What about menhirs?

Rating: 10/10 (28 July 2005)

I really can't cope. From an antiquary and archaeological point of view,"Troy" is the only serious film about ancient Greece I have ever seen. Nevertheless, a lot of silly things have been said and written about it. Why? Because the gods are excluded from the action? There are lots of ancient and modern retellings of the story which exclude the gods. Or because Hector shows scepticism about the "winged messages" alleged by Trojan priests? But this is Homer (Iliad, book 12). Religion, temples and sanctuaries in ancient Greek epics are a very difficult and delicate matter. The movie treats this subject with intelligence and information. In the Mycenean era, the temples were usually annexed to the royal palaces, and this is very well shown in "Troy". But Homer (and later epics) tell about independent sanctuaries, such as the one of Athena (Ilias, book 6), which is probably an anachronism, just like the temple of Apollo Tymbraeus, sacked by Achilles out of the walls of Troy (Cyprian tales, Apollodorus and so on). The Greek religious architecture begins in the VIII-VII centuries b.C.: the movie tries to reconstruct a temple belonging to that time, with reference to insular and "Orientalizing" evidence (Gortina, Prinias). But the most intolerable mistake I read in some reviews concerns the building where Achilles trains with Patroclus. The movie was located in Malta and Mexico...so, please, remember that there are NO Greek temples in Malta or in Mexico. The structure is a MENHIR, placed in Malta, and dating back to the third millennium b.C. There were menhirs also in Greece, and obviously we can suppose they were ruined when the Trojan war was beginning. It is possible that Achilles trained in the ruins of a menhir, and in any case the idea is very suggestive.