If the Trojan War ever took place, then it probably happened on or around 1180 BCE. This is the tail-end of the Late Bronze Age, just before most of the major Mediterranean civilizations (including the Hittite, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Mycenaean) were wiped out by a combination of natural catastrophes, internal strife, and invasion from a group known from history only as the Sea Peoples. One consequence of the collapse of these civilizations is that there are very few written records from the subsequent centuries. It is not until the 8th and 7th centuries BCE that the earliest writings from Greece and western Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) appeared—including and especially the two works attributed to Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which were written down sometime around 750 BCE but based upon an oral tradition that extended back centuries.

In the ancient world, there was no question that the Trojan War was a real event. This is particularly true for the Romans who claimed to be descended from the Trojan Aeneas, who supposedly survived the war and went on to lead a group of exiled Trojans to Italy, where they eventually founded Rome.

This story is retold in the Aeneid by Virgil, who wrote his epic during the reign of the first Roman emperor Augustus (27 BC-14 AD). During this time, Troy still existed, albeit in less regal terms than it did in the Bronze Age, and Augustus himself made a pilgrimage to Troy, as did his uncle, Julius Caesar, the later Roman Emperor Hadrian, and the Persian King Xerxes I. No doubt each of these men looked at Troy and imagined himself as Achilles or Hector battling for ten long years over the most beautiful woman in the world.

In fact, Troy remained inhabited until about 600 CE, when it was finally abandoned. From that point until to the 19th century, the general assumption among scholars and intellectuals was that Troy and the Trojan War were just myths—not based on any historical facts but simply a product of Homer’s imagination.

This view changed in the Victorian era when businessmen and amateur archaeologists (or antiquarians, as they were then known) like Frank Calvert and Heinrich Schliemann visited Turkey in search of the mythic Troy. Calvert was the first to identify a particular hilly area a few miles south of the Dardanelles, called Hisarlik, as the most likely site of ancient Troy. He did not have enough money to do a proper excavation, but he shared his ideas with the wealthy Schliemann, who set about excavating the site, using dynamite to help dig down through many layers of archaeological finds until he reached what he thought was the “original” Troy of King Priam. However, what he thought was Priam’s Troy is actually now called Troy I, and there are at least eight other Troys, each on top of the other, that can be clearly identified above Troy I, along with dozens of sublayers. Excavations have continued to explore and analyze the various layers of Troy, and the general consensus among experts is that Troy VI or Troy VII are most likely to have been inhabited during the periods most closely associated with the Trojan War (approximately 1200 BCE).

So Troy itself was real, but what of the war? A number of finds discovered at Troy, such as pottery and figurines, bear similarities to items found in Mycenaean sites in Greece. More interestingly, however, are a number of ancient Hittite administrative manuscripts that mention a Wilusa, which is very similar to Ilios, the name Homer regularly uses for Troy (and where the Iliad gets its name). One of the documents mentions a treaty between King Muwatalli II and Alaksandru of Wilusa—the latter name being tantalizingly similar to Alexander (or Paris) of Ilios.

There is another document called the Tawagalawa letter, which is a correspondence between a Hittite king and a king from a land called Ahhiyawa; in this letter, there is a mention that these two kings had once fought over Wilusa. Scholars suspect that the Ahhiyawa is a reference to some part of Mycenaean Greece, and thus this could possibly be a direct reference to the Trojan War (Villing, Fitton, Donnellan, Shapland 177-179).

In short, there is some historical evidence suggesting the Trojan War might have taken place. However, this is by no means definitive proof, and it is highly unlikely that we will ever truly know for certain if the war that Homer depicts actually took place or not.

But what of Homer himself? What do we know? As with Troy and the Trojan War, most people in the ancient world had no doubt that Homer was a real person. While some ancient commentators believed Homer was an eye-witness to the events of the Trojan War, most believed that he was a blind poet who was born on Chios,^[1] a Greek island off the coast of Anatolia (though several other sites, including Athens, also made their own claims), and lived between 850-750 BCE. Further, ancient scholars generally believed Homer wrote not just the Iliad and Odyssey but a whole slew of other epics about the Trojan War and its aftermath, along with a variety of other works, including the works commonly referred to as the Homeric Hymns.

