Homeric Sites Around Troy

The mysterious places of Homer are explored in this most extensively illustrated account of the landscape around Troy. Over 170 photographs, 38 old paintings and drawings, 31 historical maps, 27 annotated excerpts from satellite imagery, and two new maps guide the reader in search of the sites celebrated in the Iliad and the Odyssey – the rivers, springs, mountains, the Hellespont, the ships’ camps, and the heroic tombs. The book analyses the Homeric and literary sources, traces the historical and contemporary search for the sites, and summarizes the results of archaeological excavations. The findings are surprising. This edition adds two sections to the printed book. The penultimate section is a “List of videos of the sites” taken by the author and to be found on YouTube. The final section “How to get there” has detailed on-the-ground information on how to get to the sites. Beautifully illustrated, the book is an indispensable sourcebook and companion to Homer. It is also essential background for anyone planning a visit to Troy and its surrounds.

In this text, an authority on Homeric texts takes us on a tour of the main localities that Homer paints in his Iliad and Odyssey. Providing numerous photographs of the terrain and quoting liberally from the two epics, J.V. Luce argues that Homer's descriptions of the ancient landscape, far from being poetic fantasies, are accurate in every detail. Luce surveys what Homer tells us about the environs of Troy and Ithaca, applying the developing science of narratology to Homeric depiction of landscape. He also incorporates information about Troy that has been obtained in the past two decades, in particular geophysical information about the alluviation of the Trojan plain and archaeological data about Troy that reveals that the fortified area of the city was ten times as large as previously supposed. Tracing the ebb and flow of the battle as described in the Iliad, Luce shows how Homer's account is consistent with this picture of the plain.

This 1912 work explores the historical geography of the Troad and its relation to the setting of the Iliad.

Extraordinary story of the exciting discovery of the true location of Odysseus' homeland of Ithaca.

Recounts the lost city of Troy and the efforts it took to rediscover it.

In this book Joachim Latacz turns the spotlight of modern research on the much-debated question of whether the wealthy city of Troy described by Homer in the Iliad was a poetic fiction or a memory of historical reality. Earlier excavations at the hill of Hisarlik, in Turkey, on the Dardanelles, brought no answer, but in 1988 a new archaeological enterprise, under the direction of Manfred Korfmann, led to a radical shift in understanding. Latacz, one of Korfmann's closest collaborators, traces the course of these excavations, and the renewed investigation of the imperial Hittite archives they have inspired. As he demonstrates, it is now clear that the background against which the plot of the Iliad is acted out is the historical reality of the thirteenth century BC. The Troy story as a whole must have arisen in this period, and we can detect traces of it in Homer's great poem.