Troy (in Greek old Τροία / Troía ), also called Ilios ( Ἴλιος ) or Ilion , is an old town of Asia Mineure, located not far from the Aegean Sea, with the entry of the Hellespont. It is located in the current province of Çanakkale in Turkey.
Legendary Troy
Foundation
According to the legend, Dardanos is regarded as the founder of the dynasty of the Trojan kings. He flees the flood and finds asylum near king Teucros de Phrygie. After the death of Teucros, he becomes the only heir, while marrying with Batia, the girl of king Teucros. According to certain old traditions, Dardanos goes down from an old tribe, Dardaniens of the Balkans (localized in current the Kosovo). This name of Dardanien is in any case applied to indicate Troyens themselves.
Tros, grandson of Dardanos, is the Héros éponyme of Troade and Troy. The city itself is rested by his/her son Ilos (or “Ilion”, another name of the city).
Laomédon, the son of Ilos, succeeds to him on the throne. Poséidon and Apollo, punished by Zeus, built for this cruel king the walls of Troy, but finally did not receive the promised wages and, offended by the king, who threatens them to cut the ears to them, they are avenged. Apollo sends an epidemic of plague, and Poséidon orders with a marine monster to devour the inhabitants and to devastate the fields by vomitting sea water.
The Oracle of Zeus Ammon advises to him to sacrifice his/her daughter Hésione, by giving up it on the shore so that it is devoured by the monster.
The forwarding of Héraclès against Troy
Thus Héraclès, which followed Jason to the research of the Golden Fleece in Colchide, finds Hésioné connected with a rock on the shore of Troy, entirely naked and avoided its only jewels.Héraclès breaks its chains and offers to kill the marine monster in exchange of two immortal white horses, that Zeus had offered to Laomédon for the price of the removal of Ganymède.
Troyens then build a high wall at some distance from the shore. When the monster reached the wall, it opened its enormous jaws, and Héraclès engaged armed in the throat with the monster. After three days, it left victorious the belly of the monster, but it had lost all its hair.
Laomédon would then have misled Héraclès in substituent two ordinary horses with the promised immortal horses. Héraclès embarks very in anger after having threatened to carry out the war against Troy.
Héraclès recruits soldiers with Tirynthe and charters boats (6 to 18, according to the sources); it counts among its allies Iolaos, Télamon, Pélée, Oeclès the Argien, Deimachos the Béotie N.
Héraclès unloads close to Troy, by entrusting the guard of the ships to Oeclès. Laomédon sent the people equipped with swords and torches to burn the ships of Héraclès, but Oeclès resisted to its last breath and this allowed those to take again the sea.
Héraclès ordered the immediate attack of the city, and it was Télamon which succeeds in creating a breach in the wall and to penetrate in the city.
Héraclès killed Laomédon and all its wire, except for the Podarcès young person. Hésioné was allotted to Télamon in reward; it had the permission to repurchase the prisoner of its choice, and bought her Podarcès brother for the price of the gold veil which it carried to the face. This was worth in Podarcès the name of Priam, which means “repurchased”.
After having burned the city and having devastated the surroundings, Héraclès moved away from Troade with Glaucia, girl of the river Scamandre, and by leaving Priam on the throne.
The Trojan War
See also: Trojan War
The legendary history of the war with Greece is the subject of Iliade of Homère, of the epopees of the Trojan Cycle and one of the subjects of Énéide of Virgile, in which Énée must give up Troy, event which leads very indirectly to the foundation of Rome.
At the origin of the Trojan War is removal by Pâris, prince Trojan, of Helene, wife of Ménélas, king of Sparte. To punish Troyens, the Greek kings unite and put the seat in front of the city. At the end of ten years of seat, the Greeks penetrate in the city thanks to the trick of Ulysses of the Trojan horse, plunder it and reduce its inhabitants in slavery.
Historical Troy
See also: Hissarlik
The site of Troy
According to Iliade, Troy was located on the two sources of Scamandre, one releasing of the hot vapors, and the other frozen. However, when the Greek inhabitants of Ilion asserted the Trojan heritage, they were qualified the conceited one. Moreover, the Roman geographer Strabon declared that the true site was with 5,6 km from there, at the “village of Troyens”.Thus the French traveller Lechevalier affirmed, at the end of the 18th century, that Troy was the village of Bunarbashi (this name means “head of source”), which was with the foot of a rock hill from where several sources spouted out. During two generations, the researchers forgot that these sources had the same temperature. Schliemann itself did not find trace of the city on this site, and was folded back on the hill of Hissarlik, an eminence located at 4,8 km of the coast between two rivers, named Simoïs and Scamandre in Iliade.
