The Trojan War and Homer's poem Iliad http aida. Trojan War - briefly

Trojan War, according to the ancient Greeks, was one of the most significant events in their history. Ancient historians believed that it happened around the turn of the 13th-12th centuries. BC, and with it began a new “Trojan” era - the ascent of the inhabitants Balkan Greece tribes to a higher level of culture associated with life in cities. The campaign of the Achaean Greeks against the city of Troy, located in the northwestern part of the Asia Minor peninsula - Troas, was told by numerous Greek myths, later united into a cycle of legends - cyclical poems. The most authoritative for the Hellenes was the epic poem “The Iliad,” attributed to the great Greek poet Homer, who lived in the 8th century. BC e. It tells about one of the episodes of the final, tenth year of the siege of Troy-Ilion - this is the name of this Asia Minor city in the poem.

What do ancient legends tell about the Trojan War? It began by the will and fault of the gods. All the gods were invited to the wedding of the Thessalian hero Peleus and the sea goddess Thetis, except Eris, the goddess of discord. The angry goddess decided to take revenge and threw it to the feasting gods golden apple with the inscription: “To the most beautiful.” Three Olympic goddesses - Hera, Athena and Aphrodite - argued over which of them it was intended for. Zeus ordered young Paris, the son of the Trojan king Priam, to judge the goddesses. The goddesses appeared to Paris on Mount Ida, near Troy, where the prince was tending flocks, and each tried to seduce him with gifts. Paris preferred the love of Helen, the most beautiful of mortal women, offered to him by Aphrodite, and handed the golden apple to the goddess of love. Helen, daughter of Zeus and Leda, was the wife of the Spartan king Menelaus. Paris, who came as a guest to the house of Menelaus, took advantage of his absence and, with the help of Aphrodite, convinced Helen to leave her husband and go with him to Troy. The fugitives took with them slaves and treasures of the royal house. Myths tell different stories about how Paris and Helen got to Troy. According to one version, they arrived safely in three days hometown Parisa. According to another, the goddess Hera, hostile to Paris, raised a storm at sea, his ship was carried to the shores of Phenicia, and only a long time later the fugitives finally arrived in Troy. There is another option: Zeus (or Hera) replaced Helen with a ghost, which Paris took away. During the Trojan War, Helen herself was in Egypt under the protection of the wise old man Proteus. But this is a late version of the myth; the Homeric epic does not know it.

Achilles kills the Amazon queen. Fragment of the painting of a Greek amphora. Around 530 BC.

The Trojan prince committed a serious crime - he violated the law of hospitality and thereby brought a terrible disaster on his hometown. Insulted Menelaus, with the help of his brother, the powerful king of Mycenae Agamemnon, gathered a large army to return his unfaithful wife and stolen treasures. All the suitors who had once wooed Elena and swore an oath to defend her honor came to the brothers’ call. The most famous Achaean heroes and kings - Odysseus, Diomedes, Protesilaus, Ajax Telamonides and Ajax Lacrian, Philoctetes, the wise old man Nestor and many others - brought their squads. Achilles, the son of Peleus and Thetis, the most courageous and powerful of the heroes, also took part in the campaign. According to the prediction of the gods, the Greeks could not conquer Troy without his help. Odysseus, being the smartest and most cunning, managed to persuade Achilles to take part in the campaign, although he was predicted that he would die under the walls of Troy. Agamemnon was elected leader of the entire army, as the ruler of the most powerful of the Achaean states.

The Greek fleet, numbering a thousand ships, assembled at Aulis, a harbor in Boeotia. To ensure the fleet's safe voyage to the shores of Asia Minor, Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to the goddess Artemis. Having reached Troas, the Greeks tried to return Helen and the treasures peacefully. The experienced diplomat Odysseus and the insulted husband Menelaus went as envoys to Troy. The Trojans refused them, and a long and tragic war began for both sides. The gods also took part in it. Hera and Athena helped the Achaeans, Aphrodite and Apollo - the Trojans.

The Greeks were unable to immediately take Troy, which was surrounded by powerful fortifications. They built a fortified camp on the seashore near their ships, began to ravage the outskirts of the city and attack the allies of the Trojans. In the tenth year of the siege, a dramatic event occurred that resulted in serious setbacks for the Achaeans in battles with the defenders of Troy. Agamemnon insulted Achilles by taking away his captive Briseis, and he, angry, refused to enter the battlefield. No amount of persuasion could convince Achilles to abandon his anger and take up arms. The Trojans took advantage of the inaction of the bravest and strongest of their enemies and went on the offensive, led by the eldest son of King Priam, Hector. The king himself was old and could not take part in the war. The Trojans were also helped by the general fatigue of the Achaean army, which had been unsuccessfully besieging Troy for ten years. When Agamemnon, testing the morale of the warriors, feignedly offered to end the war and return home, the Achaeans greeted the proposal with delight and rushed to their ships. And only the decisive actions of Odysseus stopped the soldiers and saved the situation.

Neoptolemus kills King Priam, in the temple at the altar of Zeus

The Trojans broke into the Achaean camp and nearly burned their ships. Achilles's closest friend, Patroclus, begged the hero to give him his armor and chariot and rushed to the aid of the Greek army. Patroclus stopped the onslaught of the Trojans, but he himself died at the hands of Hector. The death of a friend made Achilles forget about the insult. The thirst for revenge inspired him. The Trojan hero Hector died in a duel with Achilles. The Amazons came to the aid of the Trojans. Achilles killed their leader Penthesilea, but soon died himself, as predicted, from the arrow of Paris, directed by the god Apollo. Achilles' mother Thetis, trying to make her son invulnerable, dipped him into the waters of the underground river Styx. She held Achilles by the heel, which remained the only vulnerable place on his body. God Apollo knew where to direct Paris's arrow. Humanity owes the expression “Achilles’ heel” to this episode of the poem.

After the death of Achilles, a dispute begins among the Achaeans over the possession of his armor. They go to Odysseus, and, offended by this outcome, Ajax Telamonides commits suicide.

A decisive turning point in the war occurs after the arrival of the hero Philoctetes from the island of Lemnos and the son of A1hill Neoptolemus to the Achaean camp. Philoctetes kills Paris, and Neoptolemus kills the Trojans' ally, the Mysian Eurinil. Left without leaders, the Trojans no longer dare to go out to battle in the open field. But the powerful walls of Troy reliably protect its inhabitants. Then, at the suggestion of Odysseus, the Achaeans decide to take the city by cunning. A huge wooden horse was built, inside which a selected squad of warriors hid. The rest of the army, in order to convince the Trojans that the Achaeans were going home, burned their camp and sailed on ships from the coast of Troas. In fact, the Achaean ships took refuge not far from the coast, near the island of Tenedos.

The Trojans roll their horse into the city

Surprised by the abandoned wooden monster, the Trojans gathered around it. Some began to offer to bring the horse into the city. The priest Laocoon, warning about the treachery of the enemy, exclaimed: “Fear the Danaans (Greeks), who bring gifts!” (This phrase also became popular over time.) But the priest’s speech did not convince his compatriots, and they brought a wooden horse into the city as a gift to the goddess Athena. At night, the warriors hiding in the belly of the horse came out and opened the gate. The Achaeans who secretly returned burst into the city and began beating the residents who were taken by surprise.

Golden funeral mask of Agamemnon

Menelaus, with a sword in his hands, was looking for his unfaithful wife, but when he saw beautiful Elena, was unable to kill her. The entire male population of Troy died, with the exception of Aeneas, the son of Anchises and Aphrodite, who received orders from the gods to flee the captured city and revive its glory elsewhere. His descendants Romulus and Remus became the founders of Ancient Rome. The women of Troy faced an equally sad fate: they all became captives and slaves of the jubilant victors. The city was destroyed by fire.

After the destruction of Troy, strife began in the Achaean camp. Ajax of Lacria brings the wrath of the goddess Athena upon the Greek fleet, and she sends a terrible storm, during which many ships sink. Menelaus and Odysseus are carried into the storm distant countries. Odysseus's wanderings after the end of the Trojan War are sung in Homer's second poem, The Odyssey. It also tells about the return of Menelaus and Helen to Sparta. The epic treats this beautiful woman favorably, since everything that happened to her was the will of the gods, which she could not resist. The leader of the Achaeans, Agamemnon, after returning home, was killed along with his companions by his wife Clytemnestra, who did not forgive her husband for the death of her daughter Iphigenia. So, not at all triumphantly, the campaign against Troy ended for the Achaeans.

Alexander Salnikov

Great city of Troy

Did Troy exist?

The first thing we know about Troy is that the great Homer sang it in his poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey”. Did Homer's Troy really exist? It is impossible to answer this question precisely yet. But most researchers still believe that it existed. Even the very fact that Troy was sung in the epic poems of antiquity rather suggests that the city once existed, since in ancient times there was no practice of chanting non-existent cities and battles. Basically, the tales were based on legends or real events. The legends and myths themselves were also based on real events, which, however, did not prevent them from being embellished with a fair amount of fiction.

Unfortunately, even Schliemann’s find does not provide a clear answer about the existence of Troy. Whether Schliemann is right or not, we will not examine this issue here, since this already relates to professional archeology and history. But we’ll still talk about whether Schliemann’s find is similar or not to Homer’s Troy.

Homer in his poem provides too little data to accurately indicate not only the location of the city, but also determine its size, or find out how many people lived in it. But still, Homer gives enough instructions so that we can imagine this wondrous city with a certain reliability.

The first thing we learn from Homer about Troy is that the city was the capital of the ancient vast state of Troas and was located somewhere near the western entrance to the Hellespont (the modern Dardanelles) on the northwestern coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) . We also learn that the city has two equivalent names: Troy and Ilion. The etymology of these names can be read in many sources, including Hittite writings, so we will not dwell on them. In our not scientific, but rather literary research, we, following Schliemann, will assume that Troy did exist, and we will try, based on the texts of the poem, to find out what the city itself was like.

