Page Content (OCR)
"For my own part, I shall stay here. seated on Mount Olympus, and look on in peace. But you others, do go among the Trojans and Achaeans, and help either side as you might be disposed." Thus spake Jove, and gave the word for war; Whereon the gods took their several sides and went into battle. The Battle of Troy, indeed Troy itself, were long thought of as just part of the fascinating but incredible Greek legends, which scholars have tolerantly called mythology. Troy and the events pertaining to it were still considered to be purely mythological when Charles McLaren suggested, back in 1822, that a certain mound in eastern Turkey, called Hissarlik. was the site of the Ho- meric Troy. It was only when a businessman named Heinrich Schliemann, risking his own money, came up with spectacular dis- coveries as he dug up the mound in 1870, that scholars began to acknowledge the existence of Troy. It is now accepted that the Bat- tle of Troy had actually taken place in the thirteenth century B.C. It was then, according to the Greek sources, that gods and men had fought side by side: in such beliefs the Greeks were not alone. In those days, though the tip of Asia Minor facing Europe and the Aegean Sea were dotted with what were essentially Greek set- tlements, Asia Minor proper was dominated by the Hittites. Known at first to modem scholars only from biblical references, then from Egyptian inscriptions, the Hittites and their kingdom— Hatti—also came to life as archaeologists began to uncover their ancient cities. The decipherment of the Hittite script and their Indo-European language made it possible to trace their origins to the second millennium B.C., when Aryan tribes began to migrate from the Caucasus area—some southeast to India, others southwest to Asia Minor. The Hittite kingdom nourished circa 1750 B.C. and began to decline five hundred years later. It was then that the Hittites were harassed by incursions from across the Aegean Sea. The Hit- tiles spoke of the invaders as the people of Achiyawa; many schol- ars believe that they were the very same people whom Homer called Achioi—the Achaeans, whose attack upon the western tip of Asia Minor he immortalized in the Iliad. For centuries prior to the war of Troy, the Hittites expanded their kingdom to imperial proportions, claiming to have done so upon the orders of their supreme god TESHUB ("The Stormer"). THE WARS OFGODS AND MEN