Troy

Troy (Ancient Greek: Τροία), archaeological site in northwestern Turkey, chief city of the Trojans during the siege by the Greeks in the Trojan War, an event described in poetic terms in Homer's Iliad to have taken place around the 12th century B.C. Archaeological research is centered on Hisarlık Tepe, a small hillock in the province Çanakkale in which archaeologists Frank Calvert and Heinrich Schliemann identified as the most probable site of Troy in the 1860's, which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In addition to Homer, the Roman poet Virgil set down the Aeneid, an epic of the founding of ancient Rome by a Trojan prince who fled the city after the Greeks had sacked it.

Trojan War

The story of Troy essentially begins with the Trojan War, a conflict between Mycenaean Greeks and the Kingdom of Troy that has generally been told and retold for about four centuries before being put down in writing by Homer, a Greek poet and bard who may or may not have existed. The conflict began when the wife of King Menelaus of Sparta, Helen, eloped with the Trojan prince Paris, and to get her back, Menelaus received the backing of King Agamemnon of Mycenae. The army that was created sailed to Troy on a thousand ships and laid siege to the city for ten years; lacking the physical power to enter, the Greeks feigned giving up, leaving a large, wooden horse on the beach as a "gift" to Troy. The horse was pulled into the city, and the Greek soldiers who had hidden inside it crept out, opened the city gates, and allowed the Greek army to enter, resulting in the destruction of the city. Homer's tale involved age-old conflicts of right and wrong; the influence of the gods; the heroes Ajax and Nestor; the intercession of the Amazons in the aid of Priam; the doomed Patroclus who believed he could be a stand-in for his cousin, the nearly-indestructible Achilles, who would take vengeance against Hector on the plain before Troy, dragging his body around the city with his chariot. And when Troy was turned to ashes, Odysseus would face a ten-year journey to get back home to Ithaca, to find his wife the target of unwanted suitors.

The Illiad was first written down about 750 B.C., followed by the Odyssey around 725 B.C. Both works are ascribed to Homer. About 29 B.C. Virgil wrote his epic Aeneid, in which the tale recounted Trojans who fled the destruction to Carthage; led by Prince Aeneas, they would leave for the Italian peninsula, founding the city of Rome on the banks of the Tiber River. Written during the period of the first emperor Augustus, Virgil's epic had the intention of giving the Romans a history as impressive as any the Greeks had.