What was the city of Troy like?

First of all, the Iliad repeatedly points out that Troy is a city with wide streets and squares. In the poem we find many indications of this, as well as the fact that Troy was not only wide, but also beautiful, that is, with beautiful architecture. We see one such indication in the sixth song:

390 This is how she answered him. He quickly left the house.

He hurried back along the vast Troy along the same road:

Its bright squares and marvelous streets. To the gate

The Scaeans were already approaching, leading to the plain from Troy.

When Andromache saw her husband, she ran up to him in tears,

395 A rich family, daughter of Etion, beautiful in appearance.

But how do we know exactly how wide these streets and squares of Troy were? Some clues to this question can be found in the poem itself. For example, in the 18th canto there is one interesting place where the leader Polydamas gives Hector good advice return with the whole army to Troy and wait out the night in the city square:

“Do as you say! Even though I know: it’s sad for my heart.

We will all spend the night in the square; Well, the city has walls,

275 The towers are tall and have huge, strong-built sections,

Long and smooth gates with bolts will provide protection.

In the morning, at dawn, we will occupy the walls and towers, taking up arms

With copper weapons. Then woe to those who want to go with Pelid

Come to us from the ships and fight around Ilion!”

We are talking here, apparently, about the main square of the city. And at first glance, there seems to be nothing strange in this proposal. But if we find out how many warriors the leader Polydamas proposes to place in this square, then we will look at it completely differently. From a small text at the end of the eighth canto we can definitely find out how big the Trojans had an army:

560 So between the black ships and the deep river

Many lights of the Trojan troops could be seen from the walls of Ilion.

A thousand fires were burning in the field there. Around in front of everyone, -

Fifty people each, illuminated by a bright glow.

Their horses ate white barley and sweet spelt,

565 Waiting for the Beautiful Throne Dawn at their chariots.

So, a thousand fires were burning in the field, and fifty people were sitting around each one. That turns out to be 50 thousand warriors. Now let’s think about what the main square of the city should be like in order for a 50,000-strong army to fit in for an overnight stay? And what should the city itself be like?

Some researchers claim that all of Troy was nothing more than the Moscow Luzhniki Stadium. But Luzhniki accommodates only about 80 thousand seats for spectators. It's shoulder to shoulder. No, like that small town There is no way it can have an area on which 50 thousand warriors could fit for an overnight stay, and not shoulder to shoulder, but freely, with chariots, weapons and fires for cooking dinner. Perhaps, only the upper city, the Acropolis of Troy, which the Trojans also called Pergamum, could be the size of Luzhniki. By the way, there is also a lot of controversy about the size of the Acropolis of Troy.

What was on the Acropolis of Troy?

Let's see what could be located in the acropolis of Troy? From the poem we know that the acropolis housed temples of the gods, for example the temple of Zeus, Apollo, and Athena. Perhaps temples of some other gods, for example, Hera, Poseidon, Aphrodite, Ares, all those gods who, according to the beliefs of the Trojans, could influence daily life people. It is unlikely that there was only one temple on the acropolis.

How could Homer know about these things?
When all this happened, he was a camel in Bactria!
Lucian, "The Dream"

They [the Greeks] were late in learning the alphabet, and the lesson turned out to be difficult... a very controversial and controversial question is whether those who took part in the Trojan campaign used letters?.. In all Greek literature, no undisputed works have been found older than poetry Homer. He is a Jew, however, obviously later than the Trojan War. But even he, as they say, did not leave his poems written down. Initially, disparate songs transmitted from memory were united only later. This circumstance explains the numerous inconsistencies of this work.
Josephus, "Against Apion"

The Iliad and the Odyssey, according to general belief, stand at the origins of European literature. It is an extraordinary paradox - unique in the history of culture - that the origins are unsurpassed masterpieces, not “rudimentary” primitive crafts, but great poems of enormous length and complexity. Here

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The images of the heroic age, “jumping out of the head of Zeus in full battle gear,” turned out to be so vivid and powerful that to this day readers are unable to resist the idea that they are somehow “true.” It was believed that their author was a poet called Homer. There was no information about him. It was even assumed that Homer was not a name, but a pseudonym (homeros - hostage). It was also believed that he composed without resorting to writing, that is, he was a poet-storyteller.
Recently, studies have been carried out on oral epic poetry in different parts light: in Serbia, where it is still preserved in a deteriorated form; in Ireland, where the last narrator of the prose epic lived long enough for his speech in 1940 to be recorded; in Albania and Armenia, where remnants of bardic traditions still exist; in Zaire, where until recently it was still possible to see the action in all its glory. All these samples oral poetry allowed us to understand how often extremely long and complex works could be transmitted orally from generation to generation. The characteristic features of such tales - especially the so-called "formulas", or repeated phrases - show that the poems of Homer are, as Josephus and other ancient authors believed, typical oral poems. But how did they come together? Was it immediate or was it a gradual growth of some poetic legend?
Did Homer exist? When were his poems first written down? And how does the text that has come down to us compare with that first recording? Discovered in the 19th century. in Egypt 600 papyrus fragments with texts

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Homer, essentially, did not move the “Homeric question” from its place. The Iliad “has its origins” in the 10th century. AD in Constantinople: the two best and earliest manuscripts were created precisely then (the main of the 200 Homer manuscripts that have come down to us date back to the 14th-15th centuries AD).
In the Latin West, Greek works were largely lost in the Dark Ages, but Homeric poems were studied in Byzantium, despite their pagan roots. In the 860s Byzantine scholars prepared a revised edition of Homer, and subsequent work led to the creation of the famous book known as Venetus A - the most authoritative edition of the Iliad (kept in Venice, in the Cathedral of San Marco). The bulk of the early and rare texts have not survived to this day due to wars: in this sense, the sack of Constantinople in 1204 is comparable to the destruction by fire of the famous Library of Alexandria in the 1st century. BC Before the final fall of Constantinople in 1453, a large number of manuscripts from the Byzantine Empire were taken to the West by Italian humanists. Later, surviving Greek monastic libraries served as sources of texts. Today there are virtually no classical texts left, but this robbery ensured the survival of Greek literature.
Homer's poems attracted attention back in the middle of the 14th century: Petrarch took Greek lessons to read the manuscript of Homer's great works, given to him by the Byzantine ambassador. In the 1360s the Italian scientist Pliato, a friend of Boccaccio, tried to translate some of Homer's tales into Latin.

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Only with the invention of printing did books, first classical Latin, then Greek, become relatively accessible. It was as if the West had rediscovered Greece. The first printed edition of Homer appeared in Florence in 1488. In Venice, the Aldov printing house, founded by Aldus Manutius specifically for printing Greek texts, the famous printed edition of Homer was published in 1504. The Greek, Cretan scientist Musurus was involved in the work. Seven main European publications Homer was published in the 16th century. Comparing Homer with the works of classical Greek literature, scholars have come to the conclusion that a different approach to his works is necessary, since they are a record of oral traditions, and that, regardless of the age of the manuscripts, it is impossible to “collect” and record from the ear texts composed centuries and centuries ago. They relied on evidence found in Cicero that the first recording of Homer's poems dates back to approximately 550 BC. and made at the court of the Athenian tyrant Pisistratus. The Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico argued that the Iliad and Odyssey are the fruit of the collective work of several generations of poet-storytellers, only written down under Pisistratus. That is, there were a lot of Homers. Vico's brilliant theory anticipated many modern studies, but did not have much influence at the time. But the Anglo-Irish traveler Robert Wood attracted attention, in his “Essay on the True Genius and Works of Homer” (1769) he was the first to argue in favor of the oral nature of Homer’s work. “Essay...” was translated into many languages ​​and contributed to the emergence of

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bringing to light the book by F.A. Wolf's "Prolegomena" - the greatest of the books about Homer. He used the best (published in 1788) manuscript of the Iliad, Venetus A, with marginal comments dating back to the 3rd century. BC Wolf was convinced that Homer created his oral works around 950 BC. and that then his poems were transmitted aurally from memory until, in the 6th century. BC, the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus did not order them to be written down. However, Wolf was ready to believe in the real Homer - a brilliant poet who “began to weave a web.” Wolf wrote in his preface to the Iliad:

...dragged the thread to a certain point... We may never be able to indicate - even with some degree of probability - the exact places where new threads began in this weaving: but, if I am not mistaken, we can say that Homer owns the bulk of the songs, the rest was completed by the Homerids, who followed the lines laid out by him.

After Wolff, there was a tendency to "disintegrate" Homer's text into a mass of short oral poems, grafted onto the tree of the primitive "primordial Iliad" by later poets and editors. However, some still defended the idea of ​​a “single poet”: Goethe, for example, wrote a short treatise on unity Homeric poems, having formulated a point of view that still has support today. Wolff identified the problems with clarity and tact, and it would be wrong to assume that the answers have already been received.

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In the two centuries that have passed since the writing of Wolf's works, three things have happened in science. important events, which were of fundamental importance for the “Homeric question”. First: the formation of scientific archeology - the search for the “real” Bronze Age, the world of Homer. She became the driving force behind Schliemann's obsession with Homer and Troy. And it quickly bore fruit, proving that Homer was actually describing artifacts of the Bronze Age: in Mycenae, Schliemann himself soon saw images of helmets made of boar tusks and “tower” shields, and held “silver-tipped” swords in his hands. A “real” connection seemed to be demonstrated. The palace at Tiryns provided an opportunity to see a picture of the royal chambers of the Bronze Age, which had a clear resemblance to the Homeric megaron. Archeology has also suggested that the settlements mentioned by Homer as important centers of the Bronze Age were indeed such, even if they later lost their importance. The decisive discovery was Dörpfeld's discovery of the Mycenaean citadel at Hisarlik, since it suggested for the first time that the central plot of the Iliad actually refers to a real Bronze Age settlement, to real events. Over the last century, archeology has continued to develop these ideas, which either resurrected the lines of Homer or quickly went sideways. But the assumption of a connection remains, although a certain degree of skepticism seems fair.
The second event: the work of Milman Parry and his follower Albert Lord, who proved the oral nature of the legends, thereby supporting the art

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Guments of Josephus and the scientists who preceded Wolf. Some of the most important publications on the characteristics of this art form are given in the bibliography.
The third and most recent development in the study of Homer was the discovery that the Linear B tablets were written in Greek, and therefore that there was cultural and linguistic continuity between the Bronze Age and the Homeric era. It became possible to study the continuity of a language in detail, in the changes of dialects, to see, for example, how many words of Linear B Greek appear in Homer, how often Homer describes Bronze Age artifacts in Mycenaean words, or where the description is accurate even though the language has disappeared. But, for example, a study of the Mycenaean Greek words minor texts from Homer that were removed from the main narrative by later editors. The deciphering of Linear B has opened up prospects, the implementation of which is yet to come.

