1 00:00:08,107 --> 00:00:12,476 In our search for the Trojan War, we've constantly spoken of Homer. 2 00:00:13,946 --> 00:00:15,743 Homer's epic poem, the "lliad" 3 00:00:15,914 --> 00:00:17,541 tells the tale of the war. 4 00:00:19,585 --> 00:00:22,019 The "lliad" is the beginning of European literature 5 00:00:22,187 --> 00:00:24,917 and yet it's still one of the widest-read books. 6 00:00:26,191 --> 00:00:27,681 Here, penguin books are running off 7 00:00:27,860 --> 00:00:32,422 the 35th printing since 1952 of their translation. 8 00:00:32,765 --> 00:00:37,327 That amounts to about a million copies of just one version into English alone. 9 00:00:37,503 --> 00:00:39,164 So if Homer were still around today, 10 00:00:39,338 --> 00:00:41,169 he'd be a very wealthy man indeed. 11 00:00:41,740 --> 00:00:45,107 The reason he's still read is not because he's a classic 12 00:00:45,344 --> 00:00:48,836 but because he's a great storyteller who uses wonderful language, 13 00:00:49,048 --> 00:00:50,777 even in translation. 14 00:00:51,316 --> 00:00:56,447 He gives us an image of a heroic age which is so vividly realised that, ever since, 15 00:00:56,655 --> 00:01:00,386 the audience have been unable to resist the idea that it's true. 16 00:01:00,893 --> 00:01:05,193 But is there any historical truth behind Homer's tale of Troy? 17 00:01:05,597 --> 00:01:09,124 Did that story go back, as so many people would love to believe, 18 00:01:09,401 --> 00:01:13,701 to a real event in the Bronze Age, a historical Trojan War? 19 00:02:23,642 --> 00:02:26,202 Homer has always been seen as the first 20 00:02:26,378 --> 00:02:28,608 and greatest poet in Western culture. 21 00:02:30,349 --> 00:02:33,614 But what connection, if any, is there between the Greek Homer, 22 00:02:33,785 --> 00:02:36,276 who may have composed in the eighth century BC, 23 00:02:36,622 --> 00:02:39,785 and the Mycenaean bards of the 13th century BC 24 00:02:39,958 --> 00:02:42,620 when the war is supposed to have taken place? 25 00:02:45,831 --> 00:02:49,198 The tale of Troy has been told for two and a half thousand years. 26 00:02:49,568 --> 00:02:54,096 According to the legend, an armada of 1,000 ships came from all over Greece 27 00:02:54,273 --> 00:02:57,572 to try to recover the Greek - or Achaean - queen, Helen, 28 00:02:57,809 --> 00:03:00,437 who had eloped with paris, prince of Troy. 29 00:03:06,752 --> 00:03:09,482 The contingents gathered at Aulis in central Greece. 30 00:03:09,755 --> 00:03:11,552 There, their leader, Agamemnon, 31 00:03:11,757 --> 00:03:13,918 sacrificed his daughter lphigenia 32 00:03:14,126 --> 00:03:16,356 to gain the gods' approval for the war. 33 00:03:18,230 --> 00:03:21,495 After 10 years of siege, the city was destroyed. 34 00:03:22,734 --> 00:03:24,599 Succeeding generations have seen the tale 35 00:03:24,770 --> 00:03:29,002 as an archetypal image of the tragedy of war. 36 00:03:41,220 --> 00:03:43,950 Homer's heroes fought with bronze weapons 37 00:03:44,122 --> 00:03:46,647 but his portrayal of the common sufferings of victors 38 00:03:46,825 --> 00:03:48,986 and vanquished is universal. 39 00:03:50,395 --> 00:03:53,159 It came to mind to one man even in the Western Desert. 40 00:03:53,432 --> 00:03:55,332 General Sir John Hackett. 41 00:03:55,801 --> 00:04:00,261 It's a story about the sort of people I know. 42 00:04:00,472 --> 00:04:01,461 It doesn't matter where they are 43 00:04:01,640 --> 00:04:04,666 or what their nationalities, what environment. 44 00:04:05,077 --> 00:04:06,374 These are fighting people. 45 00:04:06,545 --> 00:04:10,276 They share a lot of the characteristics of people I've known 46 00:04:10,449 --> 00:04:15,113 in circumstances which to me are not by any means unfamiliar. 47 00:04:15,387 --> 00:04:18,652 Does this suggest to you that the facts of the story of Troy 48 00:04:18,824 --> 00:04:21,918 as told by Homer are a mere story, 49 00:04:22,094 --> 00:04:24,722 or could they actually reflect military reality? 50 00:04:24,896 --> 00:04:26,386 Oh, I think so. 51 00:04:26,698 --> 00:04:30,099 I remember outside Mersa Matruh, 52 00:04:30,269 --> 00:04:33,432 when there'd been a battle all day and in the morning. 53 00:04:33,672 --> 00:04:36,436 And in the short night there we were, 54 00:04:36,608 --> 00:04:40,203 and German flares were going up practically all around us. 55 00:04:40,445 --> 00:04:43,812 And we were eating a little, talking a little, 56 00:04:44,082 --> 00:04:47,108 sleeping hardly at all and waiting for the morning. 57 00:04:48,387 --> 00:04:55,520 Now, there's that story about how the campfires of the Achaens and Trojans, 58 00:04:55,727 --> 00:05:00,721 like stars on a still night, twinkled at each other out of the gloom 59 00:05:00,932 --> 00:05:05,392 while the men around them waited for the battle that would begin in the morning. 60 00:05:05,904 --> 00:05:11,103 And I couldn't help asking myself whether the thoughts and feelings 61 00:05:11,276 --> 00:05:13,972 that were in these men's hearts and minds 62 00:05:14,379 --> 00:05:18,679 were very different from those that on that occasion outside Mersa Matruh 63 00:05:18,950 --> 00:05:20,178 I knew were in our own. 64 00:05:27,759 --> 00:05:28,691 Fire! 65 00:05:29,127 --> 00:05:32,062 - Fire! - Fire! 66 00:05:39,071 --> 00:05:41,505 "A thousand fires burned in the plain 67 00:05:41,707 --> 00:05:45,165 "and beside each one were 50 men in the glare of the flames. 68 00:05:46,845 --> 00:05:50,144 "So the Trojans stood to arms all night. 69 00:05:53,418 --> 00:05:57,718 "Meanwhile, immortal panic, companion of cold fear, gripped the Greeks 70 00:05:57,889 --> 00:06:02,189 "as even their best men were stricken with stark terror." 71 00:06:13,872 --> 00:06:15,464 We begin with Troy itself. 72 00:06:16,875 --> 00:06:18,342 Archaeologists have proved 73 00:06:18,510 --> 00:06:22,241 there was an imposing citadel where Homer's tale says, 74 00:06:22,414 --> 00:06:24,405 at the mouth of the Dardanelles. 75 00:06:25,784 --> 00:06:28,981 A royal fortress with well-built gates and towers. 76 00:06:29,621 --> 00:06:30,485 Finds of pottery show 77 00:06:30,655 --> 00:06:33,988 it had trading relations with Agamemnon's Mycenae, 78 00:06:34,426 --> 00:06:36,951 but that doesn't prove Homer's tale is true. 79 00:06:37,429 --> 00:06:41,490 Is there anything in Homer's language which can tell us whether his story 80 00:06:41,666 --> 00:06:45,830 actually goes back 500 years before his day? 81 00:06:49,241 --> 00:06:53,769 We'll start with a text, the one we saw coming hot-foot off the press. 