Troy The Myth and Reality Behind the Epic Legend

This is a story of war. It is also the story of one man's dream. It is a story from the deepest past, and yet it is a story as close to us as the wind. The narrative of the epic is set in the period around 1250BC, shortly before the Mycenaean civilization of the Mediterranean began to crumble and city states such as Thebes, Knossus and Tiryns fell victim to a period when settled life broke down. It took centuries to rebuild the glory that had been lost. It was a true dark age, but through travelling storytellers and the oral tradition, the stories of old heroes and gods, among them tales of the siege of Troy, were kept alive. For centuries scholars believed that both the place depicted and the events in the epic were mere fables. It took an unscholarly German indigo salesman to make the connection between the text of The Iliad, as written down by Homer, and the truth. He discovered a site of an ancient city that could have been the real Troy.