When was The Iliad composed?

Today it is believed that the Iliad (and the Odyssey too) were not composed orally, but were compiled by a poet from oral traditions using writing. In the eyes of many, the appearance of writing in Greece is indirectly connected with the genius of Homer. It has even been suggested that the Greek alphabet was invented around 700 BC. specifically for recording Homer's poems. There are obvious reasons against this

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objections. First, the recording of two huge poems in a predominantly oral culture contradicts everything we know about similar processes in history. There are no parallels to be drawn here with the impact of the introduction of “communication technologies” on the creative arts, or with the transition from pre-literate to literate culture, from handwritten to printed, or (in the recent past) from print to electronic systems. It is difficult to imagine that it was possible to undertake the gigantic and expensive task of recording (on papyrus or parchment?) such long poems when society - and, more importantly, the poet's audience - was in every respect illiterate. This idea was based on the idea that Homer foresaw the importance of writing. However, the language and style of the poems indicate their oral origin.
Given this development, the earliest time of recording would have been around 650 BC, when writing had already developed in Greece. But oral epic traditions flourished as early as the 5th century. BC, therefore the oral “composition” of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” even in the 6th century. BC cannot be considered impossible.
There was a legend that the poems were collected in Athens during the reign of Pisistratus and then they were given their final form. The real history of the texts could be something like this.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, there lived a famous poet-storyteller named Homer. It came from the Ionian Greek colonies, perhaps from Chios or Smyrna. For some reason, maybe because he was the best, he came to be seen as the personification of oral epic poetry, and

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the most famous groups of singers considered themselves his heirs. These were the so-called Homerids, “sons of Homer,” from the island of Chios. In the time of Homer (probably in the 8th century BC) the legend of Troy was often told in the Aegean courts, because we find rulers calling themselves after heroes - Hector of Chios, Agamemnon of Cyme. Perhaps their courts were located where Homer was invited to participate in the festivals of the Ionian cities, especially at the Panionion on Cape Mycale. Subsequent generations treated most of the ancient epic poetry as his creations and carefully tried to preserve the words “as Homer sang them.” During the era of expansion of Athens in the 6th century. BC a tyrant with political ambitions wanted to turn the local festival dedicated to the goddess Athena into a festival with a more “national” slant. A magnificent temple of Athena (the predecessor of the Parthenon that has come down to us) was built on the acropolis, and public holidays were encouraged with the recitation of epic and historical poems glorifying Athenian state, seeking a leading role in Greece. The ruler of Athens spared no expense with the best Homerids, who dictated Homer to the palace scribe as faithfully, completely and beautifully as possible.
The Iliad, which is the basis of the text we know, could have been written down from the words of the singer at that time. But even if we reject such a scenario, we must focus on the period after 650 BC.
The recording of ancient songs is usually stimulated by external circumstances and often occurs during the

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The period when writing begins to spread widely. There is an obvious analogy with the collection and recording of the ancient oral folk epics of the Frankish and Germanic tribes by Charlemagne, which followed his writing reforms in the 8th century. Today, in beginning of XXI century, when in industrial countries the traditions of oral creativity have practically died, we ourselves are trying to do something similar. Homer in those days, as we can guess, was recorded as a “collector,” albeit posthumously.
We began with Josephus's assumption that the poems were created when there was no written language in Greece. As mentioned, when modern studies of Homer began, Robert Wood and F.A. Wolf agreed that Homer could not write, and Wolf concluded that Homer's original was irretrievably lost. The oral-formula theory of Milman Parry and his school, which drew parallels with the Yugoslav bards, was in many respects a return to Wolff's point of view. Recently we have been forced to combine the "oral" theory with the assumption that it was Homer's uniqueness that made it possible to see that his great creation could be preserved through writing, in other words, he created in turning point development of culture, when writing was just emerging. Thus, the theory of the creation of literature by a “great man” found its advocates. Today our interpretation represents a synthesis of all these theories: the poems may have been “composed” only in the 6th or 7th century. BC - specifically for recording, but the poems, carefully preserving the ancient layers of the text, were transmitted through the oral poetic traditions of Ionia. We

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we can say that, due to the oral nature of these poems, there are texts that are quite close to the “original”, that is, the poems were written down in 650-550. BC What relation they had to Homer, if he existed at all, will not be so easy to prove, but it seems that the Homerids in the 6th century. BC could quite accurately retell stories compiled in the 8th century. BC Like all storytellers, they omitted something and added their own, based on the situation and the personality of the patron. Subsequent editors also played a role in changing the text. The period of greatest intervention was the 3rd century. BC, when the Alexandrian school of critics tried to create a definitive text. At the beginning of the Sixth Canto, for example, the words “between the river Scamander and stomalimne” were replaced by Aristarchus: “between the banks of Simois and the magnificent flowing Xanthus,” for such was the topography of the Troas of his day. Some passages were condemned simply for their "bad taste." Many words were omitted because they were now incomprehensible.

Did Mycenaean epic poetry exist?

On whose poetic traditions was Homer formed? Was there an oral epic in Mycenaean times, inherited from the Homeric epic? Was the Song of Troy heard in the Mycenaean citadels before their world collapsed? Linear B tablets are, of course, the antithesis of bureaucratic poetry. But at that time there were undoubtedly singers or storytellers, because one of the Pylos frescoes depicts a musician

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or a bard playing the lyre, and fragments of the lyre were found in a domed tomb at Menidi. It is likely that there was a genuine epic poetry, glorifying the deeds of the Mycenaean rulers, and it came to us not only through Homer. Many scientists now think so, because themes similar to those of the Iliad and others Greek myths, are found in the poetry of many contemporary Bronze Age peoples. For example, in Ugarit, a large trading city Northern Syria, there was an epic Krt, telling about the abduction of the king's wife and the siege of the city.
But how can we evaluate the Bronze Age component of Homer’s work? Firstly, he has descriptions of real Mycenaean objects. Homeric "tower-like" shields in full height, which are usually associated with Ajax and depicted in the frescoes of Thera, by the 13th century. BC are already outdated. On the frescoes of the 13th century. BC from Mycenae, Tiryns and Knossos, shields in the shape of a figure eight can be seen. “Silver nailed swords” are known from finds from the 16th and 15th centuries. Likewise, the greaves that Homer writes about, mentioning the “beautifully legged Achaeans,” were found in graves only from the Bronze Age, but not from the subsequent Iron Age. The boar's tusk helmet, perhaps the most famous piece of armor (it is described in detail in the Iliad), has been found in a large number of images, and the entire thing was found at Knossos. Homer even notes that the fangs stuck out in alternating rows. Nestor's Cup, decorated with doves (Iliad) and with two handles1, resembles a cup found

1 In Gnedich’s Russian translation there are four handles. - Approx. translation

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given by Schliemann in shaft tomb IV at Mycenae. The metal inlay described in the scene of making the shield of Achilles is found on daggers from shaft tombs (which also depict “tower” shields). Add Homer's almost universal reference to bronze as the metal for swords and tools, and you have an impressive collection of facts that suggests that it contains descriptions of a long-ago time (though our knowledge of the ensuing "Dark Ages" is too meager to say with certainty that some of these artifacts were not used after the collapse of the Mycenaean Empire). The only reliable way to show that the Homeric traditions have their roots in the heroic poetry of the Mycenaean era would be to demonstrate the specific Mycenaean poetic expressions used by Homer. Unfortunately, this is difficult to do. Homer's language is a mixture of many dialects dating from different periods, mostly Ionic (reflecting the origins of Homer himself and his followers, the Chios Homerids, in the Smyrna region). But it also contains a large number of words from the older Arcado-Cypriot dialect, spoken in parts of Arcadia and Cyprus, dating back to the Mycenaean era. Unfortunately, in all of Homer's writings only one expression appears unmistakably Mycenaean, namely, phasganon arguroelon, "sword of silver," with the variant ksiphos arguroelon. Phasganon and ksiphos ("sword") are Mycenaean words, as are arguros ("silver") and possibly alos ("nail"). Swords like this not long ago

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have been found, they date from the period between the Mycenaean era and approximately 700 BC, from which it can be assumed that the epithet refers to Bronze Age swords. But such a meager harvest suggests that direct verbal inheritance that reached the Ionian singers is very rare.
There are points in which Homer completely diverges from what we know about the Bronze Age. It is obvious that he had no idea about the complex bureaucratic world of palaces with their accounting and rationing, with their meticulous accounting of all goods down to the last sheep. This world was not included in his poems. Instead, an idealized “heroic” is given. An interesting echo of this is Homer's idea of ​​the use of chariots. They were actually used in combat in the Bronze Age - at least by the Hittites and Egyptians. Linear B and Hittite tablets suggest that the Greeks also used them for military purposes. In the Iliad, however, chariots are used only as vehicle, with a few exceptions, when the situation required it: as in the case of Nestor’s orders to the Pylos troops - to place chariots and cavalry in front, infantry behind. “Whoever comes in his chariot to another chariot, set the pike in front... By doing this, both ancient walls and cities were destroyed.” ("Iliad", IV, 306). Thus, the poetic traditions only vaguely remembered the actual details of the military art of the "heroes", and it is obvious that very little Mycenaean poetic information about life in war and in the palaces found its way into later epic traditions.

