Did Troy really exist?...

I think you tried to type greek and it didnt work. I like this a test of knowledge!

Originally posted by FreeMason
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Could possibly put this in English cos some of us cant read Greek.

First sorry about the above post, if you can't read it, try "right click on screen go to encoding go to more select greek for windows".

Anyways, you also seem to confuse servants with slaves. In the Iliad most slaves taken were women because all the men were killed, women don't make good rowers. I also would ask you show where exactly Herodotus even said this.

Oh and I never said the Athenians invented the trireme, it was probably some obscure island city-state that did, but the trireme was invented 700-600 BC, not 1300 BC which is when the Iliad is supposed to take place, or 800 BC when the Iliad is best judged to have been composed.

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Look, I would hate to make this an ongoing debate about something so well documented but here it is. First of all what you typed is modern greek not ancient greek. What obscure city are you referring to? How can you dismiss the great seafaring minoans as far inferior to the achaioi (the greeks from iliad) who were great land warriors. By 800 BC Troy was already in ruins as most of the great city states of ancient greece depicted in the Iliad.

Pou emathes na milas elinika;

dictionary.reference.com... (Origins of the word slave from 6th century AD.)

en.wikipedia.org... (Origins of the Trireme apparently from Corinth).

The specifics of what you've said have been utterly and soundly defeated by myself, the general statement you made, paraphrased "slaves rowed Greeks to Troy" has not really been discussed and while I'd argue that they didn't from text and from historical evidence by other warrior societies I don't really know what your argument is for that because your defense of your claim was that the word skalvos is used in the Iliad and the Odyssee but refer to the first link for refutation of that.

Troy existed until about 1400 AD.

The Minoans used ships of 30 rowers, there were also ships to come later along with 50 rowers which would eventually be replaced by biremes and then triremes.

In my other post that wikipedia source, it does say greek writers often used the word triere as a generic word for "warship" so that's probably where you're getting your confusion.

My argument here has only been that:

A) Triremes did not exist in the time of the Trojan War.

B) Triremes were not rowed by slaves.

My suplimentary argument has been:

C) The Greeks were rowed to Troy by their own soldiers for the following reasons.
1) Easier to maintain control of your forces.
2) Easier to raise an army and have it row than to have to gather and supply slaves as well.
3) Historically this is what other warrior societies did, keeping slaves for their homes and lands.

Now the first two A and B you can not refute ... or at least have not, and I doubt you can refute such facts.

C is up for a debate but we're getting stuck on specifics.

Ok, the passage from Iliad in ancient Greek is translated as follows- "and every trireme had one hundred slaves", in ancient greek "i entathen triiris epi okanton barvaron".

In ancient achaian greek, the word sklavos was barbarian, later came to be known in classical greece as non-greek.

Certainly a fascinating topic, I believe equaly fascinating is the argument on whether or not the Trojans were in fact Greek. What do you think Freemason?

No, see here's where we can learn from eachother, first my assumption turned out to be correct, the word "triere" is being used for "warship" not for trireme which is a specific type of warship.

Also Skalvos as we've been through this originated in the 6th century AD and the word barbarian originated from the greek word barbaroi which was a formulation of the phoenetics bar bar, which was what the "barbarians" (non-greek speakers as you should know) sounded like to the Greeks.

All I am trying to convey is that most modern historical sources are based on loosely accurate translations of the originals, somteimes to serve a purpose. In this case a Greek historian who trasnlated the ancient greek texts of Iliad and Odysey as well as Herodotus in the early 1900s, was in love with classical athens thus he really pushed Athenian achievements over the earlier greek ones. Most modern historical texts on ancient greece are based on Marathetis's translation and assertions. In the past ten years though a movement has started in Greece to reevaluate achievemets by earlier Greeks, namely the achaeans and the minoans.

As far as the minoans are concerned, remember you are talking about the greatest sea power of that era.

The bar bar. is just a myth. there are many references to a hated Dorian champion warrior named "varvaras". It is possible due to the conflict between the Achaeans and the Dorians that the feared warrior's name stuck through the ages as a reminder to a time long gone. There are also many texts such as Pausanias, which refer to the "slaving" of Dorian warriors by the Achaeans, thus the possible connection.

Yeah that is an interesting topic, historically I don't know so I'll just make a few assertions.

First, I think that until the Trojan War "Greeks" didn't exist. They were Myceneans and Spartans and Minoans and so forth. So while the Trojans were probably some colony of the Greeks (I probably read somewhere whether or not they were.) the Trojans like any culture before it realizes itself (take Britons who were welsh and english and scots and picts and so forth) had very large differences from the Greeks probably influenced by their powerful neighbors the Hittites.

Now, whether or not the Trojan War really happend it did one of two things based upon if it was true or not.

1) It really happend, and it helped unite the Greeks into one people...unlikely I'll explain later.

2) It really happend, but only influenced orators after the fall of the Myceneans and those orators such used an event unrelated to them to paint a picture of themselves.

