Trojan war

Did the Trojan war happen? Was there a fight for troy between the greek king agamemnon and the trojan king priam? Was there an achilles? Hetor? Helen? Paris? I hope to discuss this in a reasonable matter, so lets keep flaming out shall we?

Did the trojan war happen?

Yes, they have found fairly solid evidence that it indeed did occur. When they dug up the 9 layers of troy, they found that the troy of those times were levels 6 and 7. the first layer being the first in exsistense. They found that with layer 6 i believe that troy was a very rich city and had many many fotunes because of where it was placed. There were trade winds constantly blowing ships to ward them and it could be weeks before they died down. There fore ships sailed in, docked, and were taxed to hell. Now on layer 7, it is a different story. The remains seemed to convey very small living quaters, or very tight living. you may be wondering why it would change dramatically. Well the city of troy was in itself not hugely defended. It had a large ditch around it, but that was breached fairly easily. What it did have was a citadel in the middle. This was surrounded by walls high enough that they could not be climbed, basically making it impregnable. What happened is who ever the trojans were fighting breached that first defense of the ditch, so the people went inside the citadel. It was not made for that many people, there for it was crowded. They also had lots of storage jars, big ones. These storage jars hold food. In what time to they hold food? War time, they found these every where. Obviously you could not base a whole opinion just off that. They found arrow heads everwhere. As it is told it was burned to the ground by whoever took it over. They found charred remains in level 7 of troy. This in my opinion is enough to prove there was indeed a trojan war. To say it went on for 10 years, is a little iffy. Since these walls were so hard to get over, a long war makes sense. Good defenses with no real way to break through them will equal a long war.

Were the greeks the ones fighting? There is no hard evidence of this that I can remember, but most likely. As stated above the trojans became very wealthy because of these taxes. Most of the time, these taxes were coming from the greek ships. This was cutting down their revenue, thus hindering them. Not only that, but they were in an excellent position. Right in turkey. Where it was was probably affecting people in some way because turkey is on the mediterranian and the black sea. This alone is probably reason enough for the greeks to go to war with them. Agamemnon was a greedy bastard and was probably pissed that he was losing money. Legend has it that he killed his daughter for a sacrifice to the god for good wins

. This guy was serious.

Was there an achilles? There is no hard evidence, just a supposed grave in turkey where nothing is burried.

Was there a hector? Yes. There was a hector, he was Priams son. He may have been a fighter, but the amazing fighter he is depicted as? unknown, probably will never be known.

Helen? This one is tough. The hittites were a civilization just outside of troy, that was one of the first civilization to write things. In the archaelogical digs, they found some of these writing...of the trojan war They found that thre was a woman that they called, the woman of troy. Could this be helen? I have no idea, that is up to all of you.

Paris? The same people wrote of a man named Alexandros, who they discribed as one of Priams sons. From what I have read, it sounds as if that name translates to Paris. They talk about him as the prince of troy.

The story is that Paris kidanpped helen, or helen went along with Paris because they were in love. It is unknown if that is true, chances are it isn't.

Was it ended by a trojan horse? This is considered to be symolism. The horse is supposed to represent the god of water and earthquakes or something along those lines. Troy is also sitting on a fault line. What most likely happened is that an earthquake shook troy, possibly brough down one or part of a wall, and allowed the greeks to enter the city. Thus followed by mass piliage and rape and murder and burning and all that good stuff. Now, most people think that Homer used symbolism with the horse. Again the earthquake can be related to the horse. Most think that ending it was an earth quake wasn't like ending it with a bang, more like a whimper. So he probably thought up of the trojan horse to make his story a little better.

Well, that is a lot of typing, and my fingers a threatening me (shut up you damn fingers). Have fun. Don't own me too badly

I would agree that the war did occur. Though the caracters of the Iliad and the Aenied are always questionalble, several pieces of evidence exist to suggest the occurrence of the war.

Troy was, as you pointed out Tricks, a very rich city. It was situated in Turkey relatively close to the Hittite empire. In fact the Hittites even have records suggesting that they planned to attack Troy. I think it is extremely likely that the war was the result of rivalry between the Mycinaean kingdoms of Greece, who's center was Argos (often mentioned in the Iliad as Agamemnon's city), and the Hittites who centered in Turkey. Since the Turkish archaeological evidence supports that the Hittites lost the race to siege Troy, or were at least unsuccessful of it (I'm sorry for the lack of specifics here, I don't recall exactly what the book said but it was either that once the Hittite army arrived at Troy it ahd already been destroyed or that they had previously attempted siege unsuccessfully) than it is probable that the Mycenaeans were responsible for her destruction.

It's just because everyone generalizes the Iliad as being the only piece depicting the Trojan war. The final line from my translation is, "and so the Trojans buried Hector breaker of horses."

hahaha.

the Iliad is my favorite book. It's the uncontested conveyance of the tragic brutality of war. You should read the whole thing except the second book.

It's about thirty pages of "Menelaus and his two hundred fighting men, and the giant Telamonian Ajax with his two hundred fighting men... and on the Trojan side we have Hektor, with his 400 men, and Aeneas' regiment from Lycia..." and it goes on like that.

ILIVM FVIT, TROJA EST.

I am just waiting for Tman or Mustang to stumble upon my thread and tear my post apart. I am actually quite frightened right now