82 00:06:54,112 --> 00:06:57,275 This is translated from modern, printed texts, 83 00:06:57,582 --> 00:06:59,709 and they go back to this great book, 84 00:06:59,885 --> 00:07:02,251 the original printed edition of Homer's "lliad", 85 00:07:02,421 --> 00:07:04,514 done in Florence in 1488. 86 00:07:04,723 --> 00:07:07,021 What a wonderful piece of bookmaking it is. 87 00:07:07,726 --> 00:07:09,785 The Greek scholars who constructed this text 88 00:07:09,961 --> 00:07:12,191 used medieval manuscripts. 89 00:07:12,364 --> 00:07:14,389 Behind those medieval manuscripts lie 90 00:07:14,566 --> 00:07:15,965 Roman papyruses, 91 00:07:16,234 --> 00:07:19,101 preserved in fragments in the sands of Egypt. 92 00:07:19,571 --> 00:07:21,038 But this written tradition 93 00:07:21,206 --> 00:07:25,506 only takes us back about as far as 550 BC. 94 00:07:25,710 --> 00:07:28,611 In other words, 700 years after the Trojan War 95 00:07:28,880 --> 00:07:31,713 and perhaps 200 years after Homer's own time. 96 00:07:32,851 --> 00:07:33,875 There's a problem, then. 97 00:07:34,052 --> 00:07:35,644 Did Homer, whoever he was, 98 00:07:35,821 --> 00:07:37,686 actually write this poem? 99 00:07:38,290 --> 00:07:40,724 The opinion in Roman times was that he didn't, 100 00:07:40,992 --> 00:07:43,893 that the poem had been preserved orally for a long time 101 00:07:44,062 --> 00:07:45,893 before it was committed to writing. 102 00:07:46,164 --> 00:07:49,725 If that's the case, then this text that we know as a book 103 00:07:49,968 --> 00:07:54,667 is actually the record of an oral performance about two and a half millennia old! 104 00:07:54,973 --> 00:07:56,565 The question was how to prove it. 105 00:07:57,209 --> 00:07:59,575 The text of Homer contains features 106 00:07:59,744 --> 00:08:02,542 that aren't explicable if it was written down. 107 00:08:02,881 --> 00:08:04,542 Chief among them are the repetitions. 108 00:08:04,816 --> 00:08:07,546 The text is full of repeated lines, phrases 109 00:08:07,719 --> 00:08:09,016 and even whole chunks. 110 00:08:09,588 --> 00:08:11,556 Among them one special feature 111 00:08:11,823 --> 00:08:13,654 and that is what we call the formulas, 112 00:08:13,825 --> 00:08:17,261 the descriptive tags or epithets applied to the heroes. 113 00:08:17,429 --> 00:08:18,726 "Swift-running Achilles", 114 00:08:18,897 --> 00:08:20,694 "Hector of the bright helmet". 115 00:08:20,899 --> 00:08:23,026 We can just make out one of them here. 116 00:08:23,201 --> 00:08:24,828 "Theos Odysseus", 117 00:08:25,003 --> 00:08:26,595 "Brilliant Odysseus." 118 00:08:26,838 --> 00:08:30,740 And just higher up here, "Great-hearted Odysseus." 119 00:08:30,942 --> 00:08:34,935 An even more interesting group of epithets is applied by Homer to Troy, 120 00:08:35,113 --> 00:08:37,673 which he calls "well-built", "finely-towered", 121 00:08:37,849 --> 00:08:42,786 "beetling", "windy" and "bearing many horses". 122 00:08:42,954 --> 00:08:44,888 Has Homer made up those descriptions 123 00:08:45,056 --> 00:08:47,183 or do they go back before his time, 124 00:08:47,359 --> 00:08:50,021 perhaps to before the end of the Bronze Age? 125 00:08:50,228 --> 00:08:53,720 To answer that, we need to know more about Homer himself. 126 00:09:07,579 --> 00:09:11,345 Homer's identity, however, is still a great mystery. 127 00:09:12,250 --> 00:09:14,980 Modern experts cannot agree whether he was one man, 128 00:09:15,153 --> 00:09:17,314 two, several, or even a woman. 129 00:09:22,227 --> 00:09:24,525 The ancients believed that he was one man, 130 00:09:25,030 --> 00:09:28,227 whose name, mysteriously, means "the hostage". 131 00:09:28,767 --> 00:09:30,359 They thought he was blind, 132 00:09:30,602 --> 00:09:34,094 that he had lived just before 700 BC in lonia - 133 00:09:34,272 --> 00:09:36,570 what is now the western coast of Turkey. 134 00:09:37,375 --> 00:09:39,639 Here Greeks had migrated in the Dark Age 135 00:09:39,811 --> 00:09:42,780 which followed the collapse of Mycenaean civilisation. 136 00:09:43,582 --> 00:09:47,518 It was a new world which would see the birth of Western science, medicine 137 00:09:47,686 --> 00:09:48,846 and philosophy. 138 00:09:50,088 --> 00:09:51,578 If Homer existed, 139 00:09:51,756 --> 00:09:54,657 he worked as a professional singer, a bard, 140 00:09:54,926 --> 00:09:58,020 in royal and noble courts on these coasts. 141 00:09:58,363 --> 00:10:02,094 His was an oral society on the verge of literacy. 142 00:10:03,902 --> 00:10:06,234 The ancients assumed he had written his text. 143 00:10:06,438 --> 00:10:08,030 Modern scholars think the "lliad" was 144 00:10:08,206 --> 00:10:11,664 committed to writing in the century after his death 145 00:10:11,977 --> 00:10:16,243 but that Homer himself was working in a fully oral tradition. 146 00:10:17,916 --> 00:10:19,577 But what does that mean? 147 00:11:03,061 --> 00:11:06,895 Kilgalligan, on the Atlantic coast of County Mayo, Ireland. 148 00:11:08,700 --> 00:11:10,861 Here, the oral tradition has lingered on. 149 00:11:12,871 --> 00:11:15,169 The last performer of epics the length of the "lliad" 150 00:11:15,340 --> 00:11:16,932 died only 40 years ago 151 00:11:17,375 --> 00:11:20,208 but there are still storytellers reciting tales of 152 00:11:20,378 --> 00:11:22,778 heroic deeds in heroic language. 153 00:11:25,383 --> 00:11:27,715 They resemble Homer in their style of speech, 154 00:11:27,886 --> 00:11:30,218 especially in the formulas or runs, 155 00:11:30,422 --> 00:11:31,354 whose repeat passages, 156 00:11:31,523 --> 00:11:34,117 like Homer's, are highly formalised. 157 00:11:35,660 --> 00:11:37,890 The storyteller we have come to hear cannot read 158 00:11:38,063 --> 00:11:40,395 or write and speaks only Gaelic. 159 00:11:40,865 --> 00:11:42,594 His name is John Henry. 160 00:11:50,241 --> 00:11:53,176 For 10 summers, John's repertoire has been recorded by 161 00:11:53,344 --> 00:11:56,745 Dr Seamus O'Cathain of University College, Dublin. 162 00:11:57,682 --> 00:11:59,673 John has not yet run out of stories. 163 00:12:58,543 --> 00:13:02,843 You couldn't just break it down for me in translation, line by line? 164 00:13:03,014 --> 00:13:05,608 Is that a difficult thing for a storyteller to do? 165 00:13:05,917 --> 00:13:08,784 It's very hard to do and very hard to translate. 