That is, the second one is probably most likely because there was an invasion of "barbaroi" after the Trojan war that lead to a Greek Darkage.

So what I think it was, is Troy and other Greek city states do not see themselves as Greeks but as their own city state.

After the Trojan War, probably for trade routes, the greeks are invaded by an outside force that shows them that they are greeks not just city states.

These greeks now mixed with outsiders in their culture (was it the Doric Invsaion that created Sparta as we all know it?) those greeks then used an event of the past to talk about themselves as "greeks" and not as simply Spartans or Thebians or Myrmidons and such.

I wasn't referring to the varvaras but to the actual phoenetics which is Bar Bar, and I can't recal what it's called when you trace the history of a word, like we are doing right now with the words such as sklavos and what not. Anyways finding out the origins of words is indeed a tough business.

Interesting answer. I agree with you, the Trojan War propably did happen but nowhere near the scale described in the Iliad. Furthermore, it was the Dorians which created sparta as we know it, they defeated the myceaneans in the end.

At the time of the Trojan war, athens and sparta were minor players if that. Myceanae, Phtia, Thesallia, Messini and Ithaki were some of the well known kingdoms of the time.

As far as greeks being united, I don't think we ever were. The city states were always independent up until the roman invasion. You have to understand that "hellenes" were never on distinctive group but consisted of the aiolians, ionians, achaioi and dorians. They knew it from the ancient times. What they believed though was that they had a common ancestry- from "Ellina", thus an the two great confederations of the Corinthian League and the Athenian League.

Originally posted by AD5673
Yes but Scipio was smarter. He went straight into Carthage...

Actually, it was Hannibal's brother who lost Carthage, not Hannibal.

Hannibal would've run over Africanus.

Doric invasion = Dorians so I was right about that though that was stretching limits of my recollective abilities (been a while since I read through creations of Spartan militarism).

Anyways, I'd like to think that the Trojan war was every bit as big as we today are told it was, after all, if there was such a war it would have to be big, Troy had not just powerful trading rights as being a close link to the sea for the Hittites but also the winds were in their favor for easy pirating. The ships sailing to the Dardanelles would sometimes when the winds were favorable or unfavorable, depending on how you look at it, be blown to the shores of Troy where they'd plunder them at will.

The difference that should always be understood, is what the war meant to those who fought it, and those who recall it.

I think that those who fought it just simply were fighting for themselves, more reason I believe that the term "slaves" for rowing their boats is wrong either by whoever wrote down the story (remember Greece wasn't literate till about 500 BC) or whoever translated from whoever wrote it down.

The literacy problems is probably why the use the term "Triere" for their ships which surely we agree is wrong in specifics because Triremes did not exist until 700BC about or later...possibly even 500BC as far as most can tell.

So I think those who fought the Trojan War were much like vikings, out for some gold, and because Greeks at that time were powerful city-states, it was not just raiding parties.

But that the Greeks after the Doric invasion would recall the same war as if it were a great statement of, "We are Greeks!"

I guess much to the same affect that the Revolutionary War is to Americans today.

To Americans then it was a war for independence, but they were not Americans, they were Virginians and New Yorkers and these problems had to be solved by the Constitutional Convention.

But today we just simply state that we were made Americans in the Revolutionary War.

When the real history shows that we really weren't Americans until after the Civil War because before that State-Centered Federalism was the strongest and most prominent so Governors had more power than the President.

Anyways, I think that's a very thurough way of describing how I view Troy must really have been both in war and in story for the Greeks.

Speaking of Hannibal, a film is in production to bring the general's life to the big screen.

The movie however is going to be a disaster because they cast Vin Diesel as the role of Hannibal

Important for gvret

I guess somewhere I said "united" but what I really mean is this is when Greeks saw themselves as Greeks.

Before this they were any number of those city-states you mentioned and they spoke a similar language but this didn't really matter because they saw only a small portion of the world.

After the Trojan war, or more probably, after the Doric invasion and emphasised by the retelling of the Trojan war by Homer (or whoever in reality) the Greeks were able to say "I am Greek".

They may still have been Athenians or Spartans or Thebians or Laconians or so forth, but they all could say they were Greek, and when invaded by non-Greeks they all would unite as such in the Persian Wars.

So I merely mean that it is through the Trojan war, or during the Trojan war, that Greeks finally became to recognize eachother as similar in certain respects, such as language where as before all they saw were differences.

This happend with any culture as it began to expand beyond their ethnic boundaries, they began to see more and more in common with their localities that they had previously thought were a world away.

I must disagree with you on the part of "vikings", fighting for gold. To view it in perspective, in ancient times one city state would not start a large scale campaign just for gold. If parts of the Iliad are to be taken seriously, Troy had its allies and most of mainland Greece was against it. There had to be more to that conflict than just gold. Dont forget that following Troy's demise a lot of greek colonies were established in Asia Minor. Greeks effectively controlled the Agean Sea. So it is possible it was more for territorial gain and prestige, rather than gold raiding.