User Reviews

T R O Y This six-part documentary, one of the first of Michael Wood's "In Search of . . . " series, is an impressive tour de force that examines Bronze Age civilizations, what we know of the Trojan War, the oral history tradition about it embodied in the work of Homer, and the efforts to demonstrate the historicity of the war, especially through the archaeological investigations of Heinrich Schliemann, Wilhelm Dörpfeld, Arthur Evans, and Carl Blegen.

The legend of the Trojan War is fairly well known. Helen (the most beautiful woman in the world), wife of King Menelaus of Sparta, either eloped with, or was abducted by, Paris, son of King Priam of Troy. To recover her, various Greek city states assembled an allied force, under King Agamemnon of Mycenae, and sailed in fleet of 1,000 ships to attack Troy. The siege of Troy lasted a decade, and was not concluded until a contingent of Greek soldiers, hidden in the Trojan Horse, gained access to the besieged city and opened its gates to their comrades.

Inspired by the story of the Trojan War, Michael Wood attempts to discover whether there is any reality behind the legend. In his youth, Wood had been interested in drama. He studied history at Oxford, but dropped out of a doctoral program before obtaining his degree in order to become a television reporter. His ability to draw upon all of these experiences enhances the effectiveness of his documentary programs.

According to tradition, Homer's Troy lay somewhere under the Roman town of Ilium in what is now western Turkey. But, as archaeological digs would reveal, humans had occupied this site for 5,000 years, leaving, at different levels, the remains of nine principal cities, which could be further subdivided into 50 separate layers. Could one of these previous settlements provide evidence that there had actually been a Trojan War? If there had been such a war, when did it take place, who were the combatants, and what were their objectives? Wood addresses these questions in these six episodes.

In the first episode, Wood focuses on the work of Heinrich Schliemann. Schliemann was fascinated by the Trojan War; and he had the initiative and the wealth to conduct extensive excavations of the presumed site of Troy. His work was based on careful analysis of relevant literary sources. But archeology was in its infancy, and no one knew how to distinguish the Trojan War city from the cities on other levels of the site. Thus, Schliemann burrowed down to the second city (Troy II), which he claimed was the city besieged by the Greeks. Unfortunately, it eventually turned out to be the wrong city, dating from 1,000 years before the war. Schliemann had in fact destroyed much of the city that he had spent 20 years and much of his fortune trying to find. His life was a modern Greek tragedy. The second episode traces the investigations of Wilhelm Dörpfeld, who was able, on the basis of pottery evidence, to associate a more recent city (Troy VI) with the presumed period of the Trojan War. It also describes how Arthur Evans (on Crete) and Carl Blegen (on mainland Greece) turned up clay tablets written in Linear B code, which proved that the Mediterranean cities of that time belonged to a single civilization. Although it might more logically have belonged in the initial episode, Wood reserves his discussion of Homer and the transmission of historical traditions through oral history, until the third episode. The fourth episode considers whether the quest for female slaves might have been one of the motives for the war, while the fifth episode describes the Hittite diplomatic archives and the possibility that the Trojan War was merely one aspect of a larger struggle between the Hittites and the Greeks.

In the sixth episode, Wood offers his tentative hypothesis regarding the Trojan War. He suspects that there will never be a conclusive interpretation of the war, that each generation will continue to re-interpret the war in the light of its own experiences. He concedes, "I, perhaps, like all those who examined the question before me, have only found what I wanted to find." Nonetheless, he does reach some defensible conclusions, and judges some of the characters (such as Agamemnon) to have been real persons, while others were likely invented. As for Helen herself, Wood remarks, "In the archaeological record, love leaves no trace." (With reference to Helen's role in the story, one of the scholars Wood interviewed said, "I would not say that stranger things have not happened in the Near East.") This documentary takes viewers to many of the historic sites involved, including Troy, Mycenae, Pylos, Knossos, and Boghaz Köy. Wood guides us to relevant museums, and includes the assessments of leading scholars—even some who do not share his interpretations. He is even-handed in his discussions of the archaeologists, giving them credit for their accomplishments, while also pointing out what he believes to be their errors. This is especially true of Schliemann, perhaps the most important of the archaeologists, but a man who could not always be trusted. Over 25 years have passed since this documentary was produced. More recent research has told us more about Troy. But most of Wood's conclusions are still valid. This is an outstanding documentary. Those interested in the subject should obtain the companion volume (of which there is an updated edition); it contains information not in the television version

Speaking from the point of view of a virtual dummy, I found this enlightening but meandering and dull. Michael Wood seems a likable enough guy but, whew, this was a long and sometimes technical slog.

I've read the Iliad a number of times, sat through an internet auditing of David Kagan's course on the history of ancient Greece, and got an "A" in my class on archaeology, but it was tough going. I loved the Mediterranean scenery and was amused by Wood's contagious enthusiasm for the subject. The three-dimensional maps are extremely helpful. The many talking heads, well, mezza mezza. Most of the comments added up to something like, "Yes, Troy 6 could have been destroyed by an earthquake -- but I don't know. Nobody knows. Nobody will ever know." (I only recognized one name: Colin Renfrew.) Of course these comments were made in 1985 and, at least judging from one other review, a lot of new stuff has been found since then.

The myth per se is pretty much skipped over. This isn't about literature. It's about what one preserved piece of literature can tell us about the historical reality of events that happened five hundred years earlier. There's considerable material too on earlier written sources like Cretan Linear B, and there's an entire episode on the neighboring Hittites that I thought was tangential.

Anyone interested in the subject has heard of Schliemann who managed to rape an archaeological site out of a passion he couldn't overcome, the Paris of his age. But it was nice learning about the handful of diggers who followed him and did a more exacting job.

For those who don't know the story, the Greeks from a couple of city-states managed to form a fragile alliance and demolish the city of Troy and its inhabitants in what is now Turkey. That was around 1250 BC -- or BCE, if you prefer. Then the alliance fell apart, the Greeks went to war with one another, the civilization of the time fell apart, literacy was lost, and hundreds of years of Dark Ages followed, with the story of the Trojan war only preserved in the oral traditions of singers like Homer. Greece rose, Phoenix-like, out of the Dark Ages. Then the city states went to war with one another again, perhaps because of population pressure, among other things, and today they are all begging the rest of Europe to save their economy from failure.