166 00:13:08,953 --> 00:13:13,014 A lot of the words don't mean anything in particular. 167 00:13:13,191 --> 00:13:14,283 It's alliterative. 168 00:13:14,459 --> 00:13:19,658 It's fully within the ancient tradition of runs. 169 00:13:19,931 --> 00:13:21,398 Just to catch the flavour of it? 170 00:13:25,804 --> 00:13:27,635 "They raise their sails..." 171 00:13:27,872 --> 00:13:32,673 perhaps billowing or bellying sails or something like that. 172 00:13:35,980 --> 00:13:39,381 "Long threads or ropes to the tops of the masts." 173 00:13:42,987 --> 00:13:44,113 "200 rowing... 174 00:13:45,690 --> 00:13:47,453 "12 on the steering... 175 00:13:50,695 --> 00:13:52,856 "Sand coming up and foam going down... 176 00:13:58,636 --> 00:14:01,298 "Splish-splash..." 177 00:14:04,108 --> 00:14:07,475 "Whales and seals swimming behind..." 178 00:14:14,819 --> 00:14:18,311 In English, you might say they set sail and they got there! 179 00:14:18,623 --> 00:14:21,251 But it's more complicated than that! 180 00:14:21,459 --> 00:14:23,791 What impelled him to learn the stories? 181 00:14:23,962 --> 00:14:25,520 John's the man to answer that. 182 00:14:43,414 --> 00:14:47,009 John says this was the attitude of mind he always had. 183 00:14:47,218 --> 00:14:51,154 He was greedy for stories. And, of course, he got them. 184 00:14:59,097 --> 00:15:02,760 Now no one in Kilgalligan is learning the tales from John, 185 00:15:03,001 --> 00:15:04,525 to pass them on, as he did. 186 00:15:11,743 --> 00:15:13,870 His only audience is the tape recorder, 187 00:15:14,212 --> 00:15:17,443 a sure sign that the tradition is nearing its end. 188 00:15:19,951 --> 00:15:23,250 Now we have no need of such guardians of the tradition. 189 00:15:26,858 --> 00:15:30,021 Today we recall our lists from a computer terminal, 190 00:15:30,261 --> 00:15:32,024 not from the memory of a bard. 191 00:15:34,032 --> 00:15:36,091 The idea of memorising 200 names on 192 00:15:36,267 --> 00:15:38,997 an international flight would seem absurd to us. 193 00:15:39,570 --> 00:15:44,007 To deliver a poem the length of the "lliad" is simply inconceivable. 194 00:15:46,277 --> 00:15:49,178 But it is still possible to see such a performance. 195 00:15:49,847 --> 00:15:52,509 To find it, we must travel far afield. 196 00:16:05,029 --> 00:16:08,055 This is the barren landscape of Turkish Armenia, 197 00:16:08,232 --> 00:16:10,029 within sight of the Soviet border, 198 00:16:10,201 --> 00:16:13,796 over 1,000 miles from Homer's "wine-dark Aegean". 199 00:16:16,774 --> 00:16:18,207 To these lands the Turks migrated 200 00:16:18,376 --> 00:16:21,743 from the Asian steppe in the 11th century AD, 201 00:16:21,980 --> 00:16:24,141 bringing their ancient traditions with them. 202 00:16:27,151 --> 00:16:29,813 In the town of Kars, they still survive. 203 00:17:37,055 --> 00:17:40,047 Like Homer, these men are professional bards. 204 00:17:41,192 --> 00:17:44,286 They sing and play at weddings, feasts and funerals. 205 00:17:44,862 --> 00:17:47,956 They were brought up from childhood in the tuition of a master. 206 00:17:52,904 --> 00:17:56,135 This man, Seref Tasliova, was given away at seven years 207 00:17:56,307 --> 00:17:59,606 because even then it was seen he had the bardic gift. 208 00:18:03,581 --> 00:18:05,173 He is now a master. 209 00:18:05,416 --> 00:18:07,179 His repertoire includes 100 tales from 210 00:18:07,351 --> 00:18:09,842 the Turkish medieval epic of "Koroglu", 211 00:18:10,021 --> 00:18:11,784 many of them over an hour long. 212 00:18:13,524 --> 00:18:15,253 He's singing from "Koroglu" now. 213 00:18:28,439 --> 00:18:31,567 Here in Kars, the audience sat for three hours, 214 00:18:31,843 --> 00:18:33,606 as long as we might sit in a cinema, 215 00:18:33,911 --> 00:18:35,139 thrilled by the playing and 216 00:18:35,313 --> 00:18:37,008 by the pathos of the singing. 217 00:18:41,953 --> 00:18:43,477 Here it is still possible to feel 218 00:18:43,654 --> 00:18:45,815 the spell worked by a bard 219 00:18:46,023 --> 00:18:49,220 when he has an audience who believe in his magic. 220 00:19:23,327 --> 00:19:24,817 However distantly, 221 00:19:24,996 --> 00:19:29,194 Homer did something like this two and a half thousand years ago 222 00:19:29,367 --> 00:19:31,801 when he sang the tale of Troy. 223 00:20:18,015 --> 00:20:22,714 But what does this tell us about the way Homer's text has come down to us? 224 00:20:26,390 --> 00:20:28,517 In Homer's "Odyssey", King Odysseus 225 00:20:28,693 --> 00:20:31,059 praises the bard Demodocus for 226 00:20:31,229 --> 00:20:33,424 his performance of the tale of Troy. 227 00:20:33,598 --> 00:20:35,065 "You sing it," he says, 228 00:20:35,333 --> 00:20:37,130 "as if you were there yourself 229 00:20:37,401 --> 00:20:39,835 "or as if you spoke to someone who was." 230 00:20:40,238 --> 00:20:43,071 In Ireland and Turkey we gained some idea of how 231 00:20:43,241 --> 00:20:45,300 bards achieve that kind of effect. 232 00:20:45,843 --> 00:20:49,609 The sort of formulas, for example, that John Henry used in Mayo 233 00:20:50,848 --> 00:20:54,807 show the mechanism of memory and show how ancient elements 234 00:20:54,986 --> 00:20:59,946 can be preserved within the formulas and their rigid metrical patterns. 235 00:21:00,358 --> 00:21:03,987 And in Turkey, the great length of the "Koroglu" epic 236 00:21:04,195 --> 00:21:10,293 and its archaic medieval language, shows how poems of this immense length 237 00:21:10,868 --> 00:21:16,773 can be memorised and orally transmitted by a single man, a professional. 238 00:21:17,575 --> 00:21:20,772 Both the audiences in Ireland and in Turkey 239 00:21:21,012 --> 00:21:23,310 view the tale teller as a professional, 240 00:21:23,481 --> 00:21:24,914 a specialised occupation. 241 00:21:25,082 --> 00:21:26,947 For Seref Tasliova in Kars, 242 00:21:27,118 --> 00:21:29,211 it's his job, quite simply. 243 00:21:30,454 --> 00:21:32,046 But we have to ask whether that tale 244 00:21:32,223 --> 00:21:34,282 actually goes back to the Bronze Age. 245 00:21:34,458 --> 00:21:39,919 Before we do, it's worth pointing out there's nothing intrinsically unlikely 246 00:21:40,097 --> 00:21:45,501 in the idea that the "lliad" could go back to an eye-witness account of a Bronze Age war. 247 00:21:45,736 --> 00:21:47,397 In Dark Age medieval Europe, 248 00:21:47,738 --> 00:21:52,368 Viking kings took their bards with them on their campaigns 249 00:21:52,610 --> 00:21:56,478 in order to sing old songs and compose new ones about their deeds. 