Landfall 1 of 17

Troy

Τροίη · Troíē

secure identification Od. 9.37–40Od. 1.1–10

The war is won, the city burned. Twelve ships point west toward a home ten years away.

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“Tell me, O Muse, of the man of many devices, who wandered full many ways after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy. Many were the men whose cities he saw and whose mind he learned, aye, and many the woes he suffered in his heart upon the sea, seeking to win his own life and the return of his comrades.”

Od. 1.1–5 · Greek: Perseus (ed. Murray 1919) · tr. A.T. Murray 1919

Etymology — πολύτροπος

τρέπω / τρόπος ‘to turn / a turn, way, manner’ ancient greek→ πολύτροπος ‘of many turns’ ancient greek · Odysseus's epithet in the poem's first line — turned much by fortune, or turning much in mind? Both readings are ancient→ trope, tropic english · the same turn-root: a trope is a 'turn' of phrase, and the tropics are where the sun turns back

Whether the turns are done to him (storm-tossed) or by him (shifty) was argued as early as Plato, whose Hippias Minor reads the word as 'wily'. The poem seems content with both at once.

LSJ s.v. πολύτροπος · Plato, Hippias Minor 364e–365b

Etymology — Ἴλιος

Wiluša ‘a city in Hittite treaty texts, 13th c. BC’ hit · the equation with Ilios is conjectural, though now widely accepted→ Ϝίλιος → Ἴλιος ‘Ilios, Homer's other name for Troy’ ancient greek · the lost initial w-sound (digamma) makes the match audible: Wilios→ Ilium latin→ Iliad english · Ἰλιάς — 'the poem of Ilion'

If Wiluša is Ilios, the city's name is centuries older than Greek writing — and the Hittite archives record real diplomatic crises over the place.

Od. 9.39 (Ἰλιόθεν) · Latacz, Troy and Homer (2004) — conjectural

Worth knowing

Nine superimposed cities lie in the mound at Hisarlik. The candidate for Homer's Troy has moved with each generation of diggers — Schliemann bet on Troy II, a thousand years too early; the current favorite is Troy VIIa, a crowded town destroyed by fire around 1180 BC. It remains a hedge, not a fact. [Hisarlik excavations, Schliemann (1870s) to Korfmann (1988–2005); Troy VIIa identification debated]
The man of the first line is kept anonymous: Odysseus is not named until line 21. The poet repeats the trick inside the story — his hero keeps arriving nameless (Nobody, a beggar) and having to win his identity back. [Od. 1.1, 1.21]
The Odyssey never narrates the sack of Troy in its own voice. Odysseus, incognito at a Phaeacian feast, requests the song of the wooden horse from the bard Demodocus — then weeps at his own story 'as a woman weeps' over a husband killed in a falling city. The sacker mourns like the sacked. [Od. 8.499–531]
The Iliad's Catalogue of Ships gives Odysseus twelve ships, and this atlas's crew arithmetic starts there: twelve crews, roughly 600 men. None of them will see Ithaca — the proem admits as much at once, blaming 'their own blind folly'. [Il. 2.637; Od. 1.6–9]

The Procession of the Trojan Horse in Troy — Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, c. 1760 · National Gallery, London · Public domain

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⚓ companions remaining: 600

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