Even if we could prove beyond doubt that “a war at Troy” happened, would that be the Trojan War? Or would Homer’s tale always transcend the messy realities of Late Bronze Age conflict? Perhaps the Trojan War exists most powerfully not in the soil of Hisarlik, but in the cultural imagination, where Achilles, Hector, and Helen have lived for 3,000 years. A tale great in teaching virtues but not so great about facts.
Fair enough, and I quite liked the article and it did not in general smell of AI except for those two terms which are much used by AI and do not really fit the text anyway.
But on another totally different note - I haven't read Homer and I haven't seen the film, but I have always been interested in history and am fairly well acquainted with the subject. And the whole "wooden horse" episode has always struck me as being totally unbelievable, to modern ears, and probably even more so to near-contemporaries. Wooden statues that can contain any number of warriors are necessarily very heavy and large and would never have been moved in one piece, it being a major benefit of wooden structures that they can be dismantled and moved piecewise.
To me the explanation is obvious - some sort of misunderstanding has crept into the text at some point, possibly caused by readers unfamiliar with wood in general and warfare in particular. Homer was most likely talking about a vessel of some sort, and Troy was obviously a maritime city with a defended harbour. Ships were expensive, and a decent ship left marooned outside the city would have been towed into harbour. And it isn't all that difficult to imagine a secret compartment in the hull of a ship that could hide a small fighting force. Describing a ship as a "horse of t he sea" would not have been particularly original.
I would be amazed if nobody has thought of this before - but I haven't seen any literature on the subject, ad seeing Nolan go the whole "wooden horse" myth tells me that it is not widely discussed.
This is a great article, I’ll be sharing it with my Greek and Roman class for our Trojan War week :)
I am happy to hear that. 🙂 Thank you.
I thoroughly enjoyed this article. packed gull or amazing information.
I am very happy to read this. Thank you!
Yes there was. Many in fact.
Even if we could prove beyond doubt that “a war at Troy” happened, would that be the Trojan War? Or would Homer’s tale always transcend the messy realities of Late Bronze Age conflict? Perhaps the Trojan War exists most powerfully not in the soil of Hisarlik, but in the cultural imagination, where Achilles, Hector, and Helen have lived for 3,000 years. A tale great in teaching virtues but not so great about facts.
Great article
Please remove all use of "showcases" and "highlighs", it smells very badly of AI slop.
That is strange because I wrote this in 2019, quite a while before all of the AI stuff took over.
Fair enough, and I quite liked the article and it did not in general smell of AI except for those two terms which are much used by AI and do not really fit the text anyway.
But on another totally different note - I haven't read Homer and I haven't seen the film, but I have always been interested in history and am fairly well acquainted with the subject. And the whole "wooden horse" episode has always struck me as being totally unbelievable, to modern ears, and probably even more so to near-contemporaries. Wooden statues that can contain any number of warriors are necessarily very heavy and large and would never have been moved in one piece, it being a major benefit of wooden structures that they can be dismantled and moved piecewise.
To me the explanation is obvious - some sort of misunderstanding has crept into the text at some point, possibly caused by readers unfamiliar with wood in general and warfare in particular. Homer was most likely talking about a vessel of some sort, and Troy was obviously a maritime city with a defended harbour. Ships were expensive, and a decent ship left marooned outside the city would have been towed into harbour. And it isn't all that difficult to imagine a secret compartment in the hull of a ship that could hide a small fighting force. Describing a ship as a "horse of t he sea" would not have been particularly original.
I would be amazed if nobody has thought of this before - but I haven't seen any literature on the subject, ad seeing Nolan go the whole "wooden horse" myth tells me that it is not widely discussed.
Definitely an intriguing thought. It has also been suggested that the Trojan horse was a battering ram.