However, today much of this is considered suspect. In fact, the “Homeric Question”—the question of who Homer was, where he came from, or even if he existed in the first place—has dominated a subset of academic scholarship for centuries. The current assumption among experts is that Homer was not a single individual, since archaeologic, linguistic, and geographic evidence in the Iliad and the Odyssey point to the likely conclusion that the two works were not written by the same person. Further, the epics are almost certainly the end-products of an oral tradition, meaning that the “Homer” who wrote these works was most likely putting into writing stories that had existed in oral form for centuries.

The epics themselves actually help support this last point, since both the Odyssey and Iliad contain detailed descriptions of both Bronze Age and Iron Age armor and other technologies. For example, “boar’s tusk helmets” and other weapons and armor that were known to exist in the Bronze Age circa 1200 BCE are described alongside references to armor, weapons, and sailing equipment that were not developed until the Iron Age in the 8th century or later. This suggests that the final written form that the epics took combined centuries-old knowledge of weapons and armor from the Bronze Age—information no doubt handed down from one singer to another—with contemporary technologies that would have been known and understood by Iron Age audiences.

Ultimately, though, all of this is speculation. All we really know for certain is what can be found within the two epics ascribed to Homer. But that is plenty! After all, the Iliad and Odyssey have been the foundational works of not only Greek culture but western culture for thousands of years, and they have spawned countless retellings and reimaginings in all forms of art, from painting and sculpture to poetry and plays to novels and movies.

***

There are many aspects of the Trojan War that have become common knowledge for much of the western world: the Judgment of Paris, Helen of Troy, “the face that launched 1,000 ships,” the Trojan Horse, Achilles’ heel, and so forth. For first-time readers of Homer’s Iliad, it comes as a shock to learn how few of these are present in the work itself.

Although the Trojan War is said to have lasted ten years, Homer’s Iliad focuses on only a few weeks in the final year of the war—though not, significantly, the end itself or the sacking of Troy. The epic begins when Agamemnon, the Mycenaean king and commander of the Achaean (Greek) army, spurns the entreaties of Chryses, a priest of Apollo who seeks the return of his daughter, Chryseis, who was captured during a raid and given to Agamemnon to serve as his concubine. Chryses then prays to Apollo asking for retribution, and Apollo complies, sending a plague to the Achaean camp that decimates the army.

After nine days, Achilles, the greatest Achaean fighter, calls a war cabinet to determine what must be done. A seer, Calchas, says what everyone already knew: the plague was Agamemnon’s fault, and in order to end the plague he needs to return the priest’s daughter and offer tribute to Apollo. Agamemnon at first refuses, and Achilles criticizes him for his foolishness. Enraged by Achilles’ insolent behavior, Agamemnon insults Achilles back. Eventually, Agamemnon does agree to give up Chryseis—but only after insisting that Achilles surrender Briseïs, his own concubine, to him. Furious at this turn of events, Achilles declares that he will no longer fight for the Achaeans. He retreats to his tents and asks his mother, the nymph Thetis, to go to Zeus and persuade him to punish the Achaeans for Agamemnon’s treatment of him. She does this, and Zeus agrees.

All this happens in Book 1. For the next fourteen books, the will of Zeus plays out as he promised: the Trojans eventually decimate the Achaeans until they reach the ships and are ready to set them on fire. Even at the point when his own ships are threatened, however, Achilles refuses to return to battle. In book 16, however, he allows his best friend Patroclus to wear Achilles’ armor and lead the Myrmidons into battle to force the Trojans to retreat. This Patroclus does to remarkable effect. The Trojans do, indeed, flee back to the walls of Troy. However, Patroclus gets greedy and chases after them; as a result, he is killed by Hector, oldest son of King Priam of Troy, heir to the kingdom of Troy, and commander of the Trojan forces.

