As suggested above, the practice of relating topographical features and ancient remains visible in the landscape to the heroes and events which figure in folklore, legends, epic, or popular history is probably as old and widespread as humanity itself. So, no doubt, is the practice of creating the latter on the basis of the former. By the dawn of archaic Greece the landscape inhabited by the Greek-speaking world was marked with the sometimes impressive ruins of earlier centers of settlement and littered with the tombs and funeral mounds of past millennia. At Mycenae, for instance, the monuments seen by Pausanias in the second century ce were almost certainly still more impressive a millennium earlier in the eighth century bce. At that time, at the place probably already known as Ilion close to the shores of the Hellespont, a small local shrine sat amidst the ruins of the late second-millennium citadel walls, while a handful of deserted tells and perhaps burial mounds were even then visible in the surrounding terrain. It is impossible to know, at that point, what stories surrounded locations such as these, but stories there undoubtedly were. The ‘‘tombs’’ of Myrine and Aisyetes near Ilion, both mentioned in the Iliad, may already have had these names, the more so since neither Myrine nor Aisyetes figure in any other capacity in the the epic. But what the supposed tombs really were, and when they acquired their names, is something we shall almost certainly never know (see Cook 1973; Luce 2003). Mycenae and Agamemnon may well have been names that went together, at least locally, long before the creation and widespread dissemination of Homeric epic, but whether the character and deeds of an earlier Agamemnon bore any very coherent and detailed resemblance to those attributed to him in the Iliad and Odyssey is perhaps a different matter.
The importance of much ancient epic (and Homeric epic in particular) as a representation of the shared ‘‘history’’ with which a very wide group of people could identify themselves meant that its exploitation by means of what might loosely be called ancient archaeology was almost inevitable. In the case of Homeric epic, this is particularly marked in the Hellenistic and, especially, the Roman periods, following Alexander the Great’s deliberate manipulation of an ideology based on Homeric military glory and especially following Virgil’s imperial Roman twist on the Trojan hero Aeneas. Epic ‘‘relics’’ or tales of ‘‘relics,’’ for instance, had similar ideological, political, and commercial roles in the Graeco-Roman world to those of Christian ‘‘relics’’ in the Middle Ages. Pausanias (2.18.3), for instance, saw the shield which Menelaos was said to have taken from Euphorbos (cf. Il. 17.60) hanging in the Argive Heraion; Plutarch tells us that Alexander was offered a sight of Paris’ lyre during his visit to Ilion in 334 bce (Alex. 15.4); while Arrian says that, on the same occasion, he removed from the temple of Athena Ilias the arms that had been preserved there since the Trojan War (Anab. 1.12). While we can probably regard Paris’ lyre and the Trojan War arms as a figment of the Alexander mythology, and doubt that the shield seen by Pausanias was of any great antiquity, in a few cases it seems likely that ‘‘relics’’ were acquired by means of some form of archaeology, whether accidental or deliberate. The ‘‘scepter of Agamemnon,’’ which according to Pausanias (9.40.11-12) enhanced the fame (and no doubt the tourist income) of Chaer-oneia in the second century ce, was apparently discovered in the ground along with some gold. Pausanias’ observation that the Chaeroneians gave it the curious name ‘‘spear’’ (86pv) suggests that it may have been some antique form of spearhead, perhaps from a third or early second millennium grave. In the archaic and classical periods we also have literary hints of the kind of active archaeology for blatantly political purposes which, for instance, led to the opening of ‘‘Arthur’s tomb’’ at Glastonbury by the English King Edward I in 1278. The story of the sustained search by Spartan special agents for the tomb of Orestes in order to ensure Sparta’s alliance with Tegea in the sixth century bce is one such example (Hdt. 1.67-8). Another, if Plutarch’s account (Thes. 26.1-2) is to be believed, is Cimon’s hunt in the early fifth century for the bones of Theseus on Skyros, which were eventually found in a burial mound along with a bronze spear and sword and ‘‘repatriated’’ to Athens. In the latter case, this ‘‘archaeological’’ activity was motivated by the need for a plausible excuse to legitimize the Athenian seizure of Skyros in 475 bce.
Such active ‘‘archaeological’’ ploys can only have had some point if enough people believed that the bones of Orestes or Theseus really existed to be found; and, generally speaking, the ancients (like the legendary St Helena in her quest for the true Cross) never publicly or explicitly doubted the basic historicity of their epics and other ‘‘historical’’ accounts, and did not need archaeology to ‘‘prove’’ it. The visible monuments were there around them, and when they wanted ‘‘relics’’ for political or commercial purposes all they had to do was ‘‘find’’ or manufacture them. The presence or absence of such “relics’’ (or indeed the matter of their authenticity) did not affect belief in the ‘‘history’’ in anyway. Historical epic, whether composed orally or in writing, worked by telling people what they already ‘‘knew,’’ or by refashioning this disparate ‘‘knowledge’’ into new synthetic narratives which made eminent sense in the ideological or political context of their own contemporary world. They were conditioned to accept it as historical ‘‘truth,’’ and needed no independent confirmation. The historicity of heroes and their various