The Man who Blew Up Troy: Heinrich Schliemann

Today we're gonna talk about the place where history and legend collide, and this is not only true of the city of Troy itself, but also of the man who excavated it.

The problem with Heinrich Schliemann, who made his name as the discoverer of Troy, is that he very much forged his own legend, and he did it as much with the pen as with the pickaxe.

And so in reading the accounts of his life, we have to exercise a healthy dose of skepticism because Heinrich Schliemann was a man who loved a good story, and he wasn't afraid to bend the facts to tell one.

But before we get to him, we need to know what he was so obsessed with.

So let's talk about the legend of Troy itself.

We know about Troy through Homer, who some people call the greatest Greek poet who ever lived.

And the interesting thing about Homer is that he was supposed to be blind, and that the way he transmitted the story of Troy was orally.

Historians think that he lived sometime in the eighth century BCE, but the events he's talking about, the Trojan War itself, probably happened some 400 years earlier in the 12th or 13th century BCE.

Now, Homer didn't invent this story.

He was likely transmitting an account of events that had been passed down to him the same way, orally, because that's how information was preserved and passed on in this time period.

People memorized large amounts of information, especially in poetic form, and that's because the rhythm and meter of poetry lends itself to easier retention.

Now, I might be bringing back nightmares of your English class for some of you when I start talking about rhyme and meter, but if you've ever tried to memorize anything, you'll know that some piece of poetry with a regular rhyme scheme and a rhythm is much easier to commit to memory than an essay, for example.

And so Homer's work is very much in this tradition.

Now, the story of Troy itself begins with one man lusting after another man's wife.

So the lustful man in question is a prince called Paris, and he's visiting King Menelaus in Greece.

Of course, Greece as a country doesn't exist at this point, let me add.

We're talking about a bunch of little city states, but in the area that we would now call Greece.

So Paris is visiting King Menelaus' court, and while he's there, he happens to notice that King Menelaus' wife, Helen, is extraordinarily beautiful.

So Paris decides to make off with Helen, just sort of scoop her up and put her into a boat, uh, with the rest of his luggage as he's leaving the court.

There's a little problem here.

King Menelaus was not just the king of any Greek city state, he was the king of Sparta, and Spartans weren't well-known for being particularly laid back about these things.

So Paris has managed to make off with the girl of his dreams, but he's also really aggravated King Menelaus of Sparta and picked a fight with Spartans in general.

So what happens next is that King Menelaus puts together a coalition.

This coalition is led by the king of another Greek city state, King Agamemnon of Mycenae, and includes a whole host of other names that have become famous to us.

Ajax, a mountainous man of a warrior.