Customer Reviews

Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery

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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.

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.

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.

The whole of my reaction to this book is divided into three parts.

First, this book is a convenient source of information on the preliminary results of the excavations carried out at Hisarlik in Turkey under the leadership of Manfred Korfmann since 1988, as well as news about a 2003 re-interpretation of a letter from the Hittite archives known since 1928.

The truly new information in the book is that the football stadium-sized citadel at Hisarlik, which has been regarded as Troy since Schliemann's day and was almost certainly regarded as that in classical times, turns out to be exactly that: a citadel. It was the keep of a much larger walled city, serving much the same function to Troy (or whatever) that the old acropolis did for Athens before it was burnt in the Persian invasion. The full extent of Troy (or ...), its residential areas protected by a wall much less formidable than those of the citadel, as well as by anti-chariot ditches, is much greater than formerly believed and the town may have housed a population as great as 10,000. In the context of its time and place, this Troy (or ...) was a major population center. As such, rather than being merely the fortress of a relatively small-scale nest of pirates, it serves much more comfortably as the focal point of a vast sea-borne invasion.

The re-interpreted document appears in this English translation but not in Latacz's German original edition, since it was published in 2003, after the German text was in print. The document in question is now said to be a letter from the king of Ahhijawa (or Achijawa) to the Great King of the Hittites that asserts his claims to some islands in the northern Aegean, most likely Lemnos, Imbros and/or Samothrace. Now these kings of Ahhijawa were almighty nuisances to the Hittites, who ranked with the Assyrians and Egyptians among the Great Powers of the time. Ahhijawa was powerful enough to command a certain diplomatic respect and distant enough to avoid being crushed by the land-based forces of the Hittite military machine. Ahhijawa was almost certainly a naval power.

The name most commonly used by Homer for his Greeks is Latinized as "Achaean," from the Greek "Achaioi." Linguistics pretty conclusively demonstrate that the pre-Homeric form of this name was Achaiwoi. Ever since the name Ahhijawa turned up in the Hittite archives, some scholars have heatedly asserted that it is obviously the name applied by civilized Hittite scribes to the land of the barbarian Achaeans, while other scholars have just as fiercely denied it.

One of the Ahhijawan kings corresponded with Hattusili(s) II, the Hittite Great King whose reign centered around 1250 BC. The Ahhijawan's name was Tawagalawa(s). And that name has been identified as a Hittite version of the Greek name Eteokles, in its earlier form of Etewokles (while other scholars have ... etc.) Eteokles, of course, is remembered in Greek myth and legend as a prominent member of the Theban royal family and a descendant of the founder of Thebes, Kadmos.

This letter from Ahhijawa regarding the ownership of the islands appears not only to be from our old friend Tawagalawa, but in it he bases his claim on the domain of a distant ancestor who happened to be named Kadmos [page 244]. Most annoyingly, Latacz's translators fail to provide the Hittite version of the name identified with Kadmos, so we are obliged to take the identification on faith. Nevertheless, if the Kadmos-Eteokles genealogy is actually there in the Hittite archives, it is an impressive boost to the historicity of Greek legends.

The second thing about this book is attitude. It's full of it. Despite Latacz's academic credentials and the prestige of the publisher, the tone of the book is resolutely not scholarly but popularizing ... well, as popular as the subject matter will allow. Inordinate pride is taken in favorable comments appearing in German popular journals whose very existence is a matter of indifference to members of the English-speaking world. Prior excavators at Hisarlik, Latacz allows, all did well enough, considering their biases and limited technical resources, but now for the first time truly competent people are on the scene and they are finally making worthwhile discoveries. Earlier investigators of Homer and history have been trapped in the ghetto of the classicists (with a couple of exceptions almost grudgingly acknowledged), but the current crop are properly oriented toward middle eastern excavation and history. The vast majority of the text is devoted to rehashing material firmly established since the 1950s. Indeed, a good part of the text would have been old hat in the 1880s. But readers not familiar with the development of this little corner of scholarship would hardly be able to differentiate between the wholesale rehashing of old learning and the light seasoning of new material.

The third part of my reaction to the book relates to the translation. The translation has a strong and pervasive German accent. This is particularly odd because the translators, Windle and Ireland, are both associated with the School of Language Studies at the Australian National University. What were those cobbers thinking? I'm not at all chuffed about the result.

Using a much simplified version of a method used by philological scholars of the 19th Century, the ones who get such short shrift in this book, I am willing to hazard a guess that Windle and Ireland didn't work jointly on the whole text, but rather worked independently on individual chapters or, less likely, on individual sections. The test is pronunciation. One translator followed the conventions of the English language and referred to an ancient people and their language as "Luvian" (pronounced just the way it looks.) The other translator, the one who more often referred to those ancient people, followed German convention and called them "Luwian" (pronounced "Luvian.") The w-man is the one who prepared the index.