Schliemann discovers Troy
Schliemann dug immense distinct in the hill of Hissarlik while crossing the level of the Homeric Troy. Its excavations, started in 1870, lasted twenty years.
Today, we know that there existed at least nine cities, built the ones on the others in the same area, and that the first city was built with the OJ
Diverted by the many levels discovered under the hill, Schliemann ends up identifying four cities distinct and successive under the Roman city of Ilium. It decides that the Troy d' Homère corresponded to the second level starting from bottom, but this conclusion was hardly shared by the other archeologists. In 1873, he exhumes a whole of gold jewels, which he dissimulates with the Turkish authorities and the workmen, thanks to its Greek wife Sophia who passes them item by item by hiding them under her shawl. In parallel, Schliemann discovers a great number of vases, points of lances and earrings on the levels of Troy II or Troy III (2200 av. J. - C.). Unfortunately, its “treasure of Priam” disappeared with Berlin in 1945. This treasure reappears about fifty years later, the Russian authorities, which had taken it along at the time of the catch of Berlin in 1945 it having left their archaeological collection.
Assessment of the excavations
During the Years 1920, the Swiss scholar Emil Forrester declared that the names of the places found in texts Hittites - Wilusiya and Taruisa - should be identified with Ilium and Troia respectively. It foot-note also that a king wilusien, mentioned in one of the texts hittites under the name of Alaksandu was rather close with that to prince de Troie Alexandre, or Pâris. These identifications were contradicted by much as being not very probable or, at least, not provable, but Trevor Bryce defended this idea in its book The Kingdom off the Hittites ( the kingdom of Hittites , 1998), quoting part of the letter Manapa-Tarhunda , which speaks about the Kingdom of Wilusa as being located beyond the country of the river Seha (known at the time traditional like Caicus), and close to the country to the Lazpa (better known like the island of Lesbos).During the Bronze Age, Troy seems to have been a prosperous commercial town, since its position allowed the complete control of the Dardanelles, by which all the commercial boats of the Aegean Sea going in the Black Sea were to pass. It would have been disputed between the Mycéniens and the Hittites, combined city.
The seventh city, which was founded with, seems to be destroyed by a war and there are obvious traces of a large fire inside. This is why this city is supposed to be that described in the legend of the Trojan War. The last city on this site was rested by the Romans during the reign of the emperor Auguste, and seems to have been a very important city until Constantinople becomes the capital of the Roman Empire at the 4th century. Thereafter, the vitality of the city dropped gradually. Today, there is a Turkish city which is called Çanakkale and which is located very close to the Troy antique.
Celje was called the second, or small Troy: Troia secunda .
The archeological site of Troy east registered on the List of the world heritage of UNESCO since 1998.
Recent discoveries of Dr. Korfmann (2001-2002)
One of the main issues presented by the site of Hissarlik (the Troy historical) was its small size (137 m on 187 m) compared with the Troy described by Homère. Three hundred inhabitants at most could have lived in the Troy VIIa, whereas Homère of described fifty thousand. Magnification and exaggeration of the poet?One could have believed it until the discovery at the time of new excavations in 2001-2002 of the low city: these excavations, undertaken by Dr. Korfmann of the university of Tübingen in Germany, revealed an enclosing wall of the cyclopean type enclosing the low city belonging to the Troy VIIa.
This new discovery ensures the city a surface of 350 000 m ², is thirteen times larger than that of the only acropolis than we know already. With does such a considerable size, Troy exceed in surface its rival and mistress (?), Ugarit (200 000 m ²) and does of it one of the more big cities of the Bronze Age. Its population would be then of 5 000 has 10 000 inhabitants, which in times of seat can completely be sufficient to shelter the 50 000 inhabitants of all the area. For the moment, one cannot however speak about Trojan War, estimates Dr. Korfmann; one will need later excavations to reveal this myth.
See too
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