Historicity of the Iliad The extent of the historical basis of the Iliad has been a topic of scholarly debate for centuries . While researchers of the 18th century had largely rejected the story of the Trojan War as fable , the discoveries made by Heinrich Schliemann at Hisarlik reopened the question in modern terms , and the subsequent excavation of Troy VIIa and the discovery of the toponym " Wilusa " in Hittite correspondence has made it plausible that the Trojan War cycle was at least remotely based on a historical conflict of the 12th century BC , even if the poems of Homer are removed from the event by more than four centuries of oral tradition . History . In antiquity , educated Greeks of the 5th century BC continued to accept the truth of human events depicted in the " Iliad " , even as philosophical scepticism was undermining faith in divine intervention in human affairs . In the time of Strabo topographical disquisitions discussed the identity of sites mentioned by Homer . This continued when Greco - Roman culture was Christianised : Eusebius of Caesarea offered universal history reduced to a timeline , in which Troy received the same historical weight as Abraham , with whom Eusebius ' " Chronologia " began , ranking the Argives and Mycenaeans among the kingdoms ranged in vertical columns , offering biblical history on the left ( verso ) , and secular history of the kingdoms on the right ( recto ) . Jerome ' s " Chronicon " followed Eusebius , and all the medieval chroniclers began with summaries of the universal history of Jerome . With such authorities accepting it , post - Roman Europeans continued to accept Troy and the events of the Trojan War as historical . Geoffrey of Monmouth ' s pseudo - genealogy traced a Trojan origin for royal Briton descents in " Historia Regum Britanniae " . Merovingian descent from a Trojan ancestor was embodied in a literary myth first established in Fredegar ' s chronicle ( 2 . 4 , 3 . 2 . 9 ) , to the effect that the Franks were of Trojan stock and adopted their name from King Francio , who had built a new Troy on the banks of the river Rhine ( modern Treves ) . Even before the so - called Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century these supposed " facts " of the medieval concept of history were doubted by Blaise Pascal : " Homer wrote a romance , for nobody supposes that Troy and Agamemnon existed any more than the apples of the Hesperides . He had no intention to write history , but only to amuse us . " During the 19th century the stories of Troy were devalued as fables by George Grote . The discoveries made by Heinrich Schliemann at Hisarlik revived the question during modern times , and recent discoveries have resulted in more discussion . The events described by Homer ' s " Iliad " , even if based on historical events that preceded its composition by some 450 years , will never be completely identifiable with historical or archaeological facts , even if there was a Bronze Age city on the site now called Troy , and even if that city was destroyed by fire or war at about the same time as the time postulated for the Trojan War . No text or artifact found on the site itself clearly identifies the Bronze Age site by name . This is due probably to the planification of the former hillfort during the construction of Hellenistic Ilium ( Troy IX ) , destroying the parts that most likely contained the city archives . A single seal of a Luwian scribe has been found in one of the houses , proving the presence of written correspondence in the city , but not a single text . Our developing knowledge of the geography of the Hittite kingdom makes it very likely that the site corresponds to the city of Wilusa . But even if that is accepted , it is of course no positive proof of identity with Homeric " ( W ) ilios " . The bilingual toponymy of Troy / Ilion is well established in the Homeric tradition . A name " Wilios " or " Troia " does not appear in any Greek written records from the Mycenean sites , however . The Mycenaean Greeks of the 13th century BC had colonized the Greek mainland and Crete , and were only beginning to make forays into Anatolia , establishing an outpost at Miletus ( Millawanda ) . Historical Wilusa was one of the Arzawa lands , in loose alliance with the Hittite kingdom , and written reference to the city is therefore expected in Hittite correspondence rather than in Mycenaean palace archives . Status of the " Iliad " . Modern discourse has changed from questions of the historicity of the particular human events that transpire in the " Iliad " ; Moses I . Finley , in " The World of Odysseus " ( 1954 ) , which sets out a coherent picture of the society represented by the " Iliad " and the " Odyssey " , avoids the question as " beside the point that the narrative is a collection of fictions from beginning to end " Finley , for whom the Trojan War is " a timeless event floating in a timeless world " , analyzes the question of historicity , aside from invented narrative details , into five essential elements : 1 . Troy was destroyed by a war ; 2 . the destroyers were a coalition from mainland Greece ; 3 . the leader of the coalition was a king named Agamemnon ; 4 . Agamemnon ' s overlordship was recognized by the other chieftains ; 5 . Troy , too , headed a coalition of allies . Finley does not find any evidence for any of these elements . The more we know about