the Odyssey was fanfiction written by a woman. It's basically the original femnoid propaganda.
The odyssey was written by homer, so you are wrong.
>greek women of the archaic period
>writing
It is an idea which Samuel Butler came up with. The idea is that the goddesses act much different in the Odyssey than the Iliad along with the Odyssey having far more elaborate descriptions of indoor scenes relating to weaving and other feminine roles.
The illiad only existes so socrates could quote it to get out of arguments that were not going his way
Information presented in the Iliad does align with the (very scant) evidence we have, so I tend to believe that both the war and the people were real, though their epic versions are of course decorated
I think the basic gist of "a bunch of Mycenaean kings, warrior princes, and pirate lords wage war against a Hittite stronghold on the casus belli involving the theft of an arranged bride, and victory is only achieved after some treachery involving a clever engineering marvel, after which Troy is sacked and destroyed once and for all" is an extremely plausible and even probable turn of events. It might even be possible that the major individuals' names were things like Agamemnon, Achilles, Menalaus, Hector, Priam, etc, although the Trojans would surely have had Hittite versions of the names, not classical Greek ones.
What is far less probable are the fairy-tale adventures of Odysseus which seem to read straight out of the Brothers Grimm, which is an endless litany of monsters and punning morality tales. The closest thing to historicity you can glean from the Odyssey is that a man named Odysseus returned from the Trojan War to find his wife besieged in his Ithacan castle and he lifted it by having his warband kill all the attackers.
The mycenean kings in the illiad were real, but mythologzed.
Agamemnon was a king at the peak of Mycenean hegemony in the 13 Centuries BC and the ill8ad is recounting a military expedition on one of the cities that preserved their wealthy trade routes from the agean and black sea.
Obviously they were real, but how do we really connect the real historical personages with the names and identities of the Homeric tales? There are a few mentions of linear B equivalents to several persons in the Iliad and Odyssey, but beyond that, there's scant means of reconstruction.
We don't.
We have to accept that there are 2 versions of it and try to find the similarities/ between them.
I think both tales are significantly about troubles relating to dynasties and in a sense echo one another. The first, in that Menelaus wins the throne of Sparta by marrying Helen, who is then stolen from him. Note, Menelaus married his daughter by Helen to the son of Agamemnon, so I think Agamemnon's interest in retrieving Helen is an interest in securing the throne of Sparta for his son against potential claimants that may issue from Helen and Paris.
But then in the Odyssey there is a kind of inversion. Penelope is the one who has been left at home to be besieged by suitors while Odysseus is lost at sea. In both cases the story centers on dynastic dilemmas related to women, though I think in the case of the Odyssey there is lost history because the traditional story is that Odysseus inherited the throne of Ithaca from his father. He clearly inherited his patrimonial wealth from his father, because what Telemachus is really worried about is that the suitors are squandering that wealth. But what are they squandering it for? The hand of Penelope, who is the one stalling. Penelope must confer something valuable to be so desired, and given that the Iliad was significantly thematically oriented around the succession of Sparta, I think what is being explored in the Odyssey are other dilemmas around fidelity, inheritance and power that would concern the aristocratic warrior class of Greece.
>although the Trojans would surely have had Hittite versions of the names, not classical Greek ones.
AKSHYUALLY according to the Hittie stones they found, prince Paris’ name was “Aleksandu” (clearly Alexandros). He had a Greek name even though his country was politically a Hittite vassal.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaksandu
I think the most interesting take away from that is that the god Apollo is Hittite in origin, which would explain his conspicuous absence in Mycenaean religion
>Apaliunas (Hittite: 𒀀𒀊𒉺𒇷𒌋𒈾𒀸 Āppaliunāš) is the name of a god, attested in a Hittite language treaty as a protective deity of Wilusa. Apaliunas is considered to be the Hittite reflex of *Apeljōn, an early form of the name Apollo, which may also be surmised from comparison of Cypriot Ἀπείλων (Apeílōn) with Doric Ἀπέλλων (Apéllōn).[1]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apaliunas
Huh, that is actually pretty interesting.
>suddenly the Luwians don't speak Luwian but now speak Hittite
Are these guys are on crack or did they drop the plot? Every time something new comes out I become more convinced that the whole Luwian thing is just handcrafted bullshittery. Same for half the Ugaritic canon tbh.
This, except the destroyed once for all part.
But honestly I never take tales of cities being razed with a couple of pinches of salt.
Most of those were destroyed by natural reasons fyi. The Bronze Age collapse is the only collapse from siege warfare.
*late Bronze Age/ early Iron Age collapse
Yes.