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Therefore, it is unlikely that this epic tradition was formed around the already existing Mycenaean epic tale about Troy - even if the story of Troy was a theme for Bronze Age poets. The creative part of the pre-Homeric epic tradition began to work precisely in the “dark ages” that followed the collapse of the Mycenaean culture.
Many modern studies of Homer have confirmed that it was the folk singers of the “dark ages” who created their nostalgic tales of the great days of the Mycenaean past, and we can note a similar development of epic traditions in many cultures - Celtic, Germanic and African.
Such conclusions may upset those who would like to see an accurate reflection of the Mycenaean world in Homer's poems. However, they do not reject the idea that the main story of the siege of Troy and even some of the characters still go back to the Bronze Age. But what about the real story?

List of ships

As Schliemann has shown us, the cities of Mycenaean Greece mentioned by Homer as central to the history of the Trojan War were indeed such. The main and most powerful citadel is Mycenae. Tiryns, Pylos and Orkhomenes had almost the same rank. Linear B tablets confirm the Homeric names: Pylos, Knossos, Amnis, Phaistos, Kydonia - to name just a few of the most famous. Judging by an Egyptian inscription from the 14th century.

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BC, Mycenae even then bore the name Mycenae. In the second Song of the Iliad there is a remarkable list of 164 cities that sent troops to Troy, the so-called list of ships:

In Argos lived the men who inhabited the strong-walled Tiryns,
The city of Hermione, Azina, both sea havens,
The cities of Troezen, Aion, Epidaurus, abundant in grapes,
The brave Achaean youths who lived in Masete, in Aegina,
Their leader was Diomedes, the famous warrior...
“Iliad”, II, 559 (translated by G. Gnedich)

The list was originally created independently of the Iliad. It is generally accepted that it is older than the Iliad, although its language is not different from the rest of the poem. Its independence is indicated not only by the discrepancies between it and the Iliad itself, but also by its placement within the poem, since it was intended to describe the gathering of Greek troops at the beginning of the war. Fruitless debates raged for a long time about at what stage he received his place in the Iliad. Nevertheless, many critics see it as an embodiment of Mycenaean legends in a purer form than the Iliad as a whole. Some even consider him real list combat personnel Greek troops who sacked historical Troy. This theory actually received some confirmation in a large number of Pylos tablets. By-

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The late Denis Page, in one of his studies, boldly concluded that the list not only largely came from the Mycenaean period, but was also a genuine military order, and its connection with the overseas campaign “must be historically accurate.” He believed that the list was preserved independently of the poetic tradition that culminates in the Iliad, and was inserted at a late stage, since it differs greatly from the Iliad in substance. Finally, Page believed that the list of people and cities "didn't change much," although the numbers may have been invented later. This stunning and so attractive conclusion that we have an authentic list of the composition of the Greek army that marched on Troy should be treated with caution. Even if it came from the Bronze Age, is it really “supposed” to be a battle order?
Why did ancient societies create such lists? What is the list?

What's on the list?

While we may well be skeptical that the list can be traced back to the written lists on the Linear B tablets, lists of this type are nevertheless found on the tablets time and time again: lists of names, products, military equipment and military units (scholars have even claimed discovery of an authentic Mycenaean “list of ships” on the Pylos tablets). Linear B was not a flexible enough tool for transmitting Greek.

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ka. It was a stylized and purely syllabic writing system, used mainly in administrative records, but not in complex historical and literary composition. The same principles can be seen in the development of Mesopotamian cuneiform: three quarters of all inscriptions that have reached us (about 150 thousand) are, in fact, lists. Even the Ugaritic tablets (XIV-XIII centuries BC), although they contain literary texts, mostly (two thirds out of 500) are also lists - of people, geographical names. And the Egyptian texts - textbooks for scribes, where the entire structure of the cosmos is divided into huge lists for memorization, include a list of 96 cities of Egypt, expressions for describing people, names of foreign inhabitants and names of places. Schoolchildren during the 18th Dynasty were also required to list the names and typical products of countries and to use “as many foreign words and names as possible.” Such lists, if they contained descriptive epithets, could become analogues of Homeric lists, as detailed in the 13th century papyrus. BC, where we read: “Have you been to the land of the Hittites? Do you know what Hedem looks like? You walked along the road to Meger, surrounded by cypresses... Byblos, Beirut, Sidon... Nezen by the river, Tire with a port where there is more fish than sand. Egyptian ambassadors of the 14th century. BC recorded with phonetic accuracy the names of Syrian, Middle Eastern and Aegean cities, including Amnis, Knossos and Mycenae. (This practice, by the way, did not end in the Bronze Age: Dorothy Sayers's hero Lord Peter Wimsey could "produce with fair accuracy a page or so of Homer's list of ships" when he wanted to recite something

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solemn and impressive, and according to The Times of November 12, 1964, one elderly official repeated it out loud from memory as a cure for insomnia!)
Such lists were seen by anthropologists as a characteristic feature of a society in a period of transition from illiteracy to literacy (the Homeric era) or when literacy is only a limited and imperfect means of communication for a very small number of people (as in the case of the late Mycenaean bureaucracy). Egyptian and other analogies suggest that lists such as the list were more likely intended to be studied as "interesting sheets" than to begin life on clay tablets and become oral tradition (if such a thing is even conceivable).
The facts are that we know too little about the nature and spread of literacy in the Mycenaean state - and, accordingly, we know nothing about the poetic works that Mycenaean singers recited in the royal chambers - to make assumptions about how and why it originally came into being. scroll. In addition, one must be careful about bias in the part of the society that composes the legends: simply because belonging to the same era does not necessarily mean “sameness.” With that in mind, let's take a look at what the list tells us.
Many points suggest that our list reflects the life of Mycenaean Greece. The most important thing is that it mentions several cities, their location; you can definitely say

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talk about their population in the Mycenaean era, even if they were uninhabited in the 8th century. BC, when the list is believed to have taken its present form. Examples: Eutrez of Boeotia was abandoned around 1200 BC. and was not inhabited for the next 600 years, Chris, a wonderful place above the gorge below Delphi, Pylos and Dorion (Malfi in the Sulima Valley) in Messenia, Giria (Dramesi) in Boeotia. It was in Giria that a stele with an image of a ship was discovered, which Blegen considered a monument in honor of an overseas campaign similar to the Trojan one. All this suggests that the list refers at least to the Mycenaean legends of the 12th century. BC It is significant: there is not a single settlement listed in the list that would not have been inhabited in Mycenaean times. Of the eighty or ninety sites identified so far, three quarters show signs of a Mycenaean presence. Moreover, all the cities where excavations were carried out revealed a Mycenaean presence, and in about a third of them no evidence of subsequent settlement in the Iron Age could be found. We can say that these facts prove the Mycenaean origin of at least part of the list (although, of course, this does not mean that it was related to the Trojan War). The only argument against it would be that some of the cities on the list did not exist at that time, and this, as we have seen, is not the case. Let's take a closer look at one example.

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"Stormy Enispa"

It is difficult to find these places today, and it would not be easier for you if you did, because no one lives there.
Strabo, "Geography"

I chose it to illustrate important thing: The Greeks themselves in classical times could not determine the location of many of the settlements on the list. Homer may have known about Mycenae and Tiryns from ruins and folk tales. And could he have known about the numerous other settlements that historical times searched here and there until they gave up in frustration: “we can’t find it anywhere,” “doesn’t exist,” “disappeared”? How did Homer even know about them? And their names? What about the fact that there are a lot of pigeons in Mass and strong winds in Enisp? How did he obtain information about settlements which, as we have seen, were abandoned at the end of the Mycenaean era and were never reoccupied?
According to the general opinion of the “list experts”, the most hopeless for modern identification was the trio of unfamous towns in Arcadia: “Ripa, Stratia and stormy Enispa”. Even Lazenby and Hope Simpson, the old-timers of the Homer squad, admitted defeat without a fight, not knowing where to steer in their legendary battered Morris - to western or central Arcadia!
However, Greek archaeologist K.T. Siriopoulos, following unpublished signs discovered in 1939 while laying a road, discovered a prehistoric settlement in northwestern Arcadia near Dimitra in Gortynia. In the settlement there was intense

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active life from Neolithic times to the 12th century. BC, when it was empty forever. The settlement is located on a rocky hill on the southern slope of Mount Afrodision (accessible from the Tripoli-Olympia highway), and rises above one of the rapids of the Ladon River, whose wooded valley with steep walls is one of the most beautiful and most untouched places in the Peloponnese. In the western part of the settlement there are remains of fortress walls, possibly from the 13th century. BC The ceramics are “provincial”, as one would expect here. Pausanias writes: “Some believe that Enispa, Stratia and Ripa were once inhabited islands on Ladon... anyone who believes this must realize that this is nonsense: there have never been islands larger than a boat on Ladon ferryman! But if the word meaning “island” (nesos) is translated (and this is possible) as a piece of land between a river and its tributary, then Dimitra can really be called “an island on Ladon.” If we accept this explanation, then neighboring Stratia may also be an “island on Ladon,” a place called “Stratos” by a historian of the 2nd century. BC Polybius and, possibly, located (according to his testimony) in the town of Stavri, a three-hour walk from Dimitra along Ladon to the southwest. As for the “stormy” Enispa, its name could hardly be more appropriate: where Dimitra is located, strong winds blow, cutting right through the Ladon valley. The current grain current, standing on a prehistoric settlement and using the constantly blowing wind to winnow the grain, confirms this.
If Pausanias's informants are correct, then the third lost settlement, Ripa, should be located

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at the confluence of the Ladon and one of its tributaries. In fact, downstream, an hour and a half walk from Stratia, on another “island in Ladon,” there is a place called Agios Georgios, where, it is said, there are burials from the late Mycenaean period.
It turns out that the Homeric list plausibly describes three main settlements in the mountainous region of northwestern Arcadia, and they occupy places in it exactly in accordance with the sequence and direction of listing all the cities of Arcadia.
The generalized result of the discoveries of modern archeology is that, despite all the oddities of the list, taking into account later additions, its primary source was an authentic list of the Bronze Age. Homer says that there were flocks of pigeons in Messa and Thisbe, the wind in Enispe, the shore in Gelos (and horses and wind in Troy, in the same piggy bank), because that’s how it was. How else could Eutrez, devastated around 1200 BC, be on the list?
However, when we turn to political system states described by Homer, we encounter serious difficulties when trying to combine the list with what we know about Greece in the 13th century. BC In reality, you can only rely on information from the palace archives. The Linear B tablets, when compared with the Homeric list, provide detailed information about two Mycenaean states - Knossos and Pylos. With Knossos, as we have seen, problems arise. If we accept the revised dating of the tablets, then the archives date back approximately to 1200.

