I was watching Brad Pitt’s horrible portrayal of Achilles last night…aside from his wooden acting, I was wondering: how much of Homer’s tale is factual?
I know the German archaeologist Schliemann devoted his life to finding the site of Troy. He did excavate a bronze-age city that he thought was Homer’s Troy-but I understand that modern archaeologists are skeptical. Is there any other confirmation that King Priam, Paris, Helen, Agamemnon, etc, were real people? Or is Homer’s tale mostly legend?
Nope, Schliemann really did find Troy. He was a bit of a jerk himself, but he utterly humiliated the historian’s clique around the world wth that one.
Honestly, though, The Illiad is the sole record that we have of it. It appears likely that at least some of it is based on real experiences and real battles. But hwo much is something we cannot say.
Way to hurt Mr Pitt’s feelings
Not to mention Achilles’.
Bet you feel like a heel now.
There’s some evidence that Homer had some knowledge of Bronze-Age geography. Some of the places he names existed in the Mycenean period but not into Homer’s own time (he lived some 400 years after the supposed time of the Trojan War). Troy was probably one of these, though the evidence that its the same place as the city Schliemann found is pretty circumstantial.
So some actual information was apparently passed from Mycenean times down to Homer. On the other hand, most of the Illiad is pretty obviously a myth, so how much information beyond some historic place-names were passed down to Homer is anyones guess.
Personally, I’m pretty skeptical. So much of the Illiad is obviously fabricated that it hardly seems a stretch to say that much of the stuff that isn’t obviously fabricated could very well be made-up as well.
The alleged date of the Trojan War coincides with fire evidence in Troy’s ruins, and coincides with the Era of the Sea Peoples in the Eastern Mediterranean. Since Troy has an extremely strategic location (right at the mouth of the Dardanelles), there must have been important battles fought over that citadel about that time, though any details may be fictional.
Virgil took up the story where Homer left off, Aeneas fleeing Troy to found the Etruscan city of Rome. Is there not increasing evidence that the Etruscans did indeed come from the east about that time? For example, the cows of Tuscany share a genetic signature with the cows of an Anatolian region. (Again, I’m not claiming any details in The Aeneid are correct!)
A wonderful book I purchased recently is Europe between the oceans (9000 BC - 1000 AD) by Barry Cunliffe. It’s a must-buy for anyone interested in European prehistory. (Though of little use to questions like OP’s, as it “errs” on the side of being too factual, rather than too fantastical! 
)
Stop it. Just stop it.
Not long ago, we had a debate among historians in Germany wrt the importance and status of the historical settlements that are labelled Troia (Troy) VI/VII – which are the Bronze Age towns that are usually considered to be the most likely candidates for Homer’s Troy. The Korfmann-Kolb-controversy (named after the archeologist Manfred Korfmann who had led excavations at Troy for over a decade and the ancient historian Frank Kolb) was unusually grim and staged not just within the scientific community but also in public.
And though we are beyond the point in research where Homer’s Iliad should have meaning for a debate about historical reality, it became an item when prominent experts, like the classical philologist Joachim Latacz, couldn’t withstand the temptation to compare the results of the excavations to Homer’s epic.
In case you see a term spelled strangely, please remember that I am used to the German variants of ancient words.
Homer’s Iliad
Homer lived during the 8th century BC, the Iliad might have been written down around 730 BC, the Trojan War, however, took place in the 13th century – 500 hundred years before the written text.
Obviously, Homer knew about the war through lore; and though he might indeed have intended to tell a tale about ancient events, the culture he described was a much younger one, more similar to his day than the Bronze Age. This is perfectly normal; the Arthurian legends or the Nibelungenlied (The Song of the Nibelungs) also deal with events of an older era but culture and society of the tales are closer to the ones during the period in which the stories were told, so that the audience could easily relate to them (and be educated properly).
We know that Greece had been in a dark period before and around Homer’s time; even writing, the technique itself, had most likely been lost – and the Iliad might have been one of the first examples of the recovery of the culture of writing. Such circumstances mean that Homer was inspired by oral tradition and most likely a plethora of variants in style, content and intent.
Homer tells us that the city was located at the Hellespont (Dardanelles) close to the river Skamandros; it was in clear view from the highest mountain on the isle Samothrace (13th song). The town was encircled by a mighty wall and a tower was placed close to the Scaean Gate to allow the Trojans to observe the plain stretching out in front of this part of the wall.
We are also told that Troy had a lower city (something like that is often called suburbium by historians) for the citizenry and an upper area for the aristocracy and important buildings. The town Homer described was the residence of a wealthy king and a thriving trading place, a metropolis of its time.
When Schliemann started his research, it was known that the hill His(s)arlik had been considered the location of Troy in the ancient world, but most contemporary historians assumed that the town was far more likely situated near or beneath the present settlement Bunarbaschi (around 8 kilometers to the south of the hill).
Frank Calvert, however, agreed with the ancient point of view and he convinced Schliemann, who started his excavations on October 11th, 1871; he found nine settlements superimposed upon each other in the hill. Priam’s Treasure was not correctly dated by Schliemann, it belonged to Troy II, which didn’t exist in the correct period to be Homer’s Troy – unlike VI and VII.
These settlements are historical fact, they did exist during that time – but is one of them Homer’s Troy and if it is, was the town as important as the epic claims? And how could such knowledge have been preserved over hundreds of years between downfall and rebirth in Homer’s epic?
The Hittites, a major power during the period, had contact with an important centre of trade called Wilusa or Wilios. Researchers have identified the Hellespont as this region; and since the Hittites often gave the centre of power and the region the same name, it’s reasonable to accept that the residency they had contact with was situated there. And most historians agree that this place is identical with the Greek Ilios/Troy; an important piece of evidence is the Alaksandu treaty.
