BELOW
Explanation:
History[edit]
In antiquity, educated Greeks accepted the truth of human events depicted in the Iliad and Odyssey, 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).[1] 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.[2] 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).[3] However, 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."[4] During the 19th century the stories of Troy were devalued as fables by George Grote.[5]
The discoveries made by Heinrich Schliemann at Hisarlik revived the question during modern times, and recent discoveries have resulted in more discussion.[6] According to Jeremy B. Rutter, archaeological finds thus far can neither prove nor disprove whether Hisarlik VIIa was sacked by Mycenean Greeks sometime between 1325 and 1200 BC.[7]
No text or artifact found on the site itself clearly identifies the Bronze Age site by name. This is due probably to the leveling 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