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BC, that is, approximately the same time to which the list should refer. However, of the seven Cretan cities mentioned by Homer, only three are named in the tablets (Knossos, Lyktos and Phaistos), although the tablets agree with Homer that the kingdom of Idomeneo was limited to the central region, and many of the places named in the tablets are still awaiting explanation (another the listed town, Milat, has provided important archaeological material from the Late Bronze Age). There are even more difficulties with Pylos, because although both Homer and the tablets name nine cities in Messenia (a coincidence that is interesting in itself), only Pylos and Kyparissia appear in both lists. But the remaining seven names of the main Pylos towns on the tablets cannot be reconciled with Homer, and the leading authority on Linear B now considers Homer "almost useless" in attempting to reconstruct the geography of Mycenaean Greece. However, it seems that Homer is talking about real places in his list, and although the discrepancies with the tablets are confusing, it is worth wondering whether the political divisions in the list (in some cases rather bizarre) do not reflect a real situation that once existed, but at other times? For example, could Homer's description of the kingdom of Pylos reflect the situation after the collapse of Pylos? There may even have been separate Dorian minor dynasties that declared themselves heirs of Nestor, just as the Celts did at the end of Roman rule in Britain. In any case, the fugitives from Pylos who emigrated to Athens

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The memory of “sandy Pylos” was remembered. And in other places in the 12th century. BC There were still identifiable signs of Mycenaean culture, just as in Mycenae, Tiryns and Athens. Laconia also still retains some semblance of Mycenaean life: Homer's list of cities in Laconia actually matches the archaeological data very well.
The list is full of strange political divisions. He ignores the Iliad by giving the main characters, Achilles and Odysseus, minor kingdoms. He sends Ajax to tiny Salamis, dividing the plain of Argos between Agamemnon (i.e. Mycenae), ruling only the north of the plain and the Isthmus region, and Diomedes of Tiryns, controlling the southern part, Argos and Asina. Contrary to logic, most experts believed that such divisions were so implausible that they must reflect the real situation that once existed in Greece. But attempts to adjust them to the 13th century. BC encountered difficulties. Nevertheless, the presence of the cities themselves - strong argument in favor of the fact that, since the list basically comes from the Bronze Age, it is conceivable that some of the political divisions mentioned in it could have existed then. The answer may lie in the fact that the list, cleared of later insertions, actually dates back to the 12th-11th centuries. BC, the period that followed the decline of the Mycenaean civilization, although some of its centers still survived in some places. For Mycenae and Tiryns the list is inexplicable as a 13th-century document. BC (LH III B), when Mycenae was the center of Argolid with a network

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roads diverging from there, but it is plausible if we compare it with the situation after 1200 BC. AD, when the power and population of Tiryns grew. The facts known about Orchomenus suggest the same. This also includes an explanation for the attention given in the list to the Boeotians - dominant, but not playing a special role in the legend: indeed, in the time of Thucydides there was a legend that they returned to Boeotia only 60 years after the Trojan War. It turns out that the list contains signs of the decline of Mycenaean culture and its origin should date back to the (end?) XII century. BC That he refers to cities destroyed around 1200 BC is no argument against such a claim: the oral traditions of the Mycenaean world were presumably strong enough over the next three or four generations for their names and even distinctive epithets. We can suspect that the list was compiled during the years of decline of late Mycenaean culture as an edification to the small dynasties that ruled in the crumbling Mycenae. That he had anything to do with the Trojan War cannot be proven. Even if he was born in the Mycenaean world, this does not guarantee that the list is not simply a list of "interesting places" associated with war, compiled during the "creation of traditions" of the sort that often arise in the wake of a bygone golden age: audiences of failed heroes are the most greedy for such inventions. If this is so, then the list depicting Greece united in the last, great, overseas campaign is only a memory of the “good

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"old times" when Achaea was great and had strong and glorious rulers - "leaders of the people" and "kings of many islands" who knew what to do.
Did the singers who sang the names and deeds of the heroes who took part in the Trojan War really know about its real leaders and armies, or did they invent a great list of cities of Mycenaean Greece? Did they invent heroes with standard names? Ajax, whose “tower” shield reveals him as the hero of an earlier epic? Or Achilles with her mother - the queen of the sea and magical attributes? Moreover, if this is indeed a Mycenaean epic poem, then the tale of Troy would not be the first song account of a siege. We see the siege depicted on a 16th century “siege rhyton” (vase). BC, found by Schliemann. The assault on the city was also depicted on the wall painting of the megaron in Mycenae. The history of the campaign against Thebes was already the subject of legends and songs and could become the basis of a poem about the Trojan War. And the question arises: is there anything in the legend of Troy that suggests that the details and episodes of Bronze Age events are accurately reproduced in the poem that has come down to us?

Homer's story

I assume that some central facts in Homer's story are true if we accept the plausibility of the Troy tale at least in its main points. And if we cannot prove that a city called Troy was sacked by the Greeks, then, according to

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at least we can show that in other essential details the Homeric tradition speaks the truth. For example, Hittite and Egyptian finds suggest that Homer was not mistaken in the names of people: Achaeans and Danaans, in the case of the Greeks, and Dardanians, in the case of the Trojans.
But was Troy really called Troy?
As we have already seen, nothing has been found at Hisarlik that would indicate the name of this place in the Bronze Age. If there was a diplomatic archive there on tablets, it was destroyed long ago. In the Linear B inscriptions there is the word Toroja - Trojan woman, but there is no firm certainty about this. In one Hittite document from approximately 1420 BC. the western Anatolian state of Wilusa (or Vilusia) appears, along with a settlement called Taruisa, which (so tantalizing!) is mentioned only once in the Hittite archives. If we could give this name an alternative form - Taruya, then we would get similar forms to Homer's Troy and Vilios. However, the modern level of knowledge of Hittite geography does not allow us to go far in developing this attractive hypothesis. In any case, it can be said that as our knowledge of Late Bronze Age geography increases, there is no evidence that Homer was wrong, and some evidence supports his story. Let's go to Hisarlik in the hope of getting an answer to the question: did Hisarlik-Troy become the center of this story only in the late Bronze Age or has it always been the main point of the Greek epic of Troy?

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"Sacred Ilion": Homer on the topography of Troy

How long has Troy been involved in this story? In other words, was this always the story of a city located near the Dardanelles, in the region since called Troas? This question needs to be asked because it has often been stated that the singers introduced the Trojan landscape into older stories, such as the Mycenaean sack of Thebes or the Achaean attack on Egypt as described in the Odyssey. To to a certain extent it does not matter what date we assign to the poem, or whether the tale was composed in Ionia in 730 BC. or recorded from the words of the Chios singers around 550 BC. Whatever date we choose, we are interested in the period of existence of the colony of Aeolian Greeks, founded on Hisarlik in the 8th century. BC We have seen evidence in the tale of the Locridian girls that this place dates back to before 70 BC. was associated with the legend about the Greek campaign against Troy. Even if one assumes, as many do, that the singer named Homer actually visited the Aeolian colony at Ilion shortly after its founding (around 750 BC), one would have to explain why inconspicuous little Ilion ended up at the center of the Greek national epic . Those who categorically deny the historicity of the Trojan War do not find an answer to this question. What we don't know for sure is whether they were still visible on Hisarlik around 730 BC. remains of Bronze Age buildings (Troy VI-VII). But if the epic legend, which dates back to the end of the Bronze Age, tells of the assault on the real

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Noah citadel of that time, why shouldn’t traces of this event be preserved in Homer’s description?
As we have seen, the first travelers to Troas were convinced that the poet was telling what he saw himself. Indeed, from the top of Hisarlik you can see the island of Samothraki. “So Homer said, and so it is,” said Alexander Kinglake. Nobody disputed general geography edges - islands, Dardanelles, Mount Ida and so on, but other aspects of Homeric topography caused (and still cause) controversy. For example, the double spring of hot and cold water under the western wall - perhaps the most precise of the topographical landmarks mentioned by Homer - was not found and mistakenly led such an astute explorer as Lechevalier to the Forty Eyes spring at Bunarbashi. Schliemann actually found 200 yards from western wall on Gissarlik there are traces of a spring that was blocked long ago by an earthquake, although it is quite possible that the poet combined the source from Bunarbashi with the one from Gissarlik for poetic effect. Of course, the point is not in the “accuracy” of Homer as a topographer, but in the powerful influence of his poetry! When looking at any evidence, the expectation is too strong that all these epithets and details will coincide with what is on earth, but is it possible that, just as traces of the Bronze Age were preserved in some places of the poem, something was preserved in the poem itself? Three?!
The general epithets that Homer uses when describing Troy, of course, do not seem inappropriate - “strong-walled, highly fortified, rich in horses” and so on. But none of them are