250 00:21:56,747 --> 00:21:59,375 These were only written down centuries later. 251 00:21:59,550 --> 00:22:02,883 If that could happen in one culture, 252 00:22:03,054 --> 00:22:05,022 it could have happened in Mycenaean Greece. 253 00:22:05,222 --> 00:22:06,154 But did it? 254 00:22:06,390 --> 00:22:09,188 Was there a Mycenaean bardic poem about Troy 255 00:22:09,393 --> 00:22:10,257 and how were the stories 256 00:22:10,428 --> 00:22:14,057 transmitted over the 500 years before Homer? 257 00:22:19,403 --> 00:22:23,999 Such questions are now at the centre of the academic industry spawned by Homer. 258 00:22:26,110 --> 00:22:29,876 At Cambridge, Dr John Chadwick, an expert in Bronze Age Greek, 259 00:22:30,047 --> 00:22:31,674 is especially interested in the problem of 260 00:22:31,849 --> 00:22:34,613 the transmission of the tales before Homer. 261 00:22:35,419 --> 00:22:39,185 I think they are transmitted by being taught 262 00:22:39,357 --> 00:22:42,292 from one generation to the next. 263 00:22:42,660 --> 00:22:46,357 In each generation there are people who devote themselves 264 00:22:46,530 --> 00:22:48,589 to learning these stories. 265 00:22:49,400 --> 00:22:54,360 I don't think they transmit them exactly and purely accurately. 266 00:22:54,572 --> 00:22:58,474 They will improve upon the story in retelling it. 267 00:22:58,776 --> 00:23:02,439 They may just forget what the original was 268 00:23:02,613 --> 00:23:08,108 or they may quite consciously take two different stories and combine them into one. 269 00:23:08,519 --> 00:23:11,886 And that is the impression which one gets from Homer, 270 00:23:12,056 --> 00:23:16,550 except that, of course, in so doing he has produced a masterpiece. 271 00:23:16,727 --> 00:23:22,859 He has not just put together separate, isolated poems. 272 00:23:23,033 --> 00:23:30,530 He has transformed the whole into a completely new poem. 273 00:23:30,875 --> 00:23:35,938 But his sources no doubt consisted of these transmitted, 274 00:23:36,447 --> 00:23:39,883 orally transmitted versions of 275 00:23:40,184 --> 00:23:42,584 events in Mycenaean times. 276 00:23:43,053 --> 00:23:47,183 And you would be prepared to accept that they contained... 277 00:23:47,358 --> 00:23:53,319 they also included the story of a sack of a city called Troy? 278 00:23:53,564 --> 00:23:55,054 I think it's very likely, yes. 279 00:23:55,232 --> 00:23:58,326 There was a poem on the sack of Troy. 280 00:23:58,536 --> 00:24:01,937 I think that the details which Homer includes in this 281 00:24:02,139 --> 00:24:05,575 very likely come from a number of other sources as well. 282 00:24:05,876 --> 00:24:09,710 But that there was something which connected Troy 283 00:24:09,880 --> 00:24:13,441 with Mycenaean Greece seems to me very likely indeed. 284 00:24:18,422 --> 00:24:20,481 But what was that connection? 285 00:24:22,593 --> 00:24:25,562 Why did Greek tradition focus its most heroic legend 286 00:24:25,729 --> 00:24:30,063 and an armada of 1,000 ships on this tiny place? 287 00:24:34,472 --> 00:24:37,600 Can we detect when Troy became the centre of the tale 288 00:24:37,775 --> 00:24:40,266 from clues in Homer's language itself? 289 00:25:04,902 --> 00:25:06,767 The description of Troy in the "lliad" 290 00:25:06,937 --> 00:25:09,872 certainly suggests that bards of Homer's day 291 00:25:10,107 --> 00:25:12,439 knew what the site of the city looked like. 292 00:25:19,316 --> 00:25:21,682 Homer gives us a few interesting facts 293 00:25:21,852 --> 00:25:23,877 about the general situation of Troy. 294 00:25:24,188 --> 00:25:27,589 The first one is that it's windy, very windy. 295 00:25:27,825 --> 00:25:30,419 I don't think that's just a stock phrase by a poet. 296 00:25:30,628 --> 00:25:32,152 Anybody who's been here knows 297 00:25:32,329 --> 00:25:35,821 the wind blows from the north 12 months a year. 298 00:25:36,066 --> 00:25:40,127 In the days before moisturisers, what that must have done for Helen's complexion, 299 00:25:40,371 --> 00:25:41,998 your guess is as good as mine. 300 00:25:42,640 --> 00:25:48,135 The windiness has added point because the site was an exposed high one. 301 00:25:48,379 --> 00:25:51,405 Homer tells us that it was "beetling, towering". 302 00:25:51,582 --> 00:25:53,914 That may seem to be an exaggeration, 303 00:25:54,151 --> 00:25:59,088 but you've got to remember that the hill was much higher than it is today. 304 00:25:59,256 --> 00:26:02,919 The level of the royal palace would have been well above my head. 305 00:26:03,093 --> 00:26:05,618 Its classical builders have cut the top away. 306 00:26:05,829 --> 00:26:08,127 Schliemann pushed the side out. 307 00:26:08,332 --> 00:26:12,393 You've got to imagine the hill being much more compact and steep. 308 00:26:12,603 --> 00:26:17,267 This was a tall headland exposed to the blasts of wind from the north. 309 00:26:21,745 --> 00:26:25,203 But that, doubtless, was true in Homer's own day too. 310 00:26:25,683 --> 00:26:26,445 Does Homer know 311 00:26:26,617 --> 00:26:29,347 what Troy looked like in the Bronze Age? 312 00:26:32,456 --> 00:26:35,186 Here, there has been a dramatic new discovery. 313 00:26:37,428 --> 00:26:42,161 Soil cores taken in the plain show that at the time of the Trojan War, 314 00:26:42,333 --> 00:26:47,066 the city stood above a great bay which silted up during classical times. 315 00:26:47,304 --> 00:26:50,273 This could be reflected in Homer's description of sailing 316 00:26:50,441 --> 00:26:53,308 from the Dardanelles inside llios, 317 00:26:53,577 --> 00:26:57,274 and when he tells of the wide bay of the sea in front of Troy. 318 00:26:59,883 --> 00:27:02,044 But that was still true in Homer's time. 319 00:27:02,219 --> 00:27:05,188 Is there anything in his picture of the city itself 320 00:27:05,356 --> 00:27:08,348 which could go back to the time of the Trojan War? 321 00:27:09,760 --> 00:27:13,491 Three of his phrases suggest the handing down of a genuine bardic 322 00:27:13,664 --> 00:27:16,690 memory of a late Bronze Age Troy. 323 00:27:20,037 --> 00:27:24,531 First, Homer tells of "the great or sacred tower of holy llios 324 00:27:24,708 --> 00:27:26,699 "by the main gate of the city." 325 00:27:27,111 --> 00:27:30,638 Here, Hector's wife Andromache ran like a mad woman 326 00:27:30,814 --> 00:27:33,408 because she had heard the Trojans were losing. 