All very minor, idiosyncratic stuff, you might think until you come on passages devoted to historic sound changes in the Greek language and only belatedly realize that they are literal translations from the German (and of German sounds) without acknowledgment of or adjustment for English-based readers. One passage actually says something on the order of the sound represented by the archaic Greek letter digamma was originally pronounced like W, evolved into something like the English W and then disappeared in most Greek dialects before Homer's time. I think what the w-translator really meant was that digamma was originally pronounced V, became W and then disappeared. Things start getting hairy when dealing with the name Homer often uses for his besieged city: Ilios, as in the proposed equation of Ilios = pre-Homeric Wilios = Hittite Wilusa(?).

Attitude and annoying translation quirks aside, this book is still a handy summary of current scholarship and dispute. It helps, though, if you have a fairly good idea of what they're talking about before you plough through the actual words of the translators.

One of the enduring mysteries in archaeology (or history) is whether there really was a Trojan War. A second question has been whether The Illiad was just a story, or whether it was based on real events.

Troy and Homer does not definitively answer those questions, but it comes close. This is a report on the latest (as of 2004) results from the dig at Hisarlik (Troy). It incorporates information from the Hittite Archives, information dug up at Miletos, more information dug up at Thebes, as well as the results of the latest research at Troy. It concludes that there was a "war" at Troy, that the Hittites knew and referred to the war, and that this was part of an expansionist policy by the Great King of Achaians.

The authors then use an analysis of Homer to conclude that the base tale was created in the Late Bronze Age, and that Homer used that as a layer of verisimilitude over which he put his tale of the wrath of Akhilles. Some might quibble, I came away convinced.

Overall an excellent book on the subject, well worth the enthusiast getting.

but this is barely readable.

The translators have struggled earnestly, but what can you really do with a sentence like this, from the preface? "The idea of writing a book about the new research at Troy, which had developed in so many directions, arose from a combination of external impulses and a personal feeling that, given the fundamental turnabout in the research situation in Bronze Age history, which is to a large extent due to the new Troy research, a provisional appraisal of the facts and theories now to hand was needed and would probably be of value for further work in the various disciplines involved."

It's impossible to read the Iliad without feeling its historicity, that it was based on accounts of an important conflict and strong characters. But Homer is foremost a poet, a geographer of the soul, not of the soil. Professor Latacz can at most show that the physical, linguistic and written evidence available do not contradict Homer in his essential narrative. His attempt to elevate Homer to historical evidence is in the best heroic tradition, courage in the face of certain failure.

The fascinating feature of the archeology essentially resides in the continuous mobility of its nature; where every single day you may find out an evidence that destroys a whole life of sacred investigation. Because the basic corpus of its study is fed for many variables and several disciplines, where the random sequence of the intermingled factors can generate a fruitful and new hypothesis of work. History, geography, psychology, sense of ownership, military defense, religious beliefs, social conventions and mental paradigms constitute a huge parade of unlimited possibilities. And you as fevered and ceaseless analyst has to disentangle, take off and ensphere the countless clues, traces and findings along the uncertain road of riddles and enigmas.

For many persons around the world (as I do) Troy has been a matter of undeniable passion, that has transcended by far, the febrile imagination of Homer. Schliemann and more recently, Michael Wood, as well as a ser of thinkers have dealt with this captivating and enigmatic fact.

This book brings new lights around this first-rate issue. New investigations that will induce you to rethink and even reconsider all the basic premises. Once you begin to read it, you will be engaged by its extraordinary informative value around, where the finding of new signs place us before an absolutely different perspective.

Absolutely recomendable.

My husband is a great fan of Homer and of Troy. This book is a wonderful combination of both. Factual yet written interestingly and with ferver.

If I can ever get my husband to put it down, for a moment, I might get to read it, too.

IT IS A PERFECT DESCRIPTION OF ALL THE EXISTING DATA FOR TROY. IT INCLUDES NOT ONLY THE MOST RECENT EXCAVATION RESULTS BUT ALSO ALL THE EXISTING DATA FROM HITTITES AND EGYPT. I HAVE IN MY LIBRARY THE MOST OF THE BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES OF MR LATACZ BOOK. HE HAS SUMMARIZED UP THE WHOLE VOLUME OF IT.

Latacz's intent is to update scholarship for those with an interest in Troy (particularly researchers in interdisciplinary areas related to such study) and to do so by means of tightly structured argument. In this he succeeds. One might find his conclusions tentative and contingent on further corroboration, but, nevertheless, he indicates the direction of future inquiry. Yes, he uses periodic sentences, but he's entitled to his style, like Homer. Yes, the effect of his prose and framework make for dry reading, but they inform, even if they don't entertain. Worth reading, particularly for someone who will read one book about antiquity in a decade or who has little time to keep up with someone else's speciality. Still, scholarly inquiry pales when compared to the brilliance of the text it seeks to illuminate. Poetry exists to be enjoyed; scholarship to be understood. Their domains, cognitive and affective, are distinct and evaluated by different rules. "The Odyssey" is great art; "Troy and Homer" is but a good summary of rapidly changing scholarship. Some questions aren't examined, the economic cause of the Trojan War, for example. And the book itself is historic source material about Classical studies--proof that, a century after alienating its creative element, philological study, as practiced by the Grammarians, still asserts hegemony. Finally, reading between the lines, one sees the vanity of scholars competing for recognition, legitimacy, and honors on a subject that, however interesting, is marginal. All knowledge is not equally worthwhile, and irony is best served dry.