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appears to be linguistically ancient. Words about horse breeding, for example, attracted the attention of archaeologists, because their finds of many horse bones suggested that horse breeding was a characteristic occupation of the population of the Trojan plain in the Bronze Age (as well as later). But the phrase itself does not date from the Mycenaean period, although the memories are apparently ancient. Well built walls, strong towers and wide streets, which so impressed Dörpfeld in Troy VI, can, of course, be attributed to Hisarlik of the late Bronze Age in to a greater extent, than to any other fortress in the Aegean world, but Homer uses these epithets for other cities. But “windy” is interesting. The word is used to describe only one other place - Enispa1, and it certainly applies to Hisarlik, as anyone who has stood on a hill under the pressure of the north wind knows. But this epithet does not yet mean that we have touched the Bronze Age. The description of Ilion as "sacred" is noteworthy and raises a particular linguistic problem: the word used comes from Aeolia, the northwestern Aegean region, and may well belong to the ancient linguistic layer of the tale, although perhaps not from the Mycenaean era. Nevertheless, the finds of cult idols at the gates of Troy VI on Hisarlik suggest that the city could remain in the memory of posterity as sacred.
It is a pity that Homer was not more precise in describing the position of the citadel relative to the sea, since

1 The Russian translation uses the epithet “stormy”. - Approx. translation

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ku latest discoveries showed that in the Bronze Age Hisarlik was truly a cape surrounded by seas. At the time of Troy II, the ramp found by Schliemann led to a narrow strip of plain and to the sea, to a wide bay cut between two capes. By the time of Troy VI the sea was probably within a mile of the hill, and Troy was the main port at the mouth of the Dardanelles, which, like Miletus and Ephesus, eventually silted up. This defining discovery changes the content of the entire history of Troy-Hissarlik in a direction previously incomprehensible (although the existence of the bay was assumed by ancient authors and early modern explorers such as Wood). Homer's topographical indications are somewhat vague, although two details are obvious - the seething Scamander running down to the "wide bay of the sea" and the ships turning from the Hellespont to enter "Ilion". We cannot say that Homer's topography is more similar to that of the Late Bronze Age than to the topography of his time, although some geomorphologists, after studying new data, believe that this is quite possible.
Poetic language, used in descriptions of Troy and Ilion, is, of course, not limited to phrases with epithets like “high-walled Troy.” It contains some archaic elements that cannot be precisely dated, such as the strange preposition "proti" and digamma (the letter W, missing from later Greek) in Wilios, the original form of Ilios [Ilion]. By general impression linguists, the legend was gradually shortened, and its phraseology was improved,

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to achieve extreme efficiency using a very small vocabulary - important evidence that the poem of Troy was retold many times before taking the form of the present Iliad. But what linguists cannot say is how many generations of singers translated the poem - ten, twenty?
To summarize: oral poetry existed in the Mycenaean era, sometimes its echoes are heard in the Iliad, but a significant part of Homer's vocabulary belongs to a later time. But, of course, fragments of a hypothetical Mycenaean saga may exist in Homeric epic completely independent of vocabulary and style. The most impressive example is the famous boar's tusk helmet. Although it is clearly Mycenaean, there is nothing ancient about the manner in which Homer describes it. This reminds us that an archaic style could disappear from a text transmitted in this way, even if the accuracy of the descriptions remained. Finally, let's look again at three fragments of Homer's description of Troy that may go back to the Bronze Age and that the singers of Homer's time may not have known about. None of them contain any linguistic features that are certainly ancient. All contain details that could have been extracted from descriptions of the authentic Bronze Age siege of Hisarlik.
1. Sloping walls of Troy: “Three times Patroclus climbed the corner of a high wall”1 (“Iliad”, XVI, 702).

1 Three times Meneti's son ran up high walls - translated by N. Gnedich. - Approx. translation

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Does this description give a characteristic feature of the architecture of Troy? Blegen noted in the report that there were sections in the wall where the blocks were not ground tightly, and his workers easily climbed the wall in this way. (Only the top courses of the masonry walls of Troy VI were visible in the 8th century BC, “so damaged by wind and rain that they could hardly be recognized as a once beautiful structure,” wrote Dörpfeld.)
2. “The great Ilion went to the tower...” (“Iliad”, VI, 386). This tower stood on the side of the main gate of Troy. From the subtext we conclude that it could be a place of reconciliation - Andromache goes here, and not to the temple of Athena. The south gate of Troy VI, if there was one at all, was undoubtedly the main gate of the Late Bronze Age city, the "Scaean Gate". We now know that the plain was then a bay, and it seems reasonable for the main gate to face landward. There is no archaeological evidence of a main gate on the bay side. At the side of the southern gate of Troy stood a huge tower made of carefully joined limestone blocks. It was built around the main altar, outside there were six pedestals (for cult idols?) and a place for sacrifices. It seems that the phrase “The great Ilion went to the tower...” preserves the memory of Troy VI.
3. Perhaps the most accurate memory is part of the wall “at the fig tree: there is especially a city there

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approachable to enemies and the ascent to the stronghold is convenient” (“Iliad”, VI, 343). The legend about the “weak” wall (obviously in the West) has received archaeological confirmation. Dörpfeld found that all the walls had been renovated, with the exception of a short section of old construction on the west side.
It seems fair to conclude that the tale of Troy predates the Iliad, at least by the time it took the Ionian singers to create a wide and complex, but subtle and economical set of epithets and formulations characterizing Ilion, Troy and the Trojans. There is every reason to believe, as Martin Nilsson did in his classic study Homer and Mycenae (1933), that the march on Troy is the founding event of the myth and must go back to the Bronze Age. But there were also non-Homeric, continental versions of the origin of the saga, which suggested that the legend should be dated to the final part of the era of migration. From this point of view, the plot is pushed back to a time before the Aeolian Greek settlement of Troas and the refounding of Greek Ilion, the earliest date of which may be around 750 BC. Only the strange story of the Locrida girls suggests the existence of any connection between the Greeks and Troas, or at least interest in it in the “dark ages.” There are no historical or archaeological clues to explain the possibility of creating the legend of Troy in the period between the end of the Bronze Age and the 8th century. BC This is one of the arguments that, in my opinion, refute the attempt of a number of scientists to deny the connection between the sayings

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Prepared according to the edition:

In the Iliad and Odyssey, Troy is described as a vast settlement, protected by powerful walls and towers. Inside the fortress there is enough space not only for numerous citizens, but also for large number allies gathered to help the city repel the attack of the Achaeans. The fortress could house their horses, chariots and all the equipment they needed in battle. Analyzing Homer's descriptions of the city, scientists estimate that it could accommodate more than 50 thousand people. There were wide streets, and at the top of the citadel, next to the "beautiful" palace of King Priam, there was an open agora(square).

The dimensions of the main palace were enormous: in addition to the halls for state meetings with porticoes made of carefully fitted hewn stones and the king’s personal chambers (megara, there is no detailed description of them in the poems), there were 50 rooms in the palace where the sons of Priam lived with their married wives. Apparently, across the courtyard from them were the chambers of the daughters of Priam and their husbands - these are 12 more rooms, the walls of which were also made of perfectly processed stone. There were other palaces nearby, including one consisting of many rooms home Hector - very comfortable, with spacious halls (megara). Nearby stood a beautiful house where Alexander, or Paris, lived with the beautiful Elena. He built it himself, assisted by the best builders and craftsmen that could be found in Troy. His thalamos(perhaps these were Elena’s chambers), a hall and a courtyard. IN megaron Elena usually worked at the loom. Another palace house, consisting of several rooms (domata), belonged to Priam's son Deiphobus, who married Helen after the death of Alexander. When the Achaeans emerged from the wooden horse and captured Troy, Odysseus and Menelaus went straight to this house, killed Deiphobus and regained the beautiful-haired Helen.

Homer also mentions some public buildings. One of them is the Temple of Athena in the upper part of the city. It contained a figure of the seated goddess Athena. When Hecuba and the elderly women of Troy prayed to the goddess that Diomedes would be thrown back from the city walls, they placed expensive clothes on her lap. In the “sacred Pergamon” in the very heart of the fortress there was a similar temple, only built in honor of Apollo. The complex of this temple included a spacious and rich inner temple (aditon), where Leto and Artemis healed the wounds of Aeneas, and Apollo filled his heart with courage. There may have been a council chamber somewhere in the city - at least Hector speaks to the elders and councilors, who probably held some kind of secret meeting place.

Homer's poems say almost nothing about the plan of the city. The defensive wall is also described very sparingly, although we learn that it was a reliable structure made from ordinary building blocks.

At certain distances there were high towers on the wall. One of them was called the Great Tower of Ilion and, apparently, was near or somewhere near the Scaean Gate. It was there that the assembled elders of the city, eloquent as cicadas on a tree, admired the beauty of Helen as she left the house, sat down next to her father-in-law Priam and told him the names of several heroes who stood out in the ranks of the Achaeans: King Agamemnon, son of Atreus; the cunning and resourceful Odysseus; huge and mighty Ajax. But in vain she searched among the warriors for her twin brothers - Castor and Pollux. She did not know that the sword of fate had already fallen on their heads and that they were already buried in the land of Lacedaemon.

It was to the Great Tower of Ilion near the Scaean Gate that Andromache went with her little son and his nanny. It was there that Hector found them and said goodbye to them before the battle. The road to the valley passed through this gate, and Priam rode through it in his chariot when he went to watch the duel between Paris and Menelaus. It was there, outside the gates of the fortress, that the villainous fate left Hector, who alone had to fight Achilles, while Hector’s comrades hid behind the walls of the city.

The Iliad mentions the Dardanian Gate three times; it probably received its name from the name of the area to which the road that passed through it led. Dardania was located quite far to the south from Troy, on the slopes of Mount Ida, “where there were many springs.” In the poem, the goddess Hera ridicules the Achaeans, saying that without Achilles they are helpless: when he participated in the battle, the Trojans were afraid to even leave the Dardanian Gate, and in his absence they dared to get to the ships. Running just past the Dardanian Gate, Hector sought refuge in it three times in vain, pursued by Achilles. And when Hector was killed and Achilles, tying his body to a chariot, dragged him through the dust, it was from the Dardanian Gate that Priam was going to emerge to ask for decent treatment of the body of the fallen. Only with difficulty did the Trojans manage to persuade the king not to do this.