327 00:27:34,618 --> 00:27:38,281 At the main gate of the city, there was a tower enclosing an altar 328 00:27:38,455 --> 00:27:42,619 and fronted by pedestals for the idols of the Trojan gods. 329 00:27:45,129 --> 00:27:48,030 Is Homer's "great tower of holy llios" 330 00:27:48,198 --> 00:27:52,100 a genuine memory of the gate tower of Bronze Age Troy? 331 00:28:00,411 --> 00:28:03,903 Second, Homer says that the Greeks almost broke into Troy 332 00:28:04,081 --> 00:28:06,675 when three times the Greek hero patroclus 333 00:28:06,850 --> 00:28:10,377 tried to scale the slope of Troy's towering wall. 334 00:28:10,854 --> 00:28:13,880 But three times Apollo battered him back. 335 00:28:24,601 --> 00:28:28,731 The walls of the historical Troy do have a distinctive angle 336 00:28:28,906 --> 00:28:30,203 but in Homer's own time 337 00:28:30,374 --> 00:28:32,171 they were buried in debris. 338 00:28:36,980 --> 00:28:39,881 The last passage concerns the fine walls of Troy 339 00:28:40,050 --> 00:28:43,213 which Homer says had been built with the aid of the gods. 340 00:28:43,687 --> 00:28:46,884 Here he gives us an extraordinarily precise detail. 341 00:28:48,792 --> 00:28:53,491 He says that at one point in the circuit, on the western side, 342 00:28:53,697 --> 00:28:57,098 there was one section of the wall which had not been replaced 343 00:28:57,267 --> 00:29:01,761 by those beautiful constructions of Apollo and poseidon, 344 00:29:02,339 --> 00:29:08,209 that on the western side there was a badly built weak wall, 345 00:29:08,378 --> 00:29:11,905 and that was where the goddess Athena told the Greeks to attack Troy. 346 00:29:12,449 --> 00:29:16,044 And amazingly enough, when Wilhelm Dorpfeld 347 00:29:16,220 --> 00:29:21,248 was excavating the circuit of Troy VI, in 1893-4, 348 00:29:21,625 --> 00:29:23,525 he found that on the western side 349 00:29:24,161 --> 00:29:28,495 there was one section of the old circuit had not been replaced. 350 00:29:28,932 --> 00:29:31,526 Now, Homer cannot possibly have seen this. 351 00:29:31,735 --> 00:29:34,203 He was composing 500 years on 352 00:29:34,404 --> 00:29:37,635 when this whole section was under mounds of debris. 353 00:29:37,975 --> 00:29:42,378 That suggests that he is incorporating a genuine bardic memory 354 00:29:42,613 --> 00:29:44,740 of this place from the Bronze Age. 355 00:29:45,048 --> 00:29:46,743 That raises the question, 356 00:29:47,084 --> 00:29:49,575 is Homer talking about a real war? 357 00:29:57,461 --> 00:30:02,160 Finds made by archaeologists show that the bards had handed down to Homer 358 00:30:02,332 --> 00:30:05,426 some genuine memories of Mycenaean warfare. 359 00:30:08,605 --> 00:30:12,132 Homer accurately describes what is clearly a Mycenaean helmet 360 00:30:12,309 --> 00:30:14,539 sewn with rows of boars' tusks. 361 00:30:19,650 --> 00:30:21,311 Though he lived in the Iron Age, 362 00:30:21,518 --> 00:30:23,383 everywhere in the "lliad" Homer assumes 363 00:30:23,554 --> 00:30:25,647 that the weapons and armour 364 00:30:25,823 --> 00:30:27,085 are of bronze. 365 00:30:33,230 --> 00:30:34,959 In describing their swords, 366 00:30:35,165 --> 00:30:38,601 Homer sometimes uses the phrase "silver-studded". 367 00:30:39,136 --> 00:30:42,628 The memory and even the expression could be Mycenaean. 368 00:30:48,745 --> 00:30:50,610 The bards then did hand down to Homer 369 00:30:50,781 --> 00:30:54,842 some genuine memories of the heavily- armed Mycenaean warrior class, 370 00:30:55,018 --> 00:30:57,077 Bronze Age knights in armour. 371 00:31:01,892 --> 00:31:05,658 Historical artist peter Connolly, an expert in ancient weaponry, 372 00:31:05,896 --> 00:31:07,796 has recreated the heroes of Troy 373 00:31:07,965 --> 00:31:12,163 with the Mycenaean war gear which might lie behind Homer's descriptions. 374 00:31:12,769 --> 00:31:15,135 We do have a few fragments of armour 375 00:31:15,305 --> 00:31:19,332 and some ideas coming from central Europe and places like that 376 00:31:19,576 --> 00:31:22,704 that give us some inkling of what it may have been like. 377 00:31:23,714 --> 00:31:28,014 There have been found three scales like this at Troy. 378 00:31:28,652 --> 00:31:30,779 If one looks at the holes along the side 379 00:31:30,954 --> 00:31:33,787 one can see that they were stitched to a fabric 380 00:31:33,957 --> 00:31:35,618 or leather garment underneath 381 00:31:35,926 --> 00:31:38,622 and probably overlapping like this 382 00:31:38,795 --> 00:31:41,025 to cover the stitching here 383 00:31:41,198 --> 00:31:43,564 so it wouldn't get cut in the actual fighting. 384 00:31:43,934 --> 00:31:47,028 The difficulty is to what extent do earlier cuirasses - 385 00:31:47,204 --> 00:31:49,832 like this reconstruction of the Dendra armour - 386 00:31:50,107 --> 00:31:52,871 have to the period we're talking about? 387 00:31:53,043 --> 00:31:59,039 This is a particularly interesting armour because Achilles had one weak spot, 388 00:31:59,216 --> 00:32:01,878 the back of the lower leg or the Achilles' heel. 389 00:32:02,052 --> 00:32:06,455 This covers you right the way from the nose down to the knees, 390 00:32:06,623 --> 00:32:09,114 with leg guards covering the front. 391 00:32:09,293 --> 00:32:10,783 But if you turn it round... 392 00:32:13,630 --> 00:32:18,260 ...you can see the only part that is vulnerable is the back of the lower leg. 393 00:32:19,269 --> 00:32:19,997 Fantastic. 394 00:32:20,170 --> 00:32:22,570 What about the things that Homer says about the heroes, 395 00:32:22,739 --> 00:32:26,106 like Ajax's great shield and the swords of the time? 396 00:32:26,643 --> 00:32:29,373 It is possible that Ajax is an earlier legend. 397 00:32:30,013 --> 00:32:34,347 The giant in his armour with this huge shield may come from an earlier legend 398 00:32:34,518 --> 00:32:37,487 which must put Hector on an earlier legend too 399 00:32:37,654 --> 00:32:39,485 'cause he also has this huge shield. 400 00:32:39,656 --> 00:32:41,920 As Homer says of Hector, 401 00:32:42,192 --> 00:32:45,093 when he walked away from the duel with Ajax, 402 00:32:45,262 --> 00:32:48,425 his shield tapped him on the heels and neck. 403 00:32:48,598 --> 00:32:49,656 He wore it over his back 404 00:32:49,833 --> 00:32:52,393 on a strap going round the neck. 405 00:32:52,569 --> 00:32:55,003 As he walked it tapped his neck and heels. 406 00:32:55,205 --> 00:32:59,073 The perfect example is the most revolutionary of weapons. 