time it is clear that little trace remained of the site of New Ilium, for it was ignored by all early travellers.
It was not until the eighteenth century that the first scholarly attempts were made to pin down the exact location of the city of Homer and the events of the Iliad . On two visits in 1742 and 1750, at a time when travel in bandit-ridden Asia Minor was still a dangerous business, Robert Wood laid the foundations for the modern topographical study of the Trojan problem. Wood has claims to be considered the first ‘pilgrim’ to Greece. His book Essay … on the original genius of Homer , published in 1769, came to no conclusion about the exact site of the city (he thought it had been utterly obliterated) but made some excellent deductions about the topography of the plain which he thought very different from Homer’s day. Wood reckoned that ‘a great part’ of the plain had been formed of river silt since antiquity (he compared it with the mouth of the river Maeander at Miletus, formerly a great port which is now high and dry), that there had been a wide bay in front of Troy at the time of the war, ‘some miles’ nearer the city than at present, and that the courses of the rivers had moved considerably over the intervening centuries. These conclusions were abandoned by most other scholars right up to the present, but we now know they were correct ( see here ; another important assertion of Wood’s was that Homer’s account had not been composed in writing, but ‘sung and retained by memory’). Wood’s basic premise, that the location ofTroy and the historicity of the Trojan War could be determined by patient field research, set the tone for future treatment of the theme, and his book marks the start of a famous controversy which shows no sign of abating: it went through five editions and was translated into four languages.
It was with Wood’s book in his hand – along with the Iliad , of course – that the Frenchman Jean Baptiste Lechevalier went to the Troad in 1785, and with him modern topographical exploration of the Troad began. Over three visits he walked the whole area from Ida to the Dardanelles and rapidly became convinced that the Troad exactly accorded with the description in Homer. The city itself, Lechevalier thought, had lain not near the sea, but up the valley of the river Scamander (Menderes) at a place called Bunarbashi where there was a prominent, acropolis-like hill above a well-known local landmark, the ‘Forty Eyes’ springs, which Lechevalier identified with Homer’s hot and cold springs at Troy.
Exiled by the French Revolution, Lechevalier first announced his theory in a lecture in French to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in February 1791, and it was published there in English the same year with a preface testifying to the ‘vivacity of his conversation and the agreeableness of his manners’. In the light of his researches, Lechevalier also gave his opinion on the vexed question of the historicity of the Trojan War: it was, he thought,
not poetical fiction but historical fact. … For the space of ten years the Greeks were employed in laying waste the coast of Asia, together with adjacent islands. The capital of the Trojan territory was not always the immediate subject of their disputes … they do not appear to have attacked it in full force till the tenth year of the war. Whether it was really taken or … baffled all the efforts of the Greeks I cannot take it upon me to decide.
Now the controversy really took off, with some, like Jacob Bryant, not only denying that the war had taken place but vehemently asserting that Troy itself had never existed. Armchair critics fired off scholarly brickbats, arguing hotly over the minutest problem ofthe disposition of the Greek ships (or even the likely number of babies born to the camp whores over ten years!).
It was in the midst of this famous and heated dispute that Lord Byron spent seventeen days at anchor off the Troad in
It was not until the eighteenth century that the first scholarly attempts were made to pin down the exact location of the city of Homer and the events of the Iliad . On two visits in 1742 and 1750, at a time when travel in bandit-ridden Asia Minor was still a dangerous business, Robert Wood laid the foundations for the modern topographical study of the Trojan problem. Wood has claims to be considered the first ‘pilgrim’ to Greece. His book Essay … on the original genius of Homer , published in 1769, came to no conclusion about the exact site of the city (he thought it had been utterly obliterated) but made some excellent deductions about the topography of the plain which he thought very different from Homer’s day. Wood reckoned that ‘a great part’ of the plain had been formed of river silt since antiquity (he compared it with the mouth of the river Maeander at Miletus, formerly a great port which is now high and dry), that there had been a wide bay in front of Troy at the time of the war, ‘some miles’ nearer the city than at present, and that the courses of the rivers had moved considerably over the intervening centuries. These conclusions were abandoned by most other scholars right up to the present, but we now know they were correct ( see here ; another important assertion of Wood’s was that Homer’s account had not been composed in writing, but ‘sung and retained by memory’). Wood’s basic premise, that the location ofTroy and the historicity of the Trojan War could be determined by patient field research, set the tone for future treatment of the theme, and his book marks the start of a famous controversy which shows no sign of abating: it went through five editions and was translated into four languages.
It was with Wood’s book in his hand – along with the Iliad , of course – that the Frenchman Jean Baptiste Lechevalier went to the Troad in 1785, and with him modern topographical exploration of the Troad began. Over three visits he walked the whole area from Ida to the Dardanelles and rapidly became convinced that the Troad exactly accorded with the description in Homer. The city itself, Lechevalier thought, had lain not near the sea, but up the valley of the river Scamander (Menderes) at a place called Bunarbashi where there was a prominent, acropolis-like hill above a well-known local landmark, the ‘Forty Eyes’ springs, which Lechevalier identified with Homer’s hot and cold springs at Troy.
Exiled by the French Revolution, Lechevalier first announced his theory in a lecture in French to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in February 1791, and it was published there in English the same year with a preface testifying to the ‘vivacity of his conversation and the agreeableness of his manners’. In the light of his researches, Lechevalier also gave his opinion on the vexed question of the historicity of the Trojan War: it was, he thought,
not poetical fiction but historical fact. … For the space of ten years the Greeks were employed in laying waste the coast of Asia, together with adjacent islands. The capital of the Trojan territory was not always the immediate subject of their disputes … they do not appear to have attacked it in full force till the tenth year of the war. Whether it was really taken or … baffled all the efforts of the Greeks I cannot take it upon me to decide.
Now the controversy really took off, with some, like Jacob Bryant, not only denying that the war had taken place but vehemently asserting that Troy itself had never existed. Armchair critics fired off scholarly brickbats, arguing hotly over the minutest problem ofthe disposition of the Greek ships (or even the likely number of babies born to the camp whores over ten years!).
It was in the midst of this famous and heated dispute that Lord Byron spent seventeen days at anchor off the Troad in
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