It is obvious that in addition to the two gates whose names are known, there were other gates in Troy. In any case, this is evidenced by the following episode from the second book of the Iliad: on the advice of the messenger of the gods, Iris, Hector ordered the Trojans and their allies to line up in order to bring everyone out in battle order; “all the gates were open” and the soldiers went out through them. Of course, this means that there were more than two gates in the city. Using the plural of a word pylai is not surprising - undoubtedly, this is due to the fact that the gate usually consisted of two leaves, each of which was fixed on an axis and opened in its own direction.

In Homer we read that the city wall had three corners. Along the ridge of one of them, Patroclus tried to climb the wall three times, and all three times Apollo did not allow him to do this. Maybe in in this case we're talking about about the well-known characteristic protrusions on great wall Troy VI and Vila?

One of the oddities about the city was that it had two names. In the Iliad and Odyssey it is called either Troy or Ilion. Perhaps the name “Troy” came from the name of the entire area adjacent to the city - Troas, and “Ilion” was the actual name of the city. However, in Homer's poems such a distinction is not visible, and both names are used to refer to the same city. In the Iliad, the name Ilium appears 106 times - twice as often as Troy (it is mentioned 50 times). In the Odyssey the ratio is different: Troy - 25 times, Ilion - 19 times. In the ancient period and later, the city that existed on the site of ancient Troy again began to be called Ilion.

Despite the fact that Homer's poems, as we have seen, do not provide any systematic description of the city, quite a lot of information contains definitions that often appear next to one or another of its names. So, with the name “Ilion” 11 is used different definitions, and with “Troy” - only 10. Only one of them - euteicheos(behind a powerful fortress wall) - used to describe both cities: Troy - 2 times, Ilion - 4 times. This the only exception, and in other cases, descriptions of one city are never used when characterizing another - and this despite the similarity of the descriptions in essence.

Troy is a “wide-spread city”, “with spacious streets”; surrounded by fortress walls, above which rise “beautiful towers”, within the walls there are “large gates”; This " great city", "city of Priam", "city of the Trojans". In addition, the city has “good fertile land.”

Ilion is “sacred”; “unique” and “inimitable”; " terrifying"; but at the same time a “well-built” city in which it is “comfortable to live”, although “strong winds blow” there. He is also “handsome” and famous for his “good foals.”

The last thought is confirmed by the following description of the inhabitants of Troy used in the Iliad (out of 16 definitions - most often than others): 19 times the author calls them hippodamoi- “horse wrestlers.” Like a word eupolos- “having good foals” (characterizes exclusively Ilion), it is never used in poems in relation to any other people except the Trojans. However, it should be noted that the definition hippodamoi applied to nine heroes due to their ability to handle horses (Antenor, Atreus, Castor, Diomedes, Hector, Hippasus, Hypenor, Tarasimedes, Tydeus). Thus, it becomes clear that the inhabitants of Troy were known for their ability to break horses and own good horses.

Among other definitions characterizing the Trojans, the words are used more or less often in the Iliad: megathymoi –“brave”, “courageous” (11 times); hypertymoi – very close in meaning to the previous adjective (occurs 7 times); agerochoi“noble” (5 times); hyperphialoi– “arrogant”, “arrogant” (4 times); agavoi -“famous”, “famous” (3 times); megaletores –“generous” (2 times). Mentioned once each: agenores- "brave"; hyperenoreontes –"domineering" and hybhstanai- “disdainful”, “contemptuous”. All nine epithets listed above belong to one semantic series and indicate that the Trojans were proud and arrogant people.

The remaining definitions applied to the Trojans in the Iliad are neutral, purely descriptive: “with shields” (4 times); “in cuirass” and “loving to fight” (3 times each); “wear bronze jewelry” (2 times); “spearmen” (1 time). The author also names them once each eupheneis- “rich”, “prosperous”.

To characterize individual characters - both the Achaeans and the Trojans - definitions are usually also used. Many of them are not individualized and can be applied to any warrior of either one or the other warring side. However, there are a number of definitions used strictly individually to specific people. As a rule, they emphasize some feature of a person’s character, behavior or appearance. For example, King Priam apparently had a spear with an ash shaft. Therefore, when describing Priam, the author uses the word eummeles- “with a good ash spear.” In the Iliad, this definition applies only to the Trojans - Priam, the son (or sons) of Pantos, and to no one else. Achilles also had a spear with an ash shaft, but it is called differently - melie, Moreover, this definition applies only to this spear. Achilles has a kind of monopoly on one more adjective - podarkes –“swift-footed”, as well as the expression podas okus, meaning the same as podarkes(except for a single case in the Odyssey). Certain words are also used to describe Hector - korythaiolos- “in a shiny helmet” and chalkokorystes –"in a bronze helmet." In the poems they are used in relation to him alone. Alexander is called “the husband of Helen the Fair-haired” 6 times. His brother Deiphobus is distinguished by a “white shield”. Agamemnon, Odysseus, Patroclus, Ajax, Nestor and almost all other heroes are described using characteristic expressive means.

In general, these fragmentary pieces of information scattered throughout the text of Homer’s poems about Troy and the Trojans (as well as about the Achaeans) are clearly not enough to create a complete picture. In addition, this information, as a rule, is general and not specific. This is very typical of epic poems, where the author, using fiction, tells about states, kings and peoples. On the other hand, as we have seen, the texts contain quite a lot of information that the author could hardly have simply made up.

The brilliant achievements of several people with outstanding intelligence and abilities made a deep impression on their contemporaries and descendants, which cannot be ignored when studying the poems of Homer and the history of the Aegean states of the late Bronze Age. Perhaps the highlight of the region's exploration was the 1952 discovery by Michael Ventris of clay tablets from Knossos and Pylos inscribed in Linear B, an ancient syllabary. Greek language. Thus, it becomes clear that the Greek language was used in the palace of the Mycenaean civilization.

In fact, long before this, Martin Nilsson had noted that almost all major groups of Greek myths centered around palaces or large cities that flourished during the Mycenaean civilization. He also provided convincing evidence that the origin Greek mythology must be dated to that period.

Meanwhile, Milman Parry, in a series of works that examined this issue in detail, came to the conclusion that both the Iliad and the Odyssey are largely built on the combination of numerous formulaic phrases that originally appeared in oral poetry. Before the lyrics were written down, they were passed down almost unchanged by word of mouth from one generation of traveling singers to another.

Just recently, Dennis Page provided further evidence that many linguistic features The two poems are in fact the preserved almost unchanged heritage of the Achaean or Mycenaean dialect of the era of the Mycenaean civilization: the epithets used and characteristics of people and places were created by wandering singers who saw it all with their own eyes, familiar with the places, culture and main characters whose glorious deeds they sang. During and after wars, they sang their songs and poems in the palaces of kings who participated in military campaigns. Moreover, as evidence to support his conclusions, Professor Page cited all the archaeological finds relating to the Mycenaean civilization, the Trojan War and the problems reflected in the poems of Homer.

Taking into account the state of our knowledge of that period, there is no longer any doubt that the Trojan War is a real historical fact, that it was fought by a coalition of Achaeans (Mycenaeans) led by Agamemnon; that they fought against the inhabitants of Troy and their allies. In later periods, popular memory greatly increased the scope and duration of the war. In addition, the number of participants in epic poems tends to be exaggerated. It is safe to say that large and small episodes are also fictional and included in the narrative in subsequent centuries. However - and this was brilliantly demonstrated by Professor Page - even without the presence archaeological finds The evidence contained in the text of the Iliad itself (including numerous linguistic features preserved from those times) is quite sufficient not only to demonstrate that historical facts underlie the traditional campaigns against Troy, but also to show that that many of the characters in the poems (though probably not all) had their prototypes in real life. Apparently, the traveling singers observed these people in various historical situations, and the resulting impressions were later reflected in their stories.

In the Iliad and Odyssey, Troy is described as a vast settlement, protected by powerful walls and towers. Inside the fortress there is enough space not only for numerous townspeople, but also for a large number of allies who gathered to help the city repel the attack of the Achaeans. The fortress could house their horses, chariots and all the equipment they needed in battle. Analyzing Homer's descriptions of the city, scientists estimate that it could accommodate more than 50 thousand people. There were wide streets, and at the top of the citadel, next to the "beautiful" palace of King Priam, there was an open agora(square).

The dimensions of the main palace were enormous: in addition to the halls for state meetings with porticoes made of carefully fitted hewn stones and the king’s personal chambers (megara, there is no detailed description of them in the poems), there were 50 rooms in the palace where the sons of Priam lived with their married wives. Apparently, across the courtyard from them were the chambers of the daughters of Priam and their husbands - these are 12 more rooms, the walls of which were also made of perfectly processed stone. There were other palaces nearby, including one consisting of many rooms home Hector - very comfortable, with spacious halls (megara). Nearby stood a beautiful house where Alexander, or Paris, lived with the beautiful Elena. He built it himself, assisted by the best builders and craftsmen that could be found in Troy. His thalamos(perhaps these were Elena’s chambers), a hall and a courtyard. IN megaron Elena usually worked at the loom. Another palace house, consisting of several rooms (domata), belonged to Priam's son Deiphobus, who married Helen after the death of Alexander. When the Achaeans emerged from the wooden horse and captured Troy, Odysseus and Menelaus went straight to this house, killed Deiphobus and regained the beautiful-haired Helen.

Homer also mentions some public buildings. One of them is the Temple of Athena in the upper part of the city. It contained a figure of the seated goddess Athena. When Hecuba and the elderly women of Troy prayed to the goddess that Diomedes would be thrown back from the city walls, they placed expensive clothes on her lap. In the “sacred Pergamon” in the very heart of the fortress there was a similar temple, only built in honor of Apollo. This temple complex included a spacious and rich inner temple (aditon), where Leto and Artemis healed the wounds of Aeneas, and Apollo filled his heart with courage. There may have been a council chamber somewhere in the city - at least Hector speaks to the elders and councilors, who probably held some kind of secret meeting place.

