: The Romans believed to have originated from Troy after
: the Greeks destroyed it, the survivors led on a fleet
: of ships by Aeneas (of which the title of the
: Virgilian epic The Aeneid is derived. I suggest you
: read it, especially the Fitzgerald translation). These
: Trojans settled primitive Italy. Eventually, the
: Latins arose, and other myths akin to this,
: chronologically after, like Romulus the founder of
: Rome, came about.
: In relating to something well-known Roman, Iulius Cæsar
: thought he was decended from Venus, as well as others
: of his family in the Julian gens, because the Julians
: thought their gens title of Iulius was decended from
: Iulus. Iulus was the son of Aeneas. Aeneas was, in
: turn, the son of Venus, the matron goddess of Troy.
Incidentally, Aeneas was not the universally approved--and probably not even the majority--candidate as progenitor of Rome prior to Vergil's work. Several of the Aeneid's scenes are expressly designed to combat support for alternate candidates, who now and again appear and expire heroically before they get a chance to found much of anything. Vergil selected Aeneas as his hero precisely because he was writing the Aeneid as a present for a Caesar, and it was Imperial backing that made the Aeneid the "Bible" of Roman origins for a time.
: Actually, Homer based the Iliad off of the Ramayana ,
: a very descriptive Hindu tale rather similar to the
: Iliad , but it has more detail and some added
: information.
Indeed? I had not heard that, though I know that the core story of the Iliad--that of a warrior whose pride causes the death of his male lover/comrade, whom he must then avenge--is told in all Mediterranean civilizations in various forms. Are there more conrete parallels in the Ramayana, and is there evidence that the Ramayana in something like its present form was available to influence the X number of people who made up "Homer?" (I don't know too much about Hindu history, but from the dates I've seen, the Ramayana was not made into a complete work until 50-100 years after the assemblage of the Iliad--although the Odyssey was written much later.)
: As for the city of Troy itself, that was never truly
: discovered. The ruins of that little village Schlemann
: found in a landlocked part of Turkey hardly come close
: to matching the description of Homer, as being an
: incredible city with enormous walls covered in metals
: like tin and a technologically advanced society; all
: of which sank into the ocean (for Troy was a naval
: city, and Schlemann's Troy is nowhere near the ocean,
: in any geologic time period of human history).
Troy/Hissarlik was actually somewhat closer to the ocean in pre-Classical periods, and was much closer to the mouth of the Scamander, which has since silted up. A number of other physical characteristics are shared by Hissarlik and the mythical Troy; my grandfather (a classics professor) and a grad student I know have both described to me how eerie it is to stand on the Hissarlik site and, in particular, experience exactly the same wind patterns described in the Iliad.
It should be noted that Troy was never, so to speak, "on the waterfront;" the Iliad speaks of a wide plain separating the city from the coastal strip where the Greeks camp. And its final end, as described by both Greeks and Romans, was simply by fire and manmade destruction--although the sea did have a hand in earlier stories, where Hercules builds and then tears down a wall to protect against the ocean or river.
As for the size and opulence of Troy and the technological level--well, Odysseus probably didn't actually fight a six-headed sea monster either. :-) The pre-classical Greeks who developed the Trojan/Mycenaean myth cycle--the Iliad and the Odyssey are merely the survivors of a cycle which incorporated close to a dozen other epics--lacked the technology to build anything approaching the Mycenaean and Minoan ruins in whose shadow they lived, and naturally inferred that these were advanced and near-godlike people. Homer's essential ignorance of true Trojan and Mycenaean culture reveals itself in many inconsistencies, such as weapons and armor being of bronze while more mundane tools are of iron, or the famous "shoot an arrow through holes in twelve axes...or between twelves axes...or...something..." scene from the Odyssey. :-) Take all that could be inferred of Mycenaean culture from ruins and the contents of tombs--fill in the blank areas with Dark Age Greek culture--turn up the volume on how big and pretty everything was--and you have Troy. At least until the Romans arrived, and added their "Everyone from the East is a pansy girly-boy" flavor to the mix.
Of course, there need not be a true "historical Troy," any more than there need be a historical Arthur or historical Camelot. Mycenae, Crete, and the many incarnations of Hissarlik/Troy all served as inspiration; poetry did the rest.
--SiliconDream