Achilles becomes enraged at Hector for killing his friend and vows to destroy him, and so Achilles does, though not before also killing many other Trojans along the way. After Hector’s death, Achilles refuses to relinquish Hector’s body to his family, treating it with contempt by dragging it behind his chariot around the city walls. Eventually, King Priam goes to Achilles’ tent to beg the warrior to return his son to him. Achilles agrees, and Hector is buried.

This is where the Iliad ends. We do not see the death of Achilles (which is foretold on numerous occasions in Homer’s work) or the Trojan horse or the sack of Troy. There is, however, a good reason for this: Homer’s Iliad, along with Homer’s other epic, the Odyssey, are part of a cycle of epics focusing on the Trojan War, each one telling a piece of the story.

Sadly, only summaries and fragments of the others have survived to the present day, though we know enough about them to know that none of the other works were a match for Homer’s artistry (one of the reasons Homer’s epics survived and the others did not). In all, the cycle contained eight epics:^[2]

1. Cypria (Κύπρια): 11 books long, focusing on events leading up to the Trojan War like the Judgement of Paris, the abduction of Helen, the marshaling of the Achaean fleet, and the first nine years of the war.

2. Iliad: 24 books long

3. Aethiopis (Αἰθιοπίς): 5 books long, focusing on events after Hector’s funeral up to the death of Achilles.

4. Little Iliad (Ἰλὰς μικρά): 4 books long, focusing on events after Achilles’ death, the awarding of Achilles’ armor to Odysseus, the suicide of Telamonian Ajax, and the building of the Trojan horse.

5. Sack of Troy (Ἰλίου πέρσις): 2 books long, focusing on the destruction of the Trojan city and its people.

6. Nostoi or Return (Νόστοι): 5 books, focusing on the return home of the Achaeans (other than Odysseus); includes the murder of Agamemnon and the wanderings of Menelaus and Helen (both of which are also described in the Odyssey).

7. Odyssey: 24 books long

8. Telegony (Τηλεγόνεια): 2 books long, focusing on further adventures of Odysseus and his death at the hands of Telegonus, his illegitimate son, who was born to Circe after Odysseus visited her island.

***

While the Iliad and Odyssey do not provide a full narrative account of the Trojan War, they do provide us detailed studies of its major participants. However, readers new to Homer are often perplexed by the mindsets and behavior of these Bronze Age men, particularly Agamemnon and Achilles. Why, for example, is Agamemnon so furious when told that he must give back Chriseis? Why does Achilles go to such great lengths to avenge Agamemnon for his words and actions?

In order to understand why the characters behave the way that they do, it is important to understand three important Greek words: kleos (κλέος), timê (τῑμή), and geras (γέρας).

In book 12 of the Iliad, Sarpedon, son of Zeus and leader of the Lycians who fought for the Trojans, tells his comrade Glaucus,

Friend, if we fled this fight and were able
to live forever, being ageless and immortal,
then I would not fight among the finest,
nor would I send you to win glory in battle;
but now the goddess of death is all around us,
and since no mortal can escape or avoid it,
let us go and gain glory or give it to another. (12.322-328)

In these lines, Sarpedon crystallizes the Greek concept of kleos (κλέος), which roughly translates as “fame, glory, or honor,” as in something that brings fame or honor or confers distinction. Kleos is different from the English idea of “honor,” however, for it is related to the Greek word κλύον, “to hear,” suggesting that the honor embodied by the word kleos is not merely the honor that a person may receive (like the “honor” of winning a Nobel Prize) but the honor of being spoken about by others. Unlike the gods, mortals die; the only way to become immortal is to be remembered and talked about after one’s death. By venturing into the fighting (either to become a victor or victim), Sarpedon can become part of a song that will live on forever—which, indeed, is what happens.

Living on in the songs of those who come after you was at the existential heart of Bronze Age warrior culture: the ultimate justification for their actions. In everyday life, however, two other components were at least of equal importance: timê and geras. Geras is a prize given during the division of spoils after a raid or battle, and timê is the honor granted to warriors from receiving that prize. Hence, geras is the physical embodiment of a warrior’s timê: the more geras, the greater the timê.

