Fig. 17. Carl Blegen affirmed that Troy 7a had been seized and burnt in the mid-13th century B.C. and argued this on the basis of the prevalence of type 3B Mycenaean pottery in its cultural layer. (Image © Olga Aranova.)
Thus, Troy 7a must have been the mythological Troy, a fortress with its sad fate, whose seizure attracted attention and awoke imagination of its contemporaries – poets and narrators, whose stories about the heroes of that war passed by word of mouth from generation to generation. There is no doubt that some details of those stories were forgotten and omitted in due course, and that some other things were made up. This had been going on until these legends reached the ingenious poet, who collected all the different stories and wrote two epical poems that survive until our day”.[33]
Carl Blegen identified Troy 7a as Homer’s Ilion. Troy 7a came to its end being captured by the enemy after a continuous siege. However, there is no proof that it was captured by the Greeks.
The results of excavations of the next cultural layer, relating to the phase of Troy 7b (1260–1190 B.C.), indicate that many inhabitants of this burnt city had survived. Soon after the conquerors left, the citizens returned and built new houses right on the ruins and, and the city rose by approximately one meter as compared with the previous ground level. However, the city that used to be great failed to return to its former power. The population got poorer and left the city. At the same time, the fortress wall wasn’t damaged, as it had happened before. Blegen wrote, “It looks like everything happened quietly enough: having simply cast the citizens out of their houses, new tenants moved in”.[34] The tribe that settled there brought some coarse pottery along, made without a potter’s wheel, which became kind of a business card for Troy 7b. According to some explorers, that moulded pottery with bumps, just like some other primitive bronze utensils found in the same layer, were obviously related to similar goods found in depositions of the late Bronze Age in Hungary.
The next devastation to the city caused by fire completed the history of ancient Troy. For 4 centuries, the city remained empty – its inhabitants might have found a quieter place for living. New Troy – Troy 8 (700–85 B.C.) – already belonged to the Greek world entirely. It is known under the name of Ilion, though, many scientists specialized in antiquity have categorically rejected its connection with Homer’s Ilion.[35] This city was not as mighty, as it changed states several times. In 480 B.C., King Xerxes visited that very city, and Alexander the Great came there in 334 B.C. After his empire had collapsed, the city was overtaken by Lysimachus, who exercised his “special concern for the city,” according to Strabo.
Then Ilion became part of the Roman Empire, and bathhouses, temples and theatres were built there. However, in 85 B.C., due to conflicts with Rome, the city was again plundered and destroyed – this time at the hands of the troops of Roman vicar Gaius Flavius Fimbria, who captured the city during the war against Mitridate Eupatore.
Fig. 18. Division of Alexander's empire after the battle of Ips (301 B.C.) The Lysimachus empire is dashed.
Fig. 19. The Roman odeum of Troy 9 (from 85 B.C. till 500 A.D.).
When Fimbria began boasting that he captured the city on the 11th day, whereas Agamemnon did it only in the 10th year with great difficulties and having a fleet of 1,000 vessels, and the whole Greece aiding him in the campaign, one citizen of Ilion remarked, “True, but we did not have such a defender as Hector”.[36]
Troy 9, dated 85 B.C. – 500 A.D., was restored by Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who routed Fimbria. Then it was dynamically developed in times of Julius Caesar and Octavianus Augustus. By 400 the city appeared to be deserted, and all geostrategic advantages were gained by Constantinople. In due course, Troy turned into a hill that Heinrich Schliemann would dug up into historical oblivion 1500 years later.
Chapter 3
The War for Troy, 20[[th]] century
A tour around the Trojan archaeological reserve starts at the Eastern gate, relating to the period of Troy 7. It seems not to be a coincidence: upon entering the area of the great city, you immediately feel its mighty walls and involuntarily identify yourself with its defenders. The path, marked with coloured ribbons (anything can happen to tourists!), goes near the Northern bastion with a wonderful sight-seeing platform, along the Athena temple discovered in 1865 by Franc Calvert, an ancient citadel of mudbrick and megaron houses built a thousand years before the Trojan War, and the Schliemann’s trench looking like a bad wound on the body of the elderly hill…
If you do not take pictures of every stone or stay at the information stands for too long, you can walk along the tourist path in 10–15 minutes. The mighty fortress is only 200 meters in diameter.
200 multiplied by 200 is 4 hectares, which approximately matches the ground space of five football fields or one modern not-too-large megamall. How was it possible to accommodate 50,000 defenders of Troy here, as Homer had written? Let’s assume that most of them had stayed outside the bastion. In the early 1990s, Helmut Becker and Jorg Fassbinder, employees of Manfred Korfmann, made a discovery by means of magnetic survey: in the 13[[th]] and 12[[th]] centuries B.C., the Trojan citadel was surrounded by a big downtown protected with two outer circles of walls, and a ditch, cut off in the rock half a kilometer away from the fortress. Thus, territory of Troy extended about five times further and was as large as the Moscow Kremlin. Nevertheless, there were 50,000 people, who had to sleep a bit more comfortably than in standing position and to maintain cattle, battle horses and chariots! In such area, it was only economically justified, as Margaret Thatcher would say, for no more than 5 thousand people to live there. Korfmann said 7,000 would have fit it. Let it be, but surely no more than that!
Fig. 20. Megarons of the 23rd century B.C. are protected from bad weather with a canvas roof and ribbons are to guard against too curious tourists.
However, the figures provided by Homer have long been considered as poetic exaggerations – 29 empires in the Achaean coalition, 1186 ships filled with soldiers (from 50 to 120 people on every ship, more than a hundred thousand in total!), and 10 years of siege…
But many questions still have no definite answers, in particular, because of the damage done by Schliemann. Who were the Trojans? What was their nationality? What language did they speak? Why did most of them have Greek names? Who did the Trojans pray to, and why did some Greek gods help them? If the Greeks really captured Ilion, why didn’t they use the victory advantage and capture the country or even leave their vicar there? Was there the great Trojan War real, or was it just a poetic image of many independent military campaigns, forays and sieges that took place during dozens or even hundreds of years?
These questions were asked especially often since the legend about the Trojan War seemed to have been completely confirmed by finds made by Schliemann, Dörpfeld and Blegen.
Doubts about historicity of the Trojan War revived,