The philologist Joachim Latacz has compared the landscapes described in the epic with the historical topography of the Hellespont and found more congruities between the digsite and the epic; he verified, for example, the line of sight from Samothrace.
Other historians pointed out discrepancies, but there is no evidence that clearly contradicts the preferred location.
So what about the descriptions of the city itself?
It’s hard to deny anymore that a suburbium (undertown) existed during the Bronze Age where His(s)arlik is located; it was not as widespread or densely populated as Korfmann suggested but it was well developed for its time, with houses made of stone, paved streets and a trench within the rock that functioned as a border, drained the area and added an obstacle for attackers. We have also found many artifacts that indicate an at least adequately supplied citizenry and hints at trade that went beyond the region.
There is no archeological evidence that the town was an oriental metropolis like Hattusa, but we can’t deny the possibility that it had far reaching relations with close and more distant cultures. It was, at the very least, well fortified against attackers which might suggest that they had a pressing need to defend themselves against greedy intruders.
We have even found archeological artifacts from that time in the part of the region that, in ancient time, was located close to the sea. That, of course, has excited the more imaginative researchers: “Is this evidence for a temporary Greek settlement?”, they ask. It’s doubtful and little progress has been made in past years. But who knows what we still might find?
To summarize: The descriptions in Homer’s epic point to a location that actually shows archeological evidence for a town at that place that shows many of the claimed characteristics and that came to an end in the correct period of time.
The events are certainly not mere fiction: we know of wars between the people during that time, the sea peoples fit the bill, their impact was so immense that we can be sure about a continued tradition of narration wrt their deeds, even if the real events were distorted or substituted with fictional ones that better served the intentions of the singer.
We also know of the centuries-old frictions among places of trade and residences of waring lords; and other documents of the time verify to some degree the general existence of the opponents of the Trojan War.
But it’s impossible to tell whether an Achill and Hector ever existed. Given our knowledge about the use of epics within a culture, it’s far more likely that characters and events were tailored in a way to address pressing matters of the time. Many studies support this interpretation and emphasize the exemplary and educational value of the Iliad for the bitterly divided and downcast Greek in Homer’s time.
in what way was the debate grim?
Well, we’ll always have Paris.
Well, the brothers Wilhelm and Jakob got involved, on the linguistic side… 
Just realised I’d forgotten to thank wintertime for a very detailed, interesting post.
The controvery started to get heated when Kolb was interviewed by the Berliner Morgenpost, a daily newspaper, in 2001, where he stated about a wooden model that Korfmann had built to visualize the ancient Troy: „Das Modell ist eine Fiktion: Traum, nicht Rekonstruktion“ (The model is fiction: a dream, not a reconstruction). He also called any presentation of Troy as anything similar to Homer’s epic a „mediale(r) Heißluftballon“ (a hot-air balloon intended for the media).
And he continued in some other very public interviews with statements that did not call Korfmann’s expertice in question but practically negated it, he called him, among other things, a “Dänikenof archeology”. Nice.
Publicly, Korfmann answered very matter-of-factly at first but his opponent and some others said that he acted far more aggressive behind the curtain.
International colleagues started to chime in and soon both sides were hurling thinly veiled insults at one another. Things got ugly. Since both Korfmann and Kolb belonged to the same university, their superiors tried to solve their dispute or at least get it away from the public’s eye.
That didn’t happen. But some newspapers, like the Frankfurter Allgemeine, helped both sides to return to something akin to an impersonal discussion and an open symposium at the university of Tübingen in February 2002, broadcast by the SWR, seemed to settle the matter.
Of course, nothing was settled within the scientific community – they were just tired of the public interest and the less than favourable comments by other parties.
The disagreement has continued even beyond Korfmann’s death in 2005.
…
Oh, and thanks.
a side question, if I may: why are both “Troy” and “Illium” used to refer to the city?
Ouch! them’s clearly fighting words!
Wintertime, that post was amazing - better than plowing through a dozen old history books.
Well, Troy, or Troia or Τροία and Ilion, Ἴλιον or latin Ilium are alternatives in different languages or synonyms; Homer liked the word Ilion, and the Iliad or rather Iliás is a feminine form of an adjective (I don’t know the correct English term for “Adjektivbildung”) that means related to/associated with Troy or woman of Troy.
Any historical accuracy in the Aeneid is purely coincidental, and anyway the Aeneid has the Trojan refugees showing up in Italy to find it already inhabited.
That part is almost certainly ficitonal.
First, Rome was not really an Etruscan city. It’s imhabitants occupied a literally middle ground of Latium, with the local Latin culture and language, but influenced by the Etruscan and Greek communities of Italy.
Second, the story of the Aeneid dates from much longer after the Homeric epic, and we have no ancient source which even suggests such a thing AFAIK. It’s probably just an outright fable. And Virgil may not have meant it as anything else.
There is no evidence that the culture of Rome ever had anything to do with anyone near Troy.
Early Rome is widely thought to have been dominated by an Etruscan elite for at least a century; many if not most of the Roman Gods are named after Etruscan Gods, etc.
Anyway, who founded Rome wasn’t central to my point. My point was that the Aeneid postulates that the Etruscans (or at least their elites) journeyed from Anatolia to Etruria at about the time of the legendary Trojan War and there is in fact evidence (of which I gave the bovine genetic signature as example) suggesting that that much of the Aeneid might indeed correspond, even if only by coincidence, with fact. I find such hints of historic memories to be tantalizing (although the complexity of that Era makes it hard to connect archaeological dots with any certainty).
If it sounded like I thought the Aeneid was a historical record, then either I miswrote or you misread.