Why battle of Troy was fought
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[edit] Introductory Note
Troy (Greek: Τροία, Troia, also Ἴλιον, Ilion; Latin: Trōia, Īlium; Hittite: Wilusa or Truwisa) is a legendary city and center of the Trojan War, as described in the Epic Cycle and especially in the Iliad, one of the two epic poems attributed to Homer. Trojan refers to the inhabitants and culture of Troy.
Today it is the name of an archaeological site, the traditional location of Homeric Troy, Turkish Truva, in Hisarlık in Anatolia, close to the seacoast in what is now Çanakkale province in northwest Turkey, southwest of the Dardanelles under Mount Ida.
A new city of Ilium was founded on the site in the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus. It flourished until the establishment of Constantinople and declined gradually during the Byzantine era.
In 1865 an English archeologist, Frank Calvert, excavated for many years the site at Hisarlık, near Truva, where in 1870 a wealthy German businessman, Heinrich Schliemann, also began excavating in this area which he claimed to be the ancient city of Troy. Later excavations revealed several cities built in succession to each other. One of the earlier cities (Troy VII) is generally identified with Homeric Troy. While such an identity is disputed, the site has been successfully identified with the city called Wilusa in Hittite texts; Ilion (which goes back to earlier Wilion with a digamma) is thought to be the Greek rendition of that name.
The archaeological site of Troy was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1998.
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[edit] Reason
In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy stole Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology, and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer. The Iliad relates a part of the last year of the siege of Troy, while the Odyssey describes the journey home of Odysseus, one of the Achaean leaders. Other parts of the war were told in a cycle of epic poems, which has only survived in fragments. Episodes from the war provided material for Greek tragedy and other works of Greek literature, and for Roman poets like Virgil and Ovid.
The war originated from a quarrel between the goddesses Athena, Hera and Aphrodite, after Eris, the goddess of strife and discord, gave them a golden apple, sometimes known as the Apple of Discord, marked "for the fairest". Zeus sent the goddesses to Paris, who judged that Aphrodite, as the "fairest", should receive the apple. In exchange, Aphrodite made Helen, the most beautiful of all women and wife of Menelaus, fall in love with Paris, who took her to Troy. Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and the brother of Helen's husband Menelaus, led an expedition of Achaean troops to Troy and besieged the city for ten years because of Paris' insult. After the deaths of many heroes, including the Achaeans Achilles and Ajax, and the Trojans Hector and Paris, the city fell to the ruse of the Trojan Horse. The Achaeans slaughtered the Trojans (except for some of the women and children whom they kept or sold as slaves) and desecrated the temples, thus earning the gods' wrath. Few of the Achaeans returned safely to their homes and many founded colonies in distant shores. The Romans later traced their origin to Aeneas, one of the Trojans, who was said to have led the surviving Trojans to modern day Italy.
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- With the rise of modern critical history, Troy and the Trojan War were consigned to the realms of legend. However, the true location of ancient Troy had from classical times remained the subject of interest and speculation, so when in 1822 the Scottish journalist Charles Maclaren reviewed the available material and published A dissertation on the topography of the plain of Troy he was able to identify with confidence the position of the acropolis of Augustus's New Ilium in north-western Anatolia. In 1866 Frank Calvert, the brother of the United States' consular agent in the region, made extensive surveys and published in scholarly journals his identification of the hill of New Ilium (which was on farmland owned by his family) as the site of ancient Troy. The hill, near the town of Chanak, was known to the Turks as Hisarlik.
- Today there is a Turkish town called Truva in the vicinity of the archaeological site, but this town has grown up recently to service the tourist trade. The archaeological site is officially called Troia by the Turkish government and appears as such on many maps.A large number of tourists visit the site each year, mostly coming from Istanbul by bus or by ferry via Çanakkale, the nearest major town about 50 km to the north-east. The visitor sees a highly commercialised site, with a large wooden horse built as a playground for children, then shops and a museum. The archaeological site itself is, as a recent writer said, "a ruin of a ruin,"[citation needed] because the site has been frequently excavated, and because Schliemann's archaeological methods were very destructive:[citation needed] in his conviction that the city of Priam would be found in the earliest layers, he demolished many interesting structures from later eras, including all of the house walls from Troy II. For many years also the site was unguarded and was thoroughly looted.
- Troy is a 2004 epic/action film concerning the Trojan War. It is loosely based on Homer's Iliad, besides material from Virgil's Aeneid and other sources of the Epic Cycle, but it frequently diverges from myth. The film has the following cast of actors prominent at the time of its release: Brad Pitt as Achilles, Eric Bana as Hector, Orlando Bloom as Paris, Diane Kruger as Helen, Brian Cox as Agamemnon, Sean Bean as Odysseus, Rose Byrne as Briseis, Garrett Hedlund as Patroclus, Peter O'Toole as Priam, Brendan Gleeson as Menelaus, and Tyler Mane as Ajax. Troy was directed by Wolfgang Petersen and written by David Benioff. It received an Oscar nomination for its costume design.
