The Greeks, or Achaians, that Homer writes about in the Iliad were not people of a unified nation. Instead, areas of the Balkan Peninsula, now known as Greece, were made up of many small kingdoms, populated by ethnically-related peoples, from 1400–800 B.C., and even later, to the time of Alexander the Great (c. 200 B.C.). Scholarship generally dates the composition of the Iliad at about 800 B.C. At that time, Homer would have been writing about the Mycenaeans, a people who lived in Greece four to five hundred years earlier, although the picture he paints in the epic shows aspects of society from all of the periods between 1400 and 800 B.C.
The Mycenaeans, also called Hellenes, had taken control of the Balkan Peninsula around 1500 B.C. They formed what were essentially small farming communities organized around a predominant family. In the Iliad, each of the great warrior heroes is the head, and therefore the king of each of these communities. According to legend, and evidenced by some archaeological finds, the most powerful of these communities was Mycenae, ruled by Agamemnon. These rulers were known as basileis, and they acted as kings, generals, and judges. The noble families in each kingdom were the aristoi, who advised the basileis through a council called the boule. Ordinary soldiers were known as the laos, but they too had a voice and could vote in the agora, or public forum, on decisions that involved them.
In the Iliad, the Greek characters act as a kind of state. Agamemnon is the basileis; the other individual rulers act as the aristoi. The common soldiers, or laos, are best typified by Thersites, who speaks up at the boule, or assembly, in Book II.
Originally, the Mycenaeans were sea raiders. Their power and progress came as a result of conquest, usually carried out by groups organized from several kingdoms. The goal of these raids was to acquire goods, raw materials, and slaves. The slaves were usually women, because the Mycenaean custom was to kill all the men of a conquered state and capture the women and children.
Political decisions within the Mycenaean State were made through assemblies. Typically, these assemblies were made up of the powerful men within a particular state. However, for more far-reaching and important matters involving war and raids, an assembly of the leaders of a group of states would be arranged. Such major decisions were made through discussion and debate.
At the same time the Mycenaeans came to power in Greece, a related kingdom, Troy, developed near the northern coast of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). Archaeologists date the original city at the Troy site as early as 3000 B.C. By 1500 B.C., Troy was a flourishing, walled fortress, famed for horses and natural resources such as iron. The people who inhabited Troy were related to the Mycenaean Greeks and possibly traded with them.
Heinrich Schliemann, an amateur archaeologist, using information in the Iliad and other Greek texts, discovered the site that is now accepted as Troy at an area called Hisarlik. Schliemann also found Mycenae on the Greek mainland. Schliemann’s work and that of others revealed that a number of cities were built on the Troy site, each new one on the ruins of a previous city. Evidence at the city labeled site VIIA revealed that it was destroyed by fire, which was typically the fate of cities conquered by Greek raiders. Further evidence revealed that site VIIA was involved in a siege—remains of bodies there showed signs of sudden, violent death.
These facts about both Mycenae and Troy point toward a reality that may underlie the romanticized story of the Iliad. Sometime around 1200 B.C., a Mycenaean raiding party attacked the walled fortress of Troy. This attack may have resulted from a break in the rules of hospitality—a Trojan steals the wife of a Greek—but more likely it was a simple raid for booty and slaves. Troy proves to be no easy conquest; but eventually the city is taken and destroyed with mixed profits and results for the Greeks involved.
This scenario is, of course, pure speculation, but it fits with both the archaeological evidence and the basic story of the Iliad. More than this basic scenario would be absolute fiction. Are the names of the heroes in the Iliad the real names of Mycenaean and Trojan warriors? Did a Greek warrior refuse to fight? Did the Greek forces breach the walls of Troy with a subterfuge involving horses? No one will ever be able to answer these questions; they exist in a poem and nowhere else. At best, the possibility exists that parts of the story of the Iliad are based on fact. Nothing in the historical or archaeological record disproves the idea that a Mycenaean raiding party could have sacked a city in Asia Minor called Troy.
