Myth Busters

At Troy, there HAS to be a Trojan Horse!

The Trojan Horse would have come through the gate behind me.

I was in Troy. After decades of teaching literature associated with Troy—The Odyssey, The Iliad, The Aeneid—I was at Ground Zero of the action. I could hardly believe it. The name "Troy" was the reason I pointed at  "Legendary Turkey and the Turquoise Coast" in the Smithsonian Journeys catalog and said to David, "I'd like to go there."

So here I was. With a little (ok, a lot) of imagination, I could see the Odysseus and the Greeks building the Trojan Horse; Achilles pouting in his tent; Aeneas preparing to lead the defeated Trojans to Italy where they would found Rome; Odysseus and the Greeks leaving for what they believed would be a short trip home to Ithaca.

As excited as I was to be in Troy, I had to admit that the ruins are underwhelming. And what I learned about them was a definite reality check. Although Troy is now miles inland, it had at one time been on the coast and controlled trade throughout the region by controlling access to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea and between Asia and Europe. Such a powerful city fought many wars.

Of the nine levels identified by the archaeological digs at Troy, Level 2 was the most impressive. If the Trojan War happened, it would have been at Level 6. Furthermore, archaeological research shows closer ties to the Hittites than to Greeks. The Trojan Horse—non-existent. Troy's long life (3000 B.C. - 1350 A.D.) included many wars and identifying one of them as THE Trojan War is futile, although the city was destroyed around 1180 B.C., the traditional time period of the Trojan War. The destruction might have been because of a war or because of an earthquake. And by the time Homer (or a group of poets) synthesized the many legends that made up his epics, the Troy identified with the Trojan War was already a ruin.

Well, bummer.

My favorite part of Homer's Iliad is the description of the Shield of Achilles, made by Hephaestus, the god of fire and metalworking. Hephaestus made five circles on the shield Achilles would wear to his death. The outer circle was the River Ocean; the inner one the Earth, sea, sun, moon and stars. Hephaestus decorated the other three circles with scenes of peace and prosperity and a populace engaged in daily living: a council listening to debates; a wedding celebration, dancing, plowing fields; harvesting grapes for wine; fields of sheep and cattle.  Only one-half of one circle pictures a city at war; the other half of that circle pictures a city at peace.

Hephaestus had it right. Although heroes and wars are what live on in our histories, ordinary people who  live ordinary lives build civilizations for the ages.

At each of our stops on our archaeological tour of Turkey, we saw evidence of daily life. Every ancient city had an amphitheatre used not only for performances, but also as a place for citizens to meet and debate issues. In Perge, we walked along the main street of the market, our feet in the ruts worn by cart traffic thousands of years ago, as meat and produce suppliers delivered their goods to the shops. In the Turkish countryside, we watched people tending acres of crops and herds of cattle and sheep, just as Hephaestus portrayed on Achilles' shield. In Ephesus and Bergamon, we admired the work of ancient craftsmen in the magnificent buildings.

Troy—and the epics of Homer and Virgil—are universal. They reveal truth and Truth. Whether the Trojan War is true—factual—is less important than the Truth—the universals about human nature—the epics reveal. The heroes and god behave like humans. They quarrel; they love; they mess up and suffer.   They choose sides; some win, some lose.

Aeneas loses the war, but he leads the defeated Trojans to a new land where they found Rome, one of the greatest civilizations the world has ever known. Odysseus and his men leave Troy to go home to Ithaca, but because of his hubris, he loses all of his men and must fight to reclaim his palace. He becomes a much-beloved ruler of Ithaca and husband of Penelope.

We don't know the names of the Trojans who built and rebuilt their city after it was destroyed nor do we know the names of the craftsmen who built (and rebuilt after earthquakes, fires and wars) the cities whose ruins we toured. But they shared with the heroes the determination not to be defeated, to overcome whatever came their way—and to celebrate the good things in life: working, dancing, harvesting, feasting, drinking wine.

The Truth that Hephaestus engraved on Achilles' shield is that ordinary people living ordinary lives are the unsung heroes in a society. And we are ordinary people.