The Amazons were more than just a myth: They were real. Ethiopians follow the Amazons. The Ethiopia mentioned by Homer is a distant place on the banks of the mythical Oceanus River, perhaps identifiable with the Nile that had long supplied mercenaries to the Egyptian pharaohs. The Ethiopian army, commanded by King Memnon, now stands as the last line of defense between Achilles and the gates of Troy. The two warriors nobly agree to decide the battle by single combat. Victory belongs to Achilles but it is short-lived.
The Trojan prince Paris has watched the duel from behind the parapets of the city wall. Just as Achilles is about to storm the city, Paris, guided by the god Apollo, shoots an arrow that strikes Achilles in his one weak spot—his heel. As an infant, his mother held Achilles by his heel as she dipped him in the River Styx, whose waters granted protection everywhere they touched. His heel remained dry, and therefore vulnerable to attack. To the horror of the Greeks, their hero dies.
Ten years of grueling warfare suddenly seem futile to the assailants: The Greek commander, King Agamemnon, orders retreat. It is at this moment of desolation and defeat that Odysseus steps in with perhaps the most famous ruse de guerre in history. Odysseus has the Greeks construct a huge and hollow wooden horse, which hides a small band of brave warriors.
The Greek army fakes a retreat, sailing to a nearby island, and leaves the wooden horse on the beach as an offering. The Greek army, having returned under cover of darkness, will storm the city. The plan is risky and there are no second chances.
As dusk descends, the Greeks drag the horse before the city walls and abandon the camp they have occupied for years. That night the only Greeks left on the beach are those hidden in the wooden horse and a stooge named Sinon. As dawn breaks the following morning, the Trojan sentries see deserted tents, dead animals, and doused fires.
They also spot something else: a magnificent wooden horse. King Priam orders the gates to be opened, and for the first time in a decade the Trojans were able to walk freely outside of their city—many flocked to admire the unusual offering.
Enter Sinon, dramatically throwing himself at the mercy of the Trojans. He spins a story of having deserted the Greek ranks because they had chosen him to be a human sacrifice.
Sinon assures his new friends that the horse is a gift to the gods to ensure a safe return journey home. He adds that the horse has special powers and whoever possesses it will never suffer defeat. After a decade of war this news falls like rain on parched soil, and the Trojans lap it up. When his impassioned pleas are ignored, he hurls his spear against the horse and snakes surge from the sea to strangle him and his sons.
Such dramatic divine intervention only reinforces the Trojan desire for the offering and soon the wooden horse is dragged within the walls. Even now, the Greek plan can go disastrously wrong, as Helen is also suspicious.
She approaches the horse, imitating the voices of Greek wives in an attempt to provoke a reaction from any lovesick warriors within. And yet still the danger of discovery has not passed. Cassandra, a Trojan princess, cries out that the horse is a ploy and that the city will be taken.
But the gods seem to remain with the Greeks, for Cassandra has been doomed to never have her prophecies believed. The Trojans celebrate their victory and as the revelry fades they take to their beds. The Greeks slip silently from the wooden horse, kill the sentries, and fling open the gates to the waiting Greek army.
Amid flames and blood, Troy falls and its defenders are slaughtered: King Priam is cut down with the rest of his army. According to Virgil, only one Trojan warrior escapes: Aeneas. With a burning city behind, he is depicted carrying his elderly father and clutching the hand of his son as they flee to Italy, where he will found a new Troy, the city now known as Rome.
Meanwhile, Paris is wounded by a poisoned arrow to which only the nymph Oenone has an antidote. But it was she that Paris had abandoned for Helen, and despite his pleading, she refuses and he dies. As for Helen herself, when Menelaus raises his sword to deal the killer blow to his unfaithful wife, she opens her dress and reveals her body. Captivated once again, Menelaus spares her.
The tale of Troy teems with memorable characters, but perhaps its most fascinating figure is the one that never speaks—the wooden horse. This has been frequently reimagined in literature, poetry, art, and cinema. Theories about the wooden horse abound. One proposes that it was a poetic representation of the wooden ships on which the Greeks arrived that evolved into a tangible aspect of the myth.
Another suggests that a Trojan betrayed the city, sketching a horse on a secret gate as a sign to the Greeks. It is this record of a people and their city that is preserved in archaeology. The original village of Troy Troy I was small, but it flourished and grew. By about — BC Troy II it had strong walls encircling a citadel that was still relatively small, but remarkably prosperous.
Troy was situated at the entrance to the Dardanelles strait, and in ancient times lay much nearer to the sea than it does today — the coastline has changed as river deltas have silted up. Its position was key to its prosperity, as the city could trade by sea as well as by land. It may also be that ancient ships, waiting for the wind and currents they needed to pass through the straits, provided a captive market for Trojan goods and services. Troy went from strength to strength.
By the Late Bronze Age, about — BC Troy VI and VIIa , a larger citadel was enclosed behind impressive sloping walls, parts of which can still be seen at the site today, and there is evidence of a large settlement in the lower town. Trojan wealth was also built on the rich agricultural land in the surrounding area. Horse bones have been found there in quantity, as well as bones showing the rearing and domestication of other animals.
Sheep farming must have been particularly important, as there is evidence for extensive textile production at Troy and these textiles may well have been exported. It is only over the past few decades that modern archaeology, including the study of ancient plant and animal remains, has transformed our understanding of all these aspects of life at ancient Troy.
During the late Bronze Age — BC , the city was by far the most important settlement in the area but it was only a small player on the world stage. Towards the end of the Late Bronze Age, Wilusa was a small vassal state a state without independence of the mighty Hittite Empire of Anatolia. From Hattusa, Troy must have seemed a distant backwater. Yet its wealth and dominant position undoubtedly made it a prize.
This is all such tantalising evidence. Although it falls far short of proof, it builds up the picture of a feasible background for a Trojan War, in the interconnected but combative Late Bronze Age world.
Troy fell into ruin at the end of the Bronze Age, around BC, as did all the centres of power of the Mediterranean world, for reasons that are not completely understood.
The site was never completely abandoned, and its ruins must have remained visible for some centuries, probably up to the time of Homer, if the poet lived in the late 8th or early 7th centuries BC as thought. The name Ilion is used by Homer interchangeably with Troy, and it is possible the inhabitants had always called their city something like Ilion, right back to its days as Wilusa.
Greek leaders and Roman emperors endowed it with wealth and privileges, including fine civic buildings. The Troy of the Greek and Roman periods was not otherwise a particularly important place, but it nonetheless flourished until the end of the ancient world in the 6th century AD , and perhaps even beyond — there is some evidence for Byzantine settlement on the site as late as the 13th century AD. Troy can therefore be said to have had a lifespan of more than 4, years.
It seems completely astonishing that the site of Troy could later have been lost, but it was. Over time, its remains crumbled away to become part of a low hill in a flat landscape that was only sparsely populated. The hill did not seem to be anything special. Schliemann has often been criticised for his methods, but he was in uncharted territory.
Other digs on Classical that is, Greek and Roman sites had been relatively simple. As well as numerous later features cutting earlier levels, the sloping nature of the site means that layers associated with each phase will occur at different levels across the hill. The discoveries Schliemann decided to dig huge trenches, removing hundreds of tons of earth and rubble, demolishing in the process overlying structures he considered to be late and unimportant.
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