Bronze Age history , the clearer it becomes that it is not a yes - or - no question but one of educated assessment of " how much " historical knowledge is present in Homer , and whether it represents a retrospective memory of Dark Age Greece , as Finley concludes , or of Mycenaean Greece , which is the dominant view of " A Companion to Homer " , A . J . B . Wace and F . H . Stebbings , eds . ( New York / London : Macmillan 1962 ) . The particular narrative of the " Iliad " is not an account of the war , but a tale of the psychology , the wrath , vengeance and death of individual heroes , which assumes common knowledge of the Trojan War as a back - story . No scholars now assume that the individual events of the tale ( many of which involve divine intervention ) are historical fact ; however , no scholars claim that the story is entirely devoid of memories of Mycenaean times . The " Iliad " as essentially legendary . Some archaeologists and historians , most notably , until his death in 1986 , Finley , maintain that none of the events in Homer ' s works are historical . Others accept that there may be a foundation of historical events in the Homeric narrative , but say that in the absence of independent evidence it is not possible to separate fact from myth . Finley was in a minority when his " World of Odysseus " first appeared in 1954 . With the understanding that war was the normal state of affairs , Finley observed that a ten - year war was out of the question , indicating Nestor ' s recall of a cattle - raid in Elis as a norm , and identifying the scene in which Helen points out to Priam the Achaean leaders in the battlefield , as " an illustration of the way in which one traditional piece of the story was retained after the war had ballooned into ten years and the piece had become rationally incongruous . " Aside from narrative detail , Finley pointed out that , aside from some correlation of Homeric placenames and Mycenaean sites , and the fact that the heroes lived at home in palaces ( " oikoi " ) unknown in Homer ' s day ; far from a nostalgic recall of the Mycenaean age , Finley asserts that " the catalogue of his errors is very long " . His arms bear a resemblance to the armour of his time , quite unlike the Mycenaean , although he persistently casts them in antiquated bronze , not iron . His gods had temples , and the Mycenaeans built none , whereas the latter constructed great vaulted tombs to bury their chieftains in and the poet cremates his . A neat little touch is provided by the battle chariot s . Homer had heard of them , but he did not really visualize what one did with chariots in a war . So his heroes normally drove from their tents a mile or less away , carefully dismounted , and then proceeded to battle on foot . " What the poet believed he was singing about was the heroic past of his own Greek world , Finley concludes . During recent years scholars have suggested that the Homeric stories represented a synthesis of many old Greek stories of various Bronze Age sieges and expeditions , fused together in the Greek memory during the " dark ages " which followed the end of the Mycenean civilization . In this view , no historical city of Troy existed anywhere : the name perhaps derives from a people called the Troies , who probably lived in central Greece . The identification of the hill at Hisarlık as Troy is , in this view , a late development , following the Greek colonisation of Asia Minor during the 8th century BC . It is also worth comparing the details of the Iliadic story to those of older Mesopotamian literature — most notably , the " Epic of Gilgamesh " . Names , set scenes , and even major parts of the story , are strikingly similar . Most scholars believe that writing first came to Greece from the east , via traders , and these older poems were used to demonstrate the uses of writing , thus heavily influencing early Greek literature . The " Iliad " as essentially historical . Another opinion is that Homer was heir to an unbroken tradition of oral epic poetry reaching back some 500 years into Mycenaean times . The case is set out in " The Singer of Tales " by Albert B . Lord , citing earlier work by folklorist and mythographer Milman Parry . In this view , the poem ' s core could represent an historical campaign that took place at the eve of the decline of the Mycenaean civilization . Much legendary material would have been added during this time , but in this view it is meaningful to ask for archaeological and textual evidence corresponding to events referred to in the " Iliad " . Such an historical background gives a credible explanation for the geographical knowledge of Troy ( which could , however , also have been obtained in Homer ' s time by visiting the traditional site of the city , which was in fact New Ilium , built at the base of the hill at Hisarlık ) and otherwise unmotivated elements in the poem ( in particular the detailed " Catalogue of Ships " ) . Linguistically , a few verses of the " Iliad " suggest great antiquity , because they only fit the meter if projected back into Mycenaean Greek , in part due to the classical loss of the digamma ; this trace of archaic language suggests a poetic tradition spanning the Greek Dark Ages . On the other hand , there are well - known interpolations in the text we have . Even though Homer was Ionian , the " Iliad " reflects the geography known to