Trojan War: Culture and Travel Context

The Trojan War was supposedly fought over the city of Troy in today's Turkey in the 12th century BC, and inspired several great epics, in particular, the Iliad and Odyssey and the Aeneid. While historians debate whether the Trojan War happened, it is among the best-known stories of the ancient Mediterranean and part of the founding myth of both ancient Greece and the Roman Empire.

The 12th century BC saw the Bronze Age collapse in the Mediterranean; a series of catastrophic events, probably including the fall of Troy. These events heralded the Greek Dark Ages, a period lasting until 800 BC, known by posterity by scarce archaeological evidence and legends, of which the Trojan War and subsequent events might be the most famous.

The Iliad and the Odyssey, written in the 9th century BC and attributed to Homer, are among the oldest surviving pieces of Greek literature, and are often considered the beginning of European literary canon. The stories contain supernatural elements such as gods and monsters, but also realistic details about warfare and daily life of the Late Bronze Age.

The Iliad describes the Achaeans' ten-year siege of Troy, omitting both the beginning and the conclusion of the war. The Odyssey describes Odysseus' (Ulysses in Latin) disastrous ten-year journey back to his hometown Ithaca, making landfall at many places around the Mediterranean. Some of those locations can be identified in the real world, but in Hellenistic Greece, others were either forgotten or dismissed as fictional. Some famous tropes of the Trojan War, such as the abduction of Helen the Fair and the Trojan horse, are absent from the Iliad, and mentioned briefly in the Odyssey.

The Oresteia are a trilogy of plays written by Aeschylus in the 5th century BC, concerning the homecoming and murder of King Agamemnon, the Achaean commander, and subsequent events.

The Aeneid, written by Virgil in the 1st century BC, retells the war through the Trojan hero Aeneas and describes him migrating to Italy, becoming an ancestor of the Romans.

The epics describe the abduction of Helen, wife of Menelaus the king of Sparta, by Paris, a Trojan prince, sparked enmity between the Trojans and the Achaeans from across the Aegean Sea. Having been unable to break into the defensive walls of the city, the Achaeans decided to set up a trick—they offered a huge wooden horse as a gift to the Trojans, as amends for the bother they caused with their war galleys on the city's beach. The Trojans accepted the offer sincerely, but this resulted in them losing their city, as inside of the horse were of Achaean soldiers, ready to fight, and now right in the centre of the city.

The Trojan War has inspired countless pieces of art (including early modern European art), prose, theatre and motion pictures until today.

1 Troy (Turkey). The city besieged in the Iliad. Troy has been inhabited since at least 3000 BC, deserted and re-settled many times, but never forgotten. Excavated since the 19th century.

3 Erice (Sicily). Ancient Eryx (Eρυξ) is today a gorgeous hilltop destination, where less than 500 people live close to a mediaeval fortification ("Venus Castle", built on the foundations of a temple to Aphrodite) on top of the 715 m high Mount Eryx. Local tradition places the lair of cyclops Polyphemus, Ulysses' foe in the Odyssey, on the side of this mountain. (updated Feb 2016)

This cultural overview is an excerpt of a community travel guide. Confirm current access, schedules and prices with the venue before planning a visit.

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Text adapted from Trojan War by Wikivoyage contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0. Paragraphs have been selected and abridged, and formatting adjusted. This adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.