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58 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Historicity of the Trojan War, April 11, 2005
This review is from: Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery (Hardcover)
This book marshalls all of the arguments in favor of the view that the Trojan War, as reflected in the Homeric Iliad, was a real historical event. It presents both the most up-to-date archaeological developments in Anatolia, Greece and Egypt and the philological arguments based on studies of the Homeric poems that support this view. It is accessible to the general reader as well as the specialist. Prof. Latacz's conclusion is that, in light of recent developments, it is now quite plausible that the Trojan War was a real historical event and that the Iliad preserves some memory of that event, even if this has not yet been proven. The philological arguments purportedly show that, based on studies of the language and metrics of the Homeric poems, the oral tradition underlying the Homeric poems can be traced back to Mycenean times, i.e., the time period in which the Trojan War is supposed to have taken place, and that the oral tradition would be capable of preserving some factual material about the Trojan War if it did occur. I have some familiarity with these arguments and I have reservations about the certainty Prof. Latacz ascribes to them. Some of them are still controversial and have not achieved the scholarly consensus that Prof. Latacz suggests they enjoy. Nevertheless, I feel that the cumulative weight of the evidence supports his conclusion. Prof. Latacz presents these technical arguments in a manner that is accessible to non-specialists. I am not in a position to assess the validity of the archaeological evidence, but I have no reason to think that Prof. Latacz's presentation of that evidence is in error. As described in this book, Prof. Korfmann's excavations during the last twelve years at the site in northwest Turkey that has traditionally been identified as "Troy" have shown that this site was a much more important community than had previously been thought. Prior to those most recent excavations, only the citadel at the site had been excavated, and Trojan War skeptics asked why the Mycenean Greeks would have mounted a huge expedition to capture what appeared to be a small community. Prof. Korfmann's excavations uncovered a large and wealthy Bronze-age city below the citadel, one that would be a rich prize for a power that was apparently in the process of extending its reach from Greece to Asia Minor during the period in question. In addition, the identification of the site with "Wilusa" mentioned in the Hittite records, and, hence with one of the Homeric names for Troy, (W)ilios, an identification which scholars have suspected since the 1920s, has been made more secure by Hittite specialists, and the important role of Troy in Bronze-age Anatolian trading patterns has been elucidated. Finally, Hittite and Egyptian records have been brought to light that attest to the importance of the "Mycenean" Greeks as a major power in the eastern Mediterranean world of the later second millenium BCE. For anyone interested in Troy, Homer, or the Bronze Age in Greece and the eastern Mediterranean region, these are exciting developments, and this book brings all these developments together in a single narrative. In my view, Prof. Latacz exaggerates the case for confidently situating "Homer" in 8th century BCE Ionia. There is considerable scholarly controversy on this point and on the question of when and how the Homeric poems came to be written down and to assume the shape in which they have been transmitted to us; in fact, there seems to be a growing consensus in favor of a later date for the reduction of the poems to writing--perhaps as late as the 6th century BCE or even later. In addition, Prof. Latacz's portrait of the social conditions in 8th century Greece that gave rise to the Homeric poems is less well established than he acknowledges. However, these issues are not essential to his conclusions about the ability of the oral tradition to preserve a memory of events in Mycenean times down to the era of alphabetic writing in Greece, which did in fact begin in the 8th century BCE. The book contains a large number of useful maps and diagrams. The translation is not very elegant: it reads like a book translated from German.
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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent, but not that excellent, December 2, 2005
This review is from: Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery (Hardcover)
This is an excellent, readable and well-organized argument in favor of the historicity of the Trojan War. Latacz draws together the information to be gleaned from archaeology (including the recent, and controversial excavations at Troy by the late Manfred Korfmann), philology, Greek poetic metrics, Hittite textual sources, and much more besides. Written for the educated general reader, the text reads like a detective story. From all of these perspectives, it is excellent stuff. But I am not convinced. The basic issue, as "Biblical archaeology" has long demonstrated, is that legends, myths, and folktales are not subject to "proof" in the academic, scholarly sense. They float like spirits over the landscape of rational inquiry, ethereal and always elusive. When you look at the evidence at the base of many of the claims so boldly made by Latacz, matters become fuzzy. Troy was a royal city of the Hittite Empire -- on the basis of single inscribed seal. That's a big claim from a tiny, single (and thus far unique) object found at the site. Troy was the center of a trade network extending into the Black Sea -- but the evidence for that network is non-existent. It's a possibility, but not quite the fact presented here. And so the case is built up, with questionable or disputed elements knit into the fabric without comment or argument. Little mention here of the devastating criticisms levelled by Frank Kolb, a German ancient historian, on the whole notion of a greater Troy, linchpin of Aegean trade in the Late Bronze Age. Such things deserve discussion. But Latacz walks on by, as he hastens to his firm conclusions. For all that, I'd have no hesitation whatsoever recommending this book to an interested reader. It is useable in classrooms, as it is bound to spark discussion. If this is the best case that can be made for the historicity of the Trojan War (and it is, thus far, the best in print), then the weakness of that position is made all the clearer. In staking out a clear and unambiguous position, Latacz has done his readership a great service: they have something solid to wrestle with. So, even though I do not find his ultimate position convincing, I rate this excellent book very highly.
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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The historical Troy emerges from the mythic mists, July 3, 2005
This review is from: Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery (Hardcover)
Joachim Latacz's "Troy and Homer" is based in significant part on the archaeological work conducted at Troy in recent years under the leadership of Manfred Korfmann, work which has proven -- to anyone with an open mind, I believe -- that the site of Hisarlik in northwestern Turkey, originally investigated in the nineteenth century by Heinrich Schliemann and Frank Calvert, is not only the location of the city of Troy but also that this ancient Troy was a far larger, more important city than the archaeological record had previously revealed. No comprehensive, popular account of Korfmann's work has yet been published in English, but Latacz's book at least presents some of the discoveries and conclusions. I should note that "Troy and Homer" is not primarily an archaeology book, bur rather one that seeks to establish a relationship between Homer's "iliad" and whatever historical reality lies behind it, and draws not only from archaeological work at Hisarlik but also uses to great effect the study of Hittite inscriptions and tablets found elsewhere in Asia Minor and together with linguistic investigations into the roots of Homer's work and archaeological surveys in Greece. Latacz leaves, in my opinion, little doubt that at least in a broad sense Homer's "Iliad" speaks of real historical events, that the Greeks of circa 1300 or 1200 BCE indeed contend with the rulers of ancient Troy. Latcz's argument for the historical basis of Homer's poem is detailed and often closely-reasoned, so the reader must be prepared to follow the author through a wide range of evidence of various natures. But I found it to be a journey well worth taking.
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