Troy: War, Peoples and Traditions

The Trojan War brings together poems, traditions and historical questions from different periods. These pages offer a way through the conflict, its peoples, its later stories and the figures associated with it, without confusing the evidence on which they rest.

The war

Was the Trojan War a Kind of World War?The exceptional scale the Iliad gives the conflict, without turning it into a modern world war. How Many Combatants Could Have Taken Part in the Trojan War?What Homeric ships allow us to calculate, and what they cannot establish about a historical war. How Do We Know What Happened in the Trojan War?Homer, the Epic Cycle, tragedy, mythography, later reception and archaeology: what each source can contribute to the story of Troy. The Price of VictoryTroy falls, but the Achaean victory extends into losses, difficult returns and new violence. Part I. How Were Homer's Armies Organised?Contingents, commanders, obligations and forms of authority in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Part II. The BattlefieldThe Trojan plain, its fortifications and the Achaean camp between Homer and archaeology. Part III. How Did the Armies of the Iliad Fight?Weapons, chariots, animals, formations and collective movements in the poem.

Peoples and names

Peoples and Communities in the Iliad and the OdysseyAn orienting map of Homer’s human horizon and a philologically controlled inventory of 72 collective designations. Were the Achaeans, Argives, Danaans and Hellenes the Same?How Homer names the Achaean side, and why “Hellenes” does not yet mean all Greeks. Were the Trojans and Dardanians the Same?The relation between Troy, Dardania, Priam and Aeneas in the Iliad, without confusing a related core with two modern states. Who Fought for Troy?The allies of the Iliad and the reinforcements that later tradition added to the Trojan War.

Characters in the Iliad

AchillesWhat Homer and later traditions say about Achilles’ death, the Styx and his heel. AntilochusA young Achaean hero between Nestor, Achilles and the tradition of Memnon. AgamemnonKing of Mycenae and leader of the Achaean expedition: his decisions in the Iliad and the traditions of his return. AeneasThe Dardanian prince whom the Iliad saves from death and later traditions turn into a survivor of Troy. HectorThe foremost defender of Troy in the Iliad: military leader, husband of Andromache, father of Astyanax and Achilles’ final opponent. HelenThe woman around whom the war turns: Homer places her in Troy, while other ancient traditions place the real Helen in Egypt. Helenus and CassandraTwo children of Priam whom tradition associated with prophecy, though the poems treat them differently and their destinies diverge. IphigeniaThe daughter whose fate changes with the telling. PolyxenaHow a daughter of Priam, absent from Homer, acquired history, a voice and several different fates in the Trojan tradition.

Stories of Troy

The Trojan War: the Story and Its SourcesFrom the Apple of Discord to the Achaeans’ returns, with its sources and variants. Here Stood TroyHisarlık, the city’s layers, Hittite texts, and the limits between archaeology, tradition and history. What Became of Troy?Hisarlık after the Bronze Age and the later transformations of the city. Was the Trojan Horse Really a Horse?What Homer, Archaic iconography and a modern naval reinterpretation can and cannot tell us about the Trojan Horse.