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- No, ‘Troy’ is not based on a true story. However, the film is based on the epic poem ‘The Iliad.’ Interestingly, the jury is still out on the possibilities of ‘The Iliad’ being an authentic part of history.
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May 5, 2022 · Is Troy a True Story? No, ‘Troy’ is not based on a true story. However, the film is based on the epic poem ‘The Iliad.’ Interestingly, the jury is still out on the possibilities of ‘The Iliad’ being an authentic part of history.
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Did the city of Troy really exist? Is the Trojan War myth or military reality? And what about that giant horse?
As the blockbuster Brad Pitt film Troy storms the cinemas, archaeologists and historians are shedding light on the ancient city and epic that inspired the movie.
In the Greek poem The Iliad, the basis for Troy,Prince Paris of Troy steals the gorgeous Helen, of Greece, from her husband, King Menelaus. The act brings the two nations to war, and eventually Greeks led by the warrior Achilles lay siege to Troy.
The poet Homer probably wrote the epic in the eighth or ninth century, B.C., several hundred years after the war is supposed to have taken place. Much of it is no doubt fantasy. There is, for example, no evidence that Achilles or even Helen existed.
But most scholars agree that Troy itself was no imaginary Shangri-la but a real city, and that the Trojan War indeed happened.
Archaeologists who have been digging into the myth of Homer's poem believe the legendary war may have been a process rather than a single event.
In northwestern Turkey, Heinrich Schliemann excavated the site believed to be Troy in 1870. Schliemann was a German adventurer and con man who took sole credit for the discovery, even though he was digging at the site, called Hisarlik, at the behest of British archaeologist Frank Calvert.
The site contains nine cities built on top of each other. There is a citadel in the middle and a town around it. A high wall fortified the town.
Eager to find the legendary treasures of Troy, Schliemann blasted his way down to the second city, where he found what he believed were the jewels that once belonged to Helen. As it turns out, the jewels were a thousand years older than the time described in Homer's epic.
Today archaeologists believe that the sixth and seventh oldest cities found in layers at Hisarlik are the best candidates for the Troy of The Iliad.
Resplendent and strong, city number six looks like Homer's Troy. The problem is that this city's destruction in 1250 B.C. does not appear to have been caused by war but an earthquake.
But Homer's story may provide a clue.
In the late Bronze Age, Troy, if located at the Hisarlik site, would have been a great prize for power-hungry kings.
Perched at the entrance to the Black Sea, the city would have been at an international crossroads. The Greek Mycenaean empire would have lain to the west. The Hittite empire, which stretched from Mesopotamia to Syria, would have been to the east. As for its great wealth, Troy may have acquired that by taxing seafarers traveling into the Black Sea.
"It would have been a great plum for the Mycenaeans to capture," Cline said. "This war may have been fought for the usual reasons: economic gain, greed, glory, territory, and the control of trade routes."
Or the Greeks may not have fought the Trojan War at all.
One theory suggests that the lesser known Sea Peoples wrecked Troy. Originally from what is now Italy, the Sea Peoples swept across the Mediterranean Sea from west to east. According to inscriptions found in Egypt, this group came through Troy at the time of the Trojan War, around 1200 B.C.
Yet another theory, supported by ancient Hittite texts, suggests an intermittent, 200-year conflict that raged between the Hittite empire and a rebel coalition that included Troy. In this text, the Mycenaeans of Greece actually allied themselves with the Trojans against the Hittites. Archaeologists have found Mycenaean pottery in Troy 6, supporting the suggestion that the two nations were allies.
One thing is clear: The wars seem to have ended an age.
"Homer is writing a memory of the end of the world," said Diane Thompson, author of The Trojan War: Literature and Legend from the Bronze Age to the Present."Nostalgia fuels his writing, and it has fueled it ever since."
When the Roman poet Virgil in the first century B.C. rewrote Homer's story in his own classic The Aeneid, he turned the Greeks into scruffy villains and described the Trojans as beautiful losers who went on to found the Roman Empire. Through the ages, European people clung to this version—many of them tracing their ancestry back to Troy.
"It's a brilliant story of love and war," Thompson said.
- Stefan Lovgren
It is loosely based [3] on Homer's Iliad in its narration of the entire story of the decade-long Trojan War—condensed into little more than a couple of weeks, rather than just the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon in the ninth year.
Jun 1, 2022 · Is Troy a Real City? For centuries, there has been a major debate over the existence of Troy in real life. The historic city has been elaborately mentioned in Homer’s epic 8th Century BC poems ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey,’ the former also being the source material for the movie.
Jan 9, 2020 · Most historians now agree that ancient Troy was to be found at Hisarlik. Troy was real. Evidence of fire, and the discovery of a small number of arrowheads in the archaeological layer of...
Dec 1, 2021 · "Troy," which starred Brad Pitt, was based on a really long poem by the ancient writer Homer. It is a tale of a war between a Greek army and the Trojan army.
Jun 13, 2024 · Paris' fate in "Troy" differs from the original text - portrays him as more heroic in the film than in Homer's poem. Bringing the ancient work of Homer to the big screen, there is a question of how accurate Troy is as a movie. Based on Homer's writing about the Trojan War in The Iliad and the Odyssey, Troy was a 2004 Hollywood blockbuster ...