407 00:32:59,242 --> 00:33:03,008 This was an entirely new type of weapon, a slashing weapon. 408 00:33:03,380 --> 00:33:06,008 This could cut off a man's arm. 409 00:33:06,350 --> 00:33:07,510 This is the pitiless bronze? 410 00:33:07,684 --> 00:33:11,643 The weight is up here. It's a lashing weapon like that. 411 00:33:11,822 --> 00:33:15,280 This was introduced around the period of the Trojan War? 412 00:33:15,559 --> 00:33:17,493 We find a lot in central Europe 413 00:33:17,661 --> 00:33:19,595 but they're coming into Greece about this time. 414 00:33:19,830 --> 00:33:21,923 They were also developing this, 415 00:33:22,099 --> 00:33:26,866 which is a mixture of the earlier Mycenaean types for the handling. 416 00:33:28,805 --> 00:33:30,397 Also has characteristics of this. 417 00:33:30,574 --> 00:33:33,304 Again, it's very small, but it's a hacking weapon, 418 00:33:33,477 --> 00:33:35,911 like a butcher's cleaver. 419 00:33:36,079 --> 00:33:38,172 Imagine someone having his shoulder cut off! 420 00:34:10,047 --> 00:34:12,015 The "lliad", then, has many layers, 421 00:34:12,182 --> 00:34:14,616 some even older than the Trojan War. 422 00:34:14,785 --> 00:34:19,415 But some trace elements seem to go back to a Mycenaean war poem. 423 00:34:20,657 --> 00:34:24,855 So is it possible to say whether that poem was about a specific war, 424 00:34:25,162 --> 00:34:29,098 that is, a war fought by Greeks in the plain of Troy? 425 00:34:33,203 --> 00:34:35,330 At the Dardanelles, wars have been fought 426 00:34:35,505 --> 00:34:38,133 from pre-history to our own times. 427 00:34:51,421 --> 00:34:53,981 The irony was not lost on those Homer lovers 428 00:34:54,157 --> 00:34:57,524 who died in sight of Troy in 1915. 429 00:35:03,233 --> 00:35:05,997 "They say Achilles in the darkness stirred 430 00:35:06,269 --> 00:35:08,703 "and priam and his 50 sons wake, 431 00:35:08,872 --> 00:35:10,032 "all amazed... 432 00:35:11,074 --> 00:35:14,601 "...and hear the guns and shake for Troy again." 433 00:35:20,383 --> 00:35:22,044 This is Cape Helles, 434 00:35:22,319 --> 00:35:24,787 by the Dardanelles, opposite Troy. 435 00:35:26,923 --> 00:35:31,656 Here stands the monument to the 36,000 men of what was the British Empire 436 00:35:31,828 --> 00:35:36,595 who died in 1915 in as futile a war as Troy itself - 437 00:35:37,334 --> 00:35:38,494 Gallipoli. 438 00:35:41,705 --> 00:35:43,639 Round the monument are lists of regiments 439 00:35:43,807 --> 00:35:46,105 drawn from every part of the Empire - 440 00:35:46,376 --> 00:35:50,710 Assam, New Zealand, Ireland, Lancashire, 441 00:35:51,081 --> 00:35:52,844 men who no doubt died as fearfully as 442 00:35:53,016 --> 00:35:54,916 the heroes on the other shore. 443 00:35:56,920 --> 00:36:00,754 Just imagine that all the written records of our own civilisation 444 00:36:00,924 --> 00:36:03,859 were destroyed in some inconceivable catastrophe, 445 00:36:04,227 --> 00:36:06,889 and that in three or four thousand years' time, 446 00:36:07,063 --> 00:36:11,466 archaeologists came and uncovered the foundations of this structure. 447 00:36:11,935 --> 00:36:16,702 If they dug around it, they might come across fragments of the lists of names 448 00:36:16,873 --> 00:36:20,673 with a "Singh" from Burma, a "Joyce" from Dublin, 449 00:36:20,844 --> 00:36:22,402 a "Wood" from Manchester. 450 00:36:22,679 --> 00:36:27,173 But I wonder whether from those simple facts, without any written record, 451 00:36:27,450 --> 00:36:29,315 they could guess the story of Gallipoli, 452 00:36:29,486 --> 00:36:33,320 the story of that fruitless venture by an imperial power 453 00:36:33,490 --> 00:36:35,720 which had once extended across the world, 454 00:36:35,892 --> 00:36:39,328 coming to this windswept and forlorn spot. 455 00:36:39,829 --> 00:36:43,230 The story of Gallipoli, if it had only survived in legend, 456 00:36:43,400 --> 00:36:44,594 would never have been believed. 457 00:36:44,768 --> 00:36:48,864 Yet it is a real war and this is a real record of that war. 458 00:36:52,809 --> 00:36:58,406 But what form would such a record have taken in a prehistoric oral society? 459 00:36:58,915 --> 00:37:02,476 And did the bards ever have such a record for the Trojan War? 460 00:37:04,621 --> 00:37:05,610 Amazingly enough, 461 00:37:05,889 --> 00:37:09,017 something like it was preserved by Homer himself. 462 00:37:11,461 --> 00:37:12,223 In the "lliad" 463 00:37:12,395 --> 00:37:15,694 there is a strange list of 164 places. 464 00:37:16,066 --> 00:37:18,091 Homer says these provided the troops 465 00:37:18,268 --> 00:37:21,101 for the 1,000 ships which went to Troy. 466 00:37:24,441 --> 00:37:28,172 It claims to be the actual roll call of the Greek expedition - 467 00:37:28,511 --> 00:37:30,411 "the catalogue of ships". 468 00:37:30,580 --> 00:37:31,706 But what is it? 469 00:37:31,881 --> 00:37:33,872 An authentic Bronze Age war record 470 00:37:34,050 --> 00:37:35,711 handed down by the bards? 471 00:37:36,419 --> 00:37:37,681 Or a later fiction? 472 00:37:46,162 --> 00:37:50,292 Geoffrey Kirk, formerly Regius professor of Greek at Cambridge. 473 00:37:51,868 --> 00:37:54,598 Many of the places mentioned 474 00:37:55,005 --> 00:37:57,439 were known in the Mycenaean age 475 00:37:57,607 --> 00:38:01,407 and ceased to be of any importance afterwards. 476 00:38:02,279 --> 00:38:06,340 It's obviously based on perhaps a poem, perhaps a prose 477 00:38:06,516 --> 00:38:09,610 listing of the ships as they assembled 478 00:38:09,786 --> 00:38:12,254 at Aulis to go over the Aegean to Troy. 479 00:38:13,990 --> 00:38:16,151 Could you bear to let me hear some? 480 00:38:16,693 --> 00:38:21,995 We have the Codex mori open at the entry of Argos and Mycenae, 481 00:38:22,165 --> 00:38:24,190 both of which are interesting. 482 00:38:47,724 --> 00:38:52,184 So then Diomedes, good at the war cry, was leader. 483 00:38:52,395 --> 00:38:54,420 And then it goes on to say that he... 484 00:38:55,965 --> 00:38:58,559 "With them there came 80 black ships." 485 00:39:03,606 --> 00:39:07,940 I think myself that it's got a good deal of Mycenaean content 486 00:39:08,111 --> 00:39:13,242 but it also certainly has some Dark Age content. 487 00:39:13,483 --> 00:39:19,718 Like everything in Homer, it's a mixture of the very archaic, the Mycenaean, 488 00:39:19,889 --> 00:39:22,357 contemporary with the Trojan War, 489 00:39:23,059 --> 00:39:28,463 the views of Homer's own time in the eighth century BC and shortly before, 490 00:39:28,665 --> 00:39:30,758 and the whole period between the two. 491 00:39:31,067 --> 00:39:34,298 - The problem is detecting which bit's which. - Exactly. 