visited the site of ‘Troy’. The scene is described by the Greek Critoboulos of Imbros who, like many Greeks, favoured Mehmet out of hatred of ‘the Latins’, the Catholic Church. Mehmet walked the circuit of the city,
inspected its ruins, saw its topographical advantages, and its favourable position close to the sea and the opposite continent. Then he asked to be shown the tombs of the heroes Achilles, Hector and Ajax, and like other great conquerors before him he made offerings at the tomb of Achilles, congratulated him on his fame and his great deeds, and on having found the poet Homer (whom Cyriac had read to Mehmet) to celebrate them. Then, it is said, he pronounced these words: ‘It is to me that Allah has given to avenge this city and its people: I have overcome their enemies, ravaged their cities and made a Mysian prey of their riches. Indeed it was the Greeks who before devastated this city, and it is their descendants who after so many years have paid me the debt which their boundless pride [ hubris ] hadcontracted – and often afterwards – towards us, the peoples of Asia.’
So in sacking Constantinople Mehmet had avenged the Fall of Troy! It was a pilgrimage which re-enacted other pilgrimages by world conquerors at great moments of confrontation; it is clearly modelled on that of Alexander. The wheel had come full circle: even if Mehmet never said those words, one feels he ought to have!
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the Turkish and Christian worlds were opposed, and travel was dangerous and difficult. But from the late sixteenth century a change is noticeable, with new commercial relations developing between east and west. At this time the visits of a number of western visitors, starting with the naturalist Pierre Belon (who mistook Alexandria Troas for Troy), rekindled interest in Troy, aided by the spread of printing which enabled the dissemination of Homer in translation for the first time, and also of the accounts of the travellers themselves. From the 1580s, indeed, there is a continuous record of western visitors to Troy, the bulk of them English.
When William Shakespeare sat in London in 1602 writing Troilus and Cressida , and imagined the ‘Dardan plains’ and the ‘strong immures’ of Troy, ‘Priam’s six-gated city’, he was not reflecting topographical knowledge about Troy and its environs; merely using the book on his desk, Caxton’s Recuyell . But it was in his lifetime that English travellers first made their mark in the search for Troy on the ground. From the sixteenth century English and French merchants replaced Venetians and Genoese in the courts of Ottoman Turkey, and the first commercial treaty and diplomatic exchanges between England and Turkey were established in 1580. Elizabeth’s ambassador, John Sanderson, twice ‘put into Troy’, in 1584 and 1591, and Richard Wragg, taking the queen’s second present, saw the two big mounds on Cape Yenisehir in 1594: ‘not unlikely the tombs of Achilles and Ajax,’ he thought. Others followed: Thomas Dallam, the organ-builder, taking an elaborate hydraulic organ to the Sultan, put into the same place and saw ruins which he took to be Troy (probably the foundations of Constantine’s abortive city on theSigeum ridge); and in the winter of 1609–10 William Lithgow was shown round a ruined site in the Troad by a Greek guide. Some, like William Biddulph in 1600 and Thomas Coryate in 1603, published their accounts, the latter being the first detailed modern description of the plain. Most of these early visitors, however, were misled into thinking that Alexandria Troas, or the Sigeum ruins, were the site of Homeric Troy, though even in the early seventeenth century, as George Sandys said, the problem of the location of Ilium, the ‘glory of Asia’, had ‘afforded to rarest wits so plentiful an argument’. Sandys, in 1627, was the first to identify the rivers Scamander and Simois with the Menderes and Dumrek Su. By this
inspected its ruins, saw its topographical advantages, and its favourable position close to the sea and the opposite continent. Then he asked to be shown the tombs of the heroes Achilles, Hector and Ajax, and like other great conquerors before him he made offerings at the tomb of Achilles, congratulated him on his fame and his great deeds, and on having found the poet Homer (whom Cyriac had read to Mehmet) to celebrate them. Then, it is said, he pronounced these words: ‘It is to me that Allah has given to avenge this city and its people: I have overcome their enemies, ravaged their cities and made a Mysian prey of their riches. Indeed it was the Greeks who before devastated this city, and it is their descendants who after so many years have paid me the debt which their boundless pride [ hubris ] hadcontracted – and often afterwards – towards us, the peoples of Asia.’
So in sacking Constantinople Mehmet had avenged the Fall of Troy! It was a pilgrimage which re-enacted other pilgrimages by world conquerors at great moments of confrontation; it is clearly modelled on that of Alexander. The wheel had come full circle: even if Mehmet never said those words, one feels he ought to have!
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the Turkish and Christian worlds were opposed, and travel was dangerous and difficult. But from the late sixteenth century a change is noticeable, with new commercial relations developing between east and west. At this time the visits of a number of western visitors, starting with the naturalist Pierre Belon (who mistook Alexandria Troas for Troy), rekindled interest in Troy, aided by the spread of printing which enabled the dissemination of Homer in translation for the first time, and also of the accounts of the travellers themselves. From the 1580s, indeed, there is a continuous record of western visitors to Troy, the bulk of them English.
When William Shakespeare sat in London in 1602 writing Troilus and Cressida , and imagined the ‘Dardan plains’ and the ‘strong immures’ of Troy, ‘Priam’s six-gated city’, he was not reflecting topographical knowledge about Troy and its environs; merely using the book on his desk, Caxton’s Recuyell . But it was in his lifetime that English travellers first made their mark in the search for Troy on the ground. From the sixteenth century English and French merchants replaced Venetians and Genoese in the courts of Ottoman Turkey, and the first commercial treaty and diplomatic exchanges between England and Turkey were established in 1580. Elizabeth’s ambassador, John Sanderson, twice ‘put into Troy’, in 1584 and 1591, and Richard Wragg, taking the queen’s second present, saw the two big mounds on Cape Yenisehir in 1594: ‘not unlikely the tombs of Achilles and Ajax,’ he thought. Others followed: Thomas Dallam, the organ-builder, taking an elaborate hydraulic organ to the Sultan, put into the same place and saw ruins which he took to be Troy (probably the foundations of Constantine’s abortive city on theSigeum ridge); and in the winter of 1609–10 William Lithgow was shown round a ruined site in the Troad by a Greek guide. Some, like William Biddulph in 1600 and Thomas Coryate in 1603, published their accounts, the latter being the first detailed modern description of the plain. Most of these early visitors, however, were misled into thinking that Alexandria Troas, or the Sigeum ruins, were the site of Homeric Troy, though even in the early seventeenth century, as George Sandys said, the problem of the location of Ilium, the ‘glory of Asia’, had ‘afforded to rarest wits so plentiful an argument’. Sandys, in 1627, was the first to identify the rivers Scamander and Simois with the Menderes and Dumrek Su. By this
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