Homer's poems say almost nothing about the plan of the city. The defensive wall is also described very sparingly, although we learn that it was a reliable structure made from ordinary building blocks.

At certain distances there were high towers on the wall. One of them was called the Great Tower of Ilion and, apparently, was near or somewhere near the Scaean Gate. It was there that the assembled elders of the city, eloquent as cicadas on a tree, admired the beauty of Helen as she left the house, sat down next to her father-in-law Priam and told him the names of several heroes who stood out in the ranks of the Achaeans: King Agamemnon, son of Atreus; the cunning and resourceful Odysseus; huge and mighty Ajax. But in vain she searched among the warriors for her twin brothers - Castor and Pollux. She did not know that the sword of fate had already fallen on their heads and that they were already buried in the land of Lacedaemon.

It was to the Great Tower of Ilion near the Scaean Gate that Andromache went with her little son and his nanny. It was there that Hector found them and said goodbye to them before the battle. The road to the valley passed through this gate, and Priam rode through it in his chariot when he went to watch the duel between Paris and Menelaus. It was there, outside the gates of the fortress, that the villainous fate left Hector, who alone had to fight Achilles, while Hector’s comrades hid behind the walls of the city.

The Iliad mentions the Dardanian Gate three times; it probably received its name from the name of the area to which the road that passed through it led. Dardania was located quite far to the south from Troy, on the slopes of Mount Ida, “where there were many springs.” In the poem, the goddess Hera ridicules the Achaeans, saying that without Achilles they are helpless: when he participated in the battle, the Trojans were afraid to even leave the Dardanian Gate, and in his absence they dared to get to the ships. Running just past the Dardanian Gate, Hector sought refuge in it three times in vain, pursued by Achilles. And when Hector was killed and Achilles, tying his body to a chariot, dragged him through the dust, it was from the Dardanian Gate that Priam was going to emerge to ask for decent treatment of the body of the fallen. Only with difficulty did the Trojans manage to persuade the king not to do this.

It is obvious that in addition to the two gates whose names are known, there were other gates in Troy. In any case, this is evidenced by the following episode from the second book of the Iliad: on the advice of the messenger of the gods, Iris, Hector ordered the Trojans and their allies to line up in order to bring everyone out in battle order; “all the gates were open” and the soldiers went out through them. Of course, this means that there were more than two gates in the city. Using the plural of a word pylai is not surprising - undoubtedly, this is due to the fact that the gate usually consisted of two leaves, each of which was fixed on an axis and opened in its own direction.

In Homer we read that the city wall had three corners. Along the ridge of one of them, Patroclus tried to climb the wall three times, and all three times Apollo did not allow him to do this. Maybe in this case we are talking about the well-known characteristic projections on the great wall of Troy VI and Vila?

One of the oddities about the city was that it had two names. In the Iliad and Odyssey it is called either Troy or Ilion. Perhaps the name “Troy” came from the name of the entire area adjacent to the city - Troas, and “Ilion” was the actual name of the city. However, in Homer's poems such a distinction is not visible, and both names are used to refer to the same city. In the Iliad, the name Ilium appears 106 times - twice as often as Troy (it is mentioned 50 times). In the Odyssey the ratio is different: Troy - 25 times, Ilion - 19 times. In the ancient period and later, the city that existed on the site of ancient Troy again began to be called Ilion.

Despite the fact that Homer’s poems, as we have seen, do not provide any systematic description of the city, quite a lot of information contains definitions that often appear next to one or another of its names. Thus, with the name “Ilion” 11 different definitions are used, and with “Troy” - only 10. Only one of them is euteicheos(behind a powerful fortress wall) - used to describe both cities: Troy - 2 times, Ilion - 4 times. This is the only exception, and in other cases, descriptions of one city are never used when characterizing another - and this despite the similarity of the descriptions in essence.

Troy is a “wide-spread city”, “with spacious streets”; surrounded by fortress walls, above which rise “beautiful towers”, within the walls there are “large gates”; this is the “great city”, “the city of Priam”, “the city of the Trojans”. In addition, the city has “good fertile land.”

Ilion is “sacred”; “unique” and “inimitable”; "terrifying"; but at the same time a “well-built” city in which it is “comfortable to live”, although “strong winds blow” there. He is also “handsome” and famous for his “good foals.”

The last thought is confirmed by the following description of the inhabitants of Troy used in the Iliad (out of 16 definitions - most often than others): 19 times the author calls them hippodamoi- “horse wrestlers.” Like a word eupolos- “having good foals” (characterizes exclusively Ilion), it is never used in poems in relation to any other people except the Trojans. However, it should be noted that the definition hippodamoi applied to nine heroes due to their ability to handle horses (Antenor, Atreus, Castor, Diomedes, Hector, Hippasus, Hypenor, Tarasimedes, Tydeus). Thus, it becomes clear that the inhabitants of Troy were known for their ability to break horses and own good horses.

Among other definitions characterizing the Trojans, the words are used more or less often in the Iliad: megathymoi –“brave”, “courageous” (11 times); hypertymoi – very close in meaning to the previous adjective (occurs 7 times); agerochoi“noble” (5 times); hyperphialoi– “arrogant”, “arrogant” (4 times); agavoi -“famous”, “famous” (3 times); megaletores –“generous” (2 times). Mentioned once each: agenores- "brave"; hyperenoreontes –"domineering" and hybhstanai- “disdainful”, “contemptuous”. All nine epithets listed above belong to the same semantic series and indicate that the Trojans were proud and arrogant people.

The remaining definitions applied to the Trojans in the Iliad are neutral, purely descriptive: “with shields” (4 times); “in cuirass” and “loving to fight” (3 times each); “wear bronze jewelry” (2 times); “spearmen” (1 time). The author also names them once each eupheneis- “rich”, “prosperous”.

To characterize individual characters - both the Achaeans and the Trojans - definitions are usually also used. Many of them are not individualized and can be applied to any warrior of either one or the other warring side. However, there are a number of definitions that are used strictly individually to specific people. As a rule, they emphasize some feature of a person’s character, behavior or appearance. For example, King Priam apparently had a spear with an ash shaft. Therefore, when describing Priam, the author uses the word eummeles- “with a good ash spear.” In the Iliad, this definition applies only to the Trojans - Priam, the son (or sons) of Pantos, and to no one else. Achilles also had a spear with an ash shaft, but it is called differently - melie, Moreover, this definition applies only to this spear. Achilles has a kind of monopoly on one more adjective - podarkes –“swift-footed”, as well as the expression podas okus, meaning the same as podarkes(except for a single case in the Odyssey). Certain words are also used to describe Hector - korythaiolos- “in a shiny helmet” and chalkokorystes –"in a bronze helmet." In the poems they are used in relation to him alone. Alexander is called “the husband of Helen the Fair-haired” 6 times. His brother Deiphobus is distinguished by a “white shield”. Agamemnon, Odysseus, Patroclus, Ajax, Nestor and almost all other heroes are described using characteristic expressive means.

In general, these fragmentary pieces of information scattered throughout the text of Homer’s poems about Troy and the Trojans (as well as about the Achaeans) are clearly not enough to create a complete picture. In addition, this information, as a rule, is general and not specific. This is very typical of epic poems, where the author, using fiction, tells about states, kings and peoples. On the other hand, as we have seen, the texts contain quite a lot of information that the author could hardly have simply made up.

The brilliant achievements of several people with outstanding intelligence and abilities made a deep impression on their contemporaries and descendants, which cannot be ignored when studying the poems of Homer and the history of the Aegean states of the late Bronze Age. Perhaps the highlight of the region's exploration was Michael Ventris' 1952 discovery of clay tablets from Knossos and Pylos inscribed in Linear B, the ancient syllabary of Greek. Thus, it becomes clear that the Greek language was used in the palace of the Mycenaean civilization.

In fact, long before this, Martin Nilsson had noted that almost all major groups of Greek myths centered around palaces or large cities that flourished during the Mycenaean civilization. He also made a compelling case that the origins of Greek mythology must be placed in that period.

Meanwhile, Milman Parry, in a series of works that examined this issue in detail, came to the conclusion that both the Iliad and the Odyssey are largely built on the combination of numerous formulaic phrases that originally appeared in oral poetry. Before the lyrics were written down, they were passed down almost unchanged by word of mouth from one generation of traveling singers to another.

More recently, Dennis Page has demonstrated further evidence that many of the linguistic features of the two poems are in fact the almost unchanged legacy of the Achaean or Mycenaean dialect of the Mycenaean civilization: the epithets used and the characteristics of people and places were created by wandering singers who saw it all with their own eyes, familiar with the places , culture and the main characters whose glorious exploits they sang. During and after wars, they sang their songs and poems in the palaces of kings who participated in military campaigns. Moreover, as evidence to support his conclusions, Professor Page cited all the archaeological finds relating to the Mycenaean civilization, the Trojan War and the problems reflected in the poems of Homer.

Taking into account the state of our knowledge of that period, there is no longer any doubt that the Trojan War is a real historical fact, that it was fought by a coalition of Achaeans (Mycenaeans) led by Agamemnon; that they fought against the inhabitants of Troy and their allies. In later periods, popular memory greatly increased the scope and duration of the war. In addition, the number of participants in epic poems tends to be exaggerated. It is safe to say that large and small episodes are also fictional and included in the narrative in subsequent centuries. However - and this has been brilliantly demonstrated by Professor Page - even without the presence of archaeological finds, the evidence contained in the text of the Iliad itself (including numerous linguistic features preserved from that time) is quite sufficient not only to demonstrate that the basis of the The tradition of the campaigns against Troy lies in historical facts, but also in order to show that many of the characters in the poems (although probably not all) had their prototypes in real life. Apparently, the traveling singers observed these people in various historical situations, and the resulting impressions were later reflected in their stories.