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The extent of the historical basis of the ''Iliad'' has been a topic of scholarly debate for centuries. While researchers of the 18th century had largely rejected the story of the Trojan War as fable, the discoveries made by Heinrich Schliemann at Hisarlik reopened the question in modern terms, and the subsequent excavation of Troy VIIa and the discovery of the toponym "Wilusa" in Hittite correspondence has made it plausible that the Trojan War cycle was at least remotely based on a historical conflict of the 12th century BC, even if the poems of Homer are removed from the event by more than four centuries of oral tradition. ==History== In antiquity, educated Greeks of the 5th century BC continued to accept the truth of human events depicted in the ''Iliad'', even as philosophical scepticism was undermining faith in divine intervention in human affairs. In the time of Strabo, topographical disquisitions discussed the identity of sites mentioned by Homer. This continued when Greco-Roman culture was Christianised: Eusebius of Caesarea offered universal history reduced to a timeline, in which Troy received the same historical weight as Abraham, with whom Eusebius' ''Chronologia'' began, ranking the Argives and Mycenaeans among the kingdoms ranged in vertical columns, offering biblical history on the left (verso), and secular history of the kingdoms on the right (recto).〔Eusebius' chronological tables are re-analysed in depth by Richard W. Burgess, Witold Witakowski, eds.''Studies in Eusebian and Post-Eusebian Chronography'' vol. 1. (Stuttgart) 1999; see Introduction and Overview〕 Jerome's ''Chronicon'' followed Eusebius, and all the medieval chroniclers began with summaries of the universal history of Jerome. With such authorities accepting it, post-Roman Europeans continued to accept Troy and the events of the Trojan War as historical. Geoffrey of Monmouth's pseudo-genealogy traced a Trojan origin for royal Briton descents in ''Historia Regum Britanniae''.〔Analysed in Francis Ingledew, "The Book of Troy and the Genealogical Construction of History: The Case of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae" ''Speculum'' 69,.3 (July 1994:665-704).〕 Merovingian descent from a Trojan ancestor was embodied in a literary myth first established in Fredegar's chronicle (2.4, 3.2.9), to the effect that the Franks were of Trojan stock and adopted their name from King Francio, who had built a new Troy on the banks of the river Rhine (modern Treves).〔Peter G. Bietenholz, ''Historia and Fabula: Myths and Legends in Historical Thought'' 1994:190.〕 However, even before the so-called Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century these supposed facts of the medieval concept of history were doubted by Blaise Pascal: "Homer wrote a romance, for nobody supposes that Troy and Agamemnon existed any more than the apples of the Hesperides. He had no intention to write history, but only to amuse us."〔Pascal, ''Pensées'' (published 1660), part ix, §628.〕 During the 19th century the stories of Troy were devalued as fables by George Grote.〔In Grote, ''A History of Greece'', vol. I (1846), "Legendary Greece" prefaces "Historical Greece to the reign of Peisistratus", and begins the "historical" section with the traditional date of the first Olympiad, 776 BC: "To confound together these disparate matters is, in my judgement, essentially unphilosophical. I describe the earlier times by themselves, as conceived by the faith and feeling of the first Greeks, and known only through their legends,—without presuming to measure how much or how little of historical matter these legends may contain" (Preface). The "Legend of Troy"—"this interesting fable"—fills his chapter xv.〕 The discoveries made by Heinrich Schliemann at Hisarlik revived the question during modern times, and recent discoveries have resulted in more discussion.〔 According to Jeremy B. Rutter, archaeological finds thus far, can neither prove nor disprove whether Hisarlik VIIa was sacked by Mycenean Greeks sometime between 1325 and 1200 BC.〔(Rutter, Jeremy B., "Troy VII and the Historicity of the Trojan War", Dartmouth College )〕 No text or artifact found on the site itself clearly identifies the Bronze Age site by name. This is due probably to the leveling of the former hillfort during the construction of Hellenistic Ilium (Troy IX), destroying the parts that most likely contained the city archives. A single seal of a Luwian scribe has been found in one of the houses, proving the presence of written correspondence in the city, but not a single text. Research by Anatolian specialists indicates that what is called "Troy" was in the Late Bronze Age known to the Hittites as the kingdom of Wilusa, and that it appears that there were several armed conflicts in the area at the end of the Late Bronze Age,〔(Korfmann, Manfred. "Was There a Trojan War?", ''Archaeology'', Vol. 57 Number 3, May/June 2004 )〕 although this does not identify the combatants. The bilingual toponymy of Troy/Ilion is well established in the Homeric tradition. The Mycenaean Greeks of the 13th century BC had colonized the Greek mainland and Crete, and were beginning to make forays into Anatolia. Philologist Joachim Latacz identifies the "Achaioi" of the ''Illiad'' with the inhabitants of Ahhiyawa. He posits that in all probability the ''Iliad'' preserved through oral hexameters the memory of one or more acts of aggression perpetrated by the Ahhiyawans against Wilusa in the thirteenth century B.C.〔(Latacz, Joachim. "Evidence from Homer", ''Archaeology'', Vol. 57 Number 3, May/June 2004 )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Historicity of the Iliad」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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