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Key Details
Type
CityMythology
Greek Pantheon
Coordinates
39.957°N, 26.239°E
About This Location
The city the poem besieges
Troy in the Iliad is Priam's walled town on the Scamander, fought over for Helen and for honor. Homer never tells the wooden horse; that is the Cycle and then Virgil. His Troy has temples of Athena and Apollo, a Scaean gate, and a fate Zeus will not lift. Hisarlik is the archaeology. The poem is not a campaign diary. Cult of the Trojan Athena is Homeric fiction until Greeks later claimed Troad shrines. The war's length is a verse convention.
Primary Sources
“Sing, goddess, the anger of Achilles, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.”
More from Greek Pantheon
Mount Olympus
MountainThe highest mountain in Greece and the mythological home of the twelve Olympian gods.
The Underworld
RealmThe gloomy realm of the dead ruled by Hades, located deep beneath the earth.
Delphi
Sacred SiteThe site of the oracle of Apollo, considered the center of the world (omphalos) by the ancient Greeks.
Tartarus
UnderworldThe deepest abyss of the underworld, a dungeon of torment where the Titans were imprisoned and the wicked punished for eternity.
Elysian Fields
RealmA paradise at the end of the earth where heroes and the virtuous were sent after death to live in eternal bliss.
River Styx
Body Of WaterThe principal river of the underworld, upon which even the gods swore binding oaths. Charon ferried the dead across its dark waters.