492 00:39:35,805 --> 00:39:37,500 And that, for Homer lovers, 493 00:39:37,707 --> 00:39:39,971 is the $64,000 question. 494 00:39:40,477 --> 00:39:42,308 There's only one way to find the answer. 495 00:39:42,645 --> 00:39:43,737 Go and look. 496 00:39:50,553 --> 00:39:53,647 Agamemnon's capital, Golden Mycenae. 497 00:39:53,957 --> 00:39:54,981 Any bard worth his salt 498 00:39:55,158 --> 00:39:58,616 would have heard of this and other major sites in the catalogue. 499 00:39:58,928 --> 00:40:00,259 Their legends were famous. 500 00:40:00,530 --> 00:40:02,794 Their cyclopean walls still stood. 501 00:40:04,701 --> 00:40:06,225 But it is the obscure sites, 502 00:40:06,436 --> 00:40:08,529 often forgotten in later times, 503 00:40:08,838 --> 00:40:09,770 which offer us the hope of 504 00:40:09,939 --> 00:40:14,239 proving at least part of the catalogue goes back to the Bronze Age. 505 00:40:19,916 --> 00:40:22,476 The search takes you far off the beaten track. 506 00:40:22,752 --> 00:40:25,915 Take the delightfully named "Thisbe of the Many pigeons", 507 00:40:26,089 --> 00:40:29,058 which Homer says was one of 60 places in central Greece 508 00:40:29,225 --> 00:40:32,661 which sent their men to Troy in 50 black ships. 509 00:40:37,801 --> 00:40:40,998 The only clues are the pigeons and the name. 510 00:40:41,304 --> 00:40:43,272 There's still a Thisbe in Greece. 511 00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:45,039 Like most of the catalogue sites, 512 00:40:45,208 --> 00:40:46,869 it's not in the tourist guides. 513 00:40:47,110 --> 00:40:49,340 It's best to ask the locals for guidance. 514 00:40:49,779 --> 00:40:53,647 These could even be the descendants of 515 00:40:53,817 --> 00:40:55,512 the men who went to Troy. 516 00:41:02,392 --> 00:41:05,259 The trouble is, there's so much history to choose from, 517 00:41:05,495 --> 00:41:08,123 the Bronze Age is not what immediately springs to mind. 518 00:41:27,250 --> 00:41:30,378 That squared masonry is the classical city. 519 00:41:30,687 --> 00:41:33,155 What we want is 1,000 years earlier. 520 00:41:45,835 --> 00:41:46,995 There it is. 521 00:41:47,237 --> 00:41:50,502 A Mycenaean tomb was plundered here long ago. 522 00:41:50,773 --> 00:41:52,570 It's now part of local folklore. 523 00:41:59,883 --> 00:42:02,374 On top, typical cyclopean walls 524 00:42:02,552 --> 00:42:04,645 and a scatter of Mycenaean pottery. 525 00:42:05,255 --> 00:42:07,883 Thisbe of the Many pigeons was real enough. 526 00:42:09,626 --> 00:42:10,854 One up to Homer. 527 00:42:11,461 --> 00:42:12,758 Pity about the pigeonsl 528 00:42:27,810 --> 00:42:30,278 At Thisbe, I learned my first lesson. 529 00:42:30,813 --> 00:42:32,906 "Never underestimate Homer." 530 00:43:04,881 --> 00:43:06,906 Dawn in the Evrotas estuary 531 00:43:07,083 --> 00:43:10,348 on the south coast of Menelaus' kingdom of Sparta. 532 00:43:12,088 --> 00:43:13,885 Somewhere here, says the catalogue, 533 00:43:14,057 --> 00:43:17,618 lay the seaward city of Helos which sent men to Troy 534 00:43:17,794 --> 00:43:20,820 in the 60 ships of the Spartan contingent. 535 00:43:25,134 --> 00:43:27,568 The plain here is still called Helos, 536 00:43:27,870 --> 00:43:28,962 but the search is complicated 537 00:43:29,138 --> 00:43:32,073 by the fact that the sea has receded miles. 538 00:43:32,642 --> 00:43:34,473 After the pigeons of Thisbe, however, 539 00:43:34,644 --> 00:43:39,138 the Bronze Age past had started to come alive. 540 00:43:41,284 --> 00:43:45,983 It's easy as you approach through this flat country with reeds and marshes, 541 00:43:46,189 --> 00:43:48,180 the bumpy road, the seabirds, 542 00:43:48,358 --> 00:43:53,625 to imagine paris himself, perhaps, approaching it by sea. 543 00:43:53,896 --> 00:43:57,263 This was the main Mycenaean port of the Gulf of Helos. 544 00:43:58,067 --> 00:44:01,468 You see this limestone cliff 545 00:44:01,638 --> 00:44:04,471 rising above the plain about 70 or 80 feet, 546 00:44:04,774 --> 00:44:09,677 what was in fact a low promontory in Mycenaean times. 547 00:44:10,179 --> 00:44:12,170 It's called Agios Stefanos. 548 00:44:19,188 --> 00:44:22,021 There was a little city on that limestone bluff 549 00:44:22,225 --> 00:44:24,693 under an impenetrable tangle of thorns. 550 00:44:24,994 --> 00:44:27,895 But why here when there is nothing today? 551 00:44:30,233 --> 00:44:32,360 An abandoned Bronze Age quarry 552 00:44:32,535 --> 00:44:34,662 behind the site shows why. 553 00:44:35,171 --> 00:44:40,632 Agios Stefanos was the export point for this mottled green stone, found only here, 554 00:44:40,843 --> 00:44:43,573 which was much coveted by Bronze Age kings. 555 00:44:44,013 --> 00:44:48,245 It is the only possible site for Homer's seaward city of Helos. 556 00:44:58,661 --> 00:45:00,390 Homer's catalogue of ships says 557 00:45:00,563 --> 00:45:02,428 that Agamemnon took troops to Troy 558 00:45:02,598 --> 00:45:04,293 not only from mainland Greece, 559 00:45:04,467 --> 00:45:06,867 but from many islands including Crete. 560 00:45:12,608 --> 00:45:14,508 And in the 80 Cretan ships, 561 00:45:14,711 --> 00:45:18,306 there were men from an obscure little place called Rhytion. 562 00:45:21,150 --> 00:45:23,448 Here we have no clues, only the name, 563 00:45:23,720 --> 00:45:27,087 perhaps partly preserved in today's village name, Rotasi. 564 00:45:29,092 --> 00:45:32,084 Here there is an unexcavated Acropolis-like hill 565 00:45:32,261 --> 00:45:36,163 with a scatter of pottery sherds going back deep into pre-history. 566 00:45:39,936 --> 00:45:41,631 The locals must think I'm crazy 567 00:45:43,172 --> 00:45:44,503 I hope he doesn't ask where I'm going. 568 00:45:44,674 --> 00:45:46,665 He won't believe a town in Homer 569 00:45:49,979 --> 00:45:52,504 - Rhytion, Rhytion! - Rhytion! 570 00:45:54,417 --> 00:45:57,614 So Homer's world is still alive after all 571 00:46:01,457 --> 00:46:02,685 The search for Homer's catalogue 572 00:46:02,859 --> 00:46:06,454 takes you to many such forgotten corners. 573 00:46:06,963 --> 00:46:08,726 My journey led me to over 40. 574 00:46:10,933 --> 00:46:14,630 Half of the 164 names have so far been identified 575 00:46:14,904 --> 00:46:16,599 and all those examined have shown 576 00:46:16,773 --> 00:46:18,968 traces of Mycenaean occupation. 