the Mycenaean Greeks , showing detailed knowledge of the mainland but not extending to the Ionian Islands or Anatolia , which suggests that the " Iliad " reproduces an account of events handed down by tradition , to which the author did not add his own geographical knowledge . The " Iliad " as partly historical . As mentioned above , though , it is most likely that the Homeric tradition contains elements of historical fact and elements of fiction interwoven . Homer describes a location , presumably in the Bronze Age , with a city . This city was near Mount Ida in northwest Turkey . Such a city did exist , at the mound of Hisarlık . Homer describes that the location was very windy , which Hisarlık almost always is , and several other geographical features also match ; so it appears , therefore , that Homer describes an actual place , although this fact does not in itself prove that his story is true . Homeric evidence . Also , the " Catalogue of Ships " mentions a great variety of cities , some of which , including Athens , were inhabited both in the Bronze Age and in Homer ' s time , and some of which , such as Pylos , were not rebuilt after the Bronze Age . This suggests that the names of no - longer - existing towns were remembered from an older time , because it is unlikely that Homer would have managed to name successfully a diverse list of important Bronze Age cities that were , in his time , only a few blocks of rubble on the surface , often without even names . Furthermore , the cities enumerated in the " Catalogue " are given in geographical clusters , this revealing a sound knowledge of Aegean topography . Some evidence is mixed , though : locating the Bronze Age palace of Sparta , the traditional home of Menelaus , under the modern city has been challenging . Mycenaean evidence . Likewise , in the Linear B tablets , some Homeric names appear , including Achilles , " " a - ki - re - u " " ( which was also a common name in the classical period ) , noted on tablets from both Knossos and Pylos . The Achilles of the Linear B tablet is a shepherd , not a king or warrior , but the very fact that the name is an authentic Bronze Age name is significant . These names in the Homeric poems presumably remember , if not necessarily specific people , at least an older time when people ' s names were not the same as they were when the Homeric epics were written down . Some story elements from the tablets appear in the " Iliad " . Hittite evidence . The first person to point to the Hittite texts as a possible primary source was the Swiss scholar Emil Forrer in the 1920s and 1930s . In discussing an ethnic group called the " Ahhiyawa " in these texts , Forrer drew attention to the place names " Wilusa " and " Taruisa " , which he argued were the Hittite way of writing " ( W ) ilios " ( Ilios ) and " Troia " ( Troy ) . He also noted the mention of a Wilusan king Alaksandu , who had concluded a treaty with the Hittite king Muwatalli ; the name of this king closely resembled Alexandros / Alexander , the alternative name of Paris , the son of king Priam . Other identifications Forrer offered included Priam with Piyama - Radu , and Eteocles , king of Orchomenos , with one " Tawagalawa " . However despite his arguments , many scholars dismissed Forrer ' s identification of Wilusa - ( W ) ilios / Troia - Taruisa as either improbable or at least unprovable , since until recently the known Hittite texts provided no clear indication where the kingdom of Wilusa was located beyond somewhere in Western Anatolia . General scholarly opinion about this identification changed with the discovery of a text join to the Manapa - Tarhunda letter , which located Wilusa beyond the Seha River near the Lazpa land . Modern scholars identify the Seha with the Classical Caicus River , which is the modern Bakırçay , and the Lazpa land is the more familiar isle of Lesbos . As Trevor Bryce observes , " This must considerably strengthen the possibility that the two were directly related , if not identical . " Despite this evidence , the surviving Hittite texts do not provide an independent account of the Trojan War . The Manapa - Tarhunda letter is about a member of the Hittite ruling family , Piyama - Radu , who gained control of the kingdom of Wilusa , and whose only serious opposition came from the author of this letter , Manapa - Tarhunda . King Muwatalli of the Hittites was the opponent of this king of Troy , and the result of Muwatalli ' s campaign is not recorded in the surviving texts . The Ahhiyawa , generally identified with the Achaean Greeks , are mentioned in the Tawagalawa letter as the neighbors of the kingdom of Wilusa , and who provided a refuge for the troublesome renegade Piyama - Radu . Geological evidence . In November 2001 , geologists John C . Kraft from the University of Delaware and John V . Luce from Trinity College , Dublin presented the results of investigations into the geology of the region that had started in 1977 . The geologists compared the present geology with the landscapes and coastal features described in the " Iliad " and other classical sources , notably Strabo ' s " Geographia " . Their conclusion was that there is regularly a consistency between the location of Troy as Hisarlik ( and other locations such as the Greek camp ) , the geological evidence , and descriptions of the topography and accounts of the battle in the " Iliad " .