These two concepts are at the core of Achilles’s rage. Briseïs is Achilles’s geras, and her presence in his camp, as his slave, was the embodiment of his timê, his honor and reputation. When Agamemnon takes her from Achilles, he is not simply taking Achilles’ concubine; he is taking his timê. Once Achilles loses this timê, he loses the motivation to fight. This is revealed to us in book 9. Agamemnon sends a group of leaders to Achilles’ tent to beg him to return to the fight, offering not only the return of Briseïs but numerous other tributes as well. Achilles, however, rejects the offer out of hand. In explaining this rejection, Achilles details the effect Agamemnon’s insult has had on his desire to fight:

An equal fate awaits both the coward holding
back and the hero fighting hardest, and death
comes both to the idle man and the busy.
It has not brought me profit for my heart
to suffer by always risking my life in battle. (9.318-322)

Agamemnon can offer Achilles all the geras in the world, but those promised prizes are not enough for Achilles for they do not make up for the timê he lost in the first place. Moreover, the fact that Agamemnon took away Achilles’s geras means that any promise of future geras is suspect. What does it matter if Agamemnon offers half his kingdom to Achilles if, as in the case of Briseïs, those prizes can be taken back? Why risk one’s life for timê that can be stripped away at a moment’s notice?

***

Another concept central both to the Iliad and to Bronze Age culture in general is xenia (ξενία), which roughly translates as “guest friendship.” During this period, when a guest or stranger (xenos) comes to a person’s house, that person becomes the host’s friend, and the host is obligated to provide numerous accommodations based upon particular rituals. In turn, the stranger promises to return the generous offers of friendship. This friendship does not end at the death of the host or stranger, either; the sons and grandsons of both men would be honor-bound to maintain this alliance.

The Oxford Classical Dictionary notes that, in guest friendships, “friends provided services analogous to those provided by bankers, lawyers, hotel owners, insurers, and others today” (591). A host offered a guest a place to stay, gifts in the form of money or commerce, and assistance with any legal or tax issues that might have brought the visitor to this new place.

A window into xenia can be found in book 6 when Diomedes of Argos meet Glaucus of Lycia in battle. As is the custom in numerous occasions in the Iliad, the two talk to one another before engaging in battle. In this case, Glaucus mentions his heroic ancestor Bellerophon; hearing this, Diomedes exclaims:

Then you are a friend of my father’s house
for noble Oeneus once hosted blameless
Bellerophon in his great hall for twenty days. (6.215-16)

Recognizing a guest friendship between their paternal grandfathers suddenly makes Glaucus not an enemy in battle but a long-lost friend. Diomedes expands on this later:

So now I am your host when you are in Argos,
and you to me in Lycia when I visit the land.
Let us leave our spears, even in this throng;
there are other Trojans and their allies to slay,
either sent by the gods or overcome by foot,
and many Achaeans for you to slay, if you can.
And let us exchange armor, so others may know
we are guest-friends from our fathers’ days. (6.224-231)

From here, Diomedes and Glaucus swap armor and go away from battle to talk more about their shared xenia.

On the opposite end of xenia is the event that precipitated the Trojan War itself. Paris was a guest friend of Menelaus in Sparta when he abducted Helen and took numerous prizes from Menelaus’ palace. This grave violation of xenia was seen as an offense to both mortals and gods, for to violate xenia was to offend Zeus himself.

This offense instigated the war, and it is recalled numerous times throughout the Iliad, right up to the end. In book 24, Zeus (through his messenger Iris) tells Priam to visit Achilles’ tent and beg for his son’s body. Zeus assures Priam that he would be safe from harm in this endeavor because Achilles, unlike Paris, respects the gods and abides by their laws:

And after he has arrived in Achilles’ tent,
neither Achilles nor anyone else will kill him,
for the man is not foolish, impulsive, or sinful
and will kindly protect a suppliant man.” (24.155-158)

Hence, although the Iliad does not end with the sacking of Troy, it does end with a symbolic reconciliation between Hector and Priam and between mortals and immortals.