Troy

or Ilium, an ancient city of Asia Minor. It was situated in the plain of the Scamander River, near the Asiatic side of the entrance to the Hellespont. The legend of the siege of Troy is the most celebrated in antiquity. It furnishes the theme of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and is, in part, the theme of Virgil's Aeneid. According to the legend, Troy was a strongly walled city inhabited by Asiatics. Paris, son of Priam, the king, visited Menelaus, king of Sparta, and repaid his hospitality by carrying away his wife, Helen, the most beautiful woman in Greece. Menelaus called on his countrymen to aid him in taking revenge. Achilles, the lion-hearted, came with his Myrmidons from Thessaly; Odysseus, the crafty king of Ithaca, and the aged Nestor, sage in council, came at the call. Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and brother of Menelaus, was made commander-in-chief. A hundred thousand warriors, twelve hundred war galleys, they crossed the Aegean and laid siege to Troy. Wondrous deeds of valor were done under the old walls. The Trojans drove the Greeks repeatedly to their ships. Achilles slew Hector, the valiant son of Priam, and dragged his body at the tail of his chariot around the city. The siege lasted for ten years, 1194-1184 B. C. At last the Greeks gained entrance through the strategy of the wooden horse. They built an immense wooden horse, the body of which they filled with armed men. The rest of the Greeks withdrew to their ships and sailed away, leaving behind one man, Sinon, who was taken prisoner. Sinon acted well his part. He pretended to have been deserted by Ulysses and to be terribly frightened. When told that his life would be spared, he explained to the Trojans that the horse was an offering to Minerva and that it was made of great size lest it be taken into the city and thus win the favor of the goddess for the Trojans instead of the Greeks. So the horse was taken into the city with much rejoicing. At night the armed men came forth from their concealment and opened the gates for their companions who had returned. Carnage and conflagration, and "Troy was not." The very site of the city was long in controversy.

In 1870 Dr. Schliemann, an enthusiastic German student of Homer, began a series of excavations on a mound popularly believed to be the site of the lost city of Troy. As he descended, he found nine distinct strata-the remains of nine cities, one under the other. The second stratum from the bottom, fifty feet below the present surface, revealed massive walls and defensive gateways, the foundation of a palace and archaic articles of gold, silver, and bronze. For a time this was believed to be the Troy of Homer, but later enlargements of the excavations have established the conviction that the Troy of Homer is the sixth from the bottom, and that still older civilizations preceded the age described by Homer.

Above the Homeric city is a Grecian city, evidently a place of wealth and magnificence in the time of Alexander. Above this are the remains of a Roman city, and finally, at the present surface, a wretched Turkish village, squalid with dogs and offal, the Hissarlik of modern atlases.

See Homer; Iliad; Odyssey; Achilles; Ajax; Paris; Hector; Menelaus; Agamemnon; Ulysses; Aeneas; Mycenae; Laocoon; Cassandra; Schliemann