577 00:46:19,709 --> 00:46:21,643 Most important, some were abandoned 578 00:46:21,811 --> 00:46:23,745 after the fall of the Mycenaean world 579 00:46:23,913 --> 00:46:27,041 and never lived in again until after Homer's day. 580 00:46:28,484 --> 00:46:30,645 Proof that at least some of the catalogue 581 00:46:30,820 --> 00:46:32,811 does go back to the Bronze Age. 582 00:46:41,898 --> 00:46:44,093 Exactly why the catalogue was compiled 583 00:46:44,267 --> 00:46:45,700 we may never know for sure. 584 00:46:45,868 --> 00:46:49,429 But it remains possible that it is connected with a real event. 585 00:46:56,012 --> 00:46:58,981 That brings us back to the first line of the catalogue, 586 00:46:59,215 --> 00:47:01,615 Homer's "rocky Aulis". 587 00:47:02,351 --> 00:47:03,113 This is where the legend 588 00:47:03,286 --> 00:47:05,777 said the Greek armada assembled for Troy. 589 00:47:07,089 --> 00:47:07,919 Here Agamemnon 590 00:47:08,090 --> 00:47:10,251 sacrificed his daughter lphigenia - 591 00:47:10,493 --> 00:47:12,757 Iphianassa, as Homer calls her - 592 00:47:12,929 --> 00:47:14,419 to get a fair wind. 593 00:47:16,199 --> 00:47:19,828 Gave her to the goddess Artemis, as was later believed, 594 00:47:20,002 --> 00:47:22,698 where the classical sanctuary of Artemis stood. 595 00:47:24,307 --> 00:47:26,172 Its ruins are visible today 596 00:47:26,843 --> 00:47:29,607 in the shadow of an immense cement factory. 597 00:47:47,496 --> 00:47:50,988 Over the railway, you enter a strange deserted valley, 598 00:47:51,367 --> 00:47:53,198 barren and sinister. 599 00:47:55,204 --> 00:47:57,104 Almost a taboo place. 600 00:48:06,315 --> 00:48:08,909 Bronze Age Aulis looked over the famous straits 601 00:48:09,085 --> 00:48:10,746 where the tides meet. 602 00:48:10,953 --> 00:48:13,547 Here, it was said, the Greek fleet had anchored. 603 00:48:25,868 --> 00:48:28,496 Above the little bay is a rocky acropolis 604 00:48:28,671 --> 00:48:32,334 where the familiar broken sherds of Mycenaean pottery have been found, 605 00:48:33,609 --> 00:48:36,669 although all is now blanketed by concrete dust. 606 00:48:37,713 --> 00:48:42,650 Mycenaean chamber tombs were found down there when the concrete works was built. 607 00:48:42,885 --> 00:48:46,844 There's also traces of Mycenaean settlement around the sanctuary. 608 00:48:47,023 --> 00:48:53,622 So this part of the catalogue and the story does fit with archaeology. 609 00:48:53,996 --> 00:48:59,263 And if the Greek chiefs did indeed meet here in Mycenaean Aulis before they set sail, 610 00:48:59,435 --> 00:49:03,804 then it may have been here that they held their last night's celebrations, 611 00:49:04,006 --> 00:49:07,840 although celebrations blood-dimmed by the events which took place 612 00:49:08,010 --> 00:49:10,774 down there in the sanctuary of Artemis. 613 00:49:25,895 --> 00:49:29,160 On the sacrifice of lphigenia, Homer is silent. 614 00:49:29,532 --> 00:49:32,126 Later Greek tradition gives us the detail. 615 00:49:38,941 --> 00:49:44,402 "In Aulis they waited, waited while the winds brought costly delay. 616 00:49:45,314 --> 00:49:49,808 "Hulls and cables rotting, wasting away the flower of the Greeks. 617 00:49:52,388 --> 00:49:55,152 "Then the army prophet came up with a solution. 618 00:49:56,092 --> 00:49:59,926 "The winds could be changed by an offering to the gods, 619 00:50:00,529 --> 00:50:02,429 "the blood of a girl. 620 00:50:04,834 --> 00:50:07,132 "Her prayers, her cries of 'Father', 621 00:50:07,303 --> 00:50:10,704 "her virgin youth counted for nothing. 622 00:50:11,140 --> 00:50:13,768 "Her father prayed and told them to hold her like a goat 623 00:50:13,943 --> 00:50:15,342 "above the altar, 624 00:50:15,644 --> 00:50:18,579 "to bind her mouth, to gag the sound 625 00:50:18,814 --> 00:50:21,476 "which might be a curse upon her royal house. 626 00:50:34,463 --> 00:50:39,127 "Agamemnon brought himself to sacrifice his daughter, 627 00:50:39,502 --> 00:50:42,835 "to sponsor a war for a faithless woman." 628 00:50:59,422 --> 00:51:00,855 Did it really happen? 629 00:51:01,524 --> 00:51:03,958 The sacrifice sounds like a fairy tale. 630 00:51:06,162 --> 00:51:08,221 When we know more about the Bronze Age, 631 00:51:08,497 --> 00:51:11,864 we may be able to say whether, like so much of Homer's story, 632 00:51:12,101 --> 00:51:13,796 it has a darker truth. 633 00:51:23,245 --> 00:51:26,681 In conclusion, Homer stands at the end of an oral tradition 634 00:51:26,849 --> 00:51:29,784 which must take the story far back before him. 635 00:51:30,019 --> 00:51:34,547 It took generations of bards to refine the language in which he tells the tale. 636 00:51:35,758 --> 00:51:38,283 And inextricably embedded in that language, 637 00:51:38,561 --> 00:51:40,791 with its elaborate range of formulas, 638 00:51:41,030 --> 00:51:42,657 is Troy itself. 639 00:51:46,802 --> 00:51:51,933 It seems to me, then, there's very good reason to think that the expedition against Troy 640 00:51:52,108 --> 00:51:54,941 is the fundamental and central fact of the story 641 00:51:55,144 --> 00:51:57,135 and must go back to the Bronze Age. 642 00:51:57,980 --> 00:52:00,744 You can deny that the Trojan War ever took place 643 00:52:00,983 --> 00:52:04,316 but then you have no historical or archaeological peg 644 00:52:04,553 --> 00:52:09,855 to explain the creation of a fictional tale of Tro centring on the hill called Hisarlik, 645 00:52:10,092 --> 00:52:15,724 at any time in between the end of the Bronze Age and Homer's own day. 646 00:52:15,931 --> 00:52:19,628 And to me that is a fatal objection 647 00:52:19,802 --> 00:52:23,898 to those who would deny that the Trojan War ever took place. 648 00:52:25,274 --> 00:52:27,003 An overgrown and deserted ruin 649 00:52:27,176 --> 00:52:30,839 in a sparsely populated corner of north-western Anatolia 650 00:52:31,046 --> 00:52:36,074 is hardly likely to be picked out as the scene of the Greeks' national epic 651 00:52:36,385 --> 00:52:40,822 unless at some point it really had been the focus of war-like deeds 652 00:52:40,990 --> 00:52:45,427 so memorable that ever after they were celebrated by the bards in song. 653 00:52:53,502 --> 00:52:57,563 "Was it so hard, Achilles, so very hard to die? 654 00:52:58,607 --> 00:53:00,905 "Thou knowest and I know not. 655 00:53:01,510 --> 00:53:03,637 "So much the happier, I."