Oleg Matveychev - Trojan Horse of Western History

The folklore nature of Homer’s poems that were of exactly such formula style was proven, thus (over 90 percent of the Iliad text was comprised of such formulas – a staggering number, especially upon considering the refinement and intricacy of the Greek hexameter). [44] Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales . It is hard to expect that folklore tales would mirror some true historical reality.

Moses Finley, a reputable historian, insisted on that point, too. In his book The World of Odysseus (1954), he affirmed that searching through Homer’s works for authentic testimonies concerning the Trojan War, its causes, outcome and even composition of coalitions is just the same as studying the history of Huns in the 5[[th]] century by the Song of Nibelungs or appealing to the Song about Rolland to reconstruct the course of the Battle of Roncevaux Pass. Finley grounded his doubts on both the data for comparative philology and results of the economic history study of Homer’s society by means of the model proposed by French anthropologist Marcel Mauss.

In his famous book The Gift (1925), Marcel Mauss studied the mechanism of operation of traditional society’s economy based on the gratuitous expenditure principle. According to Mauss, archaic economy does not push advantages. At its bottom there is the potlatch (a holiday held to distribute all of the tribe’s property; however, another tribe receiving the gifts undertakes to make a greater and more generous potlatch. Thus, accumulated and spent wealth circulation starts, for the prestige of ones and enjoyment of others. [45] Marcel Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (London: Cohen&West, 1970).

By reconstructing the system of exchange in the Hellenic world, Finley discovered that the socio-economical relations mirrored in Homer’s poems were close to those existing under eastern despotism and that they were absolutely untypical for the Mycenae society during the Trojan War period (13[[th]] and 12th centuries B.C.). The Iliad and the Odyssey somewhat restored the reality of the 10[[th]] and 9[[th]] centuries B.C. (i.e. the Dark Ages). On this basis, Finley directly stated that the Trojan War depicted by Homer should be razed from the history of the Greek Bronze Age.

Moses Finley had written his book before Michael Ventris and John Chadwick published deciphered results of the so-called linear writing B – the most ancient syllabary, samples of which were found on artifacts of Mycenae Greece. [46] Palace at Pylos, where they found the tablets with texts written with this type of writing, was opened in the early 1950s by Carl Blegenom. The article Evidence for Greek Dialect in the Mycenaean Archives [47] M. Ventris, J. Chadwick, “Evidence for Greek dialect in the Mycenaean archives”, The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Vol. 73 (1953); pp. 84–103. by Ventris and Chadwick provoked a chain reaction in the scientific world. One by one, the studies appeared, reconstructing the Crete and Mycenaean period of ancient history. According to Chadwick’s testimony, 432 articles, brochures and books by 152 writers from 23 countries appeared [48] John Chadwick, The Decipherment of Linear B (Cambridge at the University Press, 1967). in the period 1953–1958 alone. These studies demonstrated that linear writing was used in all big centers of Mycenaean Greece as the official writing, and therefore, it was a factor that combined politically different societies in a uniform cultural space. A more important thing was that according to these studied high-level culture and developed political life were there on the Aegean islands of the 2nd millennium B.C.

Fig. 23.Knossos plates with linear writing B (XV century B.C.)

Authoritative French historian Paul Fort asserted: “The texts discovered in Knossos, Pylos, Mycenae, Phebe, etc., made it possible, at last, to reconstruct the everyday life of the contemporaries of the Trojan War and even that of a few generations of their predecessors since the 13th century B.C. Due to these, peasants, seamen, handicraftsmen, soldiers, officials once again began speaking and acting. And the golden masks of the Athenian museum became more than simple masks of the dead”. [49] Paul Faure, La Grèce au temps de la Guerre de Troie. 1250 avant J.-C. (Paris, Hachette, 1975).

The results of decryption of ancient written sources, together with analysis of archaeological finds, served as an additional argument in favour of Finley’s and his predecessor’s hypothesis that the author of the Iliad did not realize customs and everyday life of the Hellenes in the 13[[th]] and 12[[th]] centuries B.C.

The results of decryption of the Mycenaean written language, along with analysis of the archaeological finds, confirmed that the author of Iliad did not realize customs and everyday life of the Hellenes in the 13th and 12th centuries B.C.

For the Greek theocratic monarchy in the Trojan War times, the kings were considered as living gods, unapproachable by mere mortals and managing their empires by means of a developed bureaucratic apparatus. According to Homer, the kings were quite close to the people and not devoid of democratic methods of rule. [50] The leader of the Achaeans Agamemnon makes key decisions not on his own, but at the Military Council. See Iliad, II, 50–444.

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Paul Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchist Theory of Knowledge (London, 1975).

Herodotus, Histories , VII, 43.

Strabo, Geography , XIII, 26.

Lucan, Pharsalia , IX, 964–969.

Ecumene (also spelled oecumene or oikoumene) is a term originally used in the Greco-Roman world to refer to the inhabited universe (or at least the known part of it). The term derives from the Greek οἰκουμένη (oikouménē, the feminine present middle participle of the verb οἰκέω, oikéō, “to inhabit”), short for οἰκουμένη γῆ “inhabited world”. In modern connotations it refers either to the projection of a united Christian Church or to world civilizations.

Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, Epitome, III, 5.

Osip Mandelstam, Stone (N.Y.: Princeton University Press, 1981).

A.I. Zaitsev, “Ancient Greek Epos and the Iliad by Homer”, Homer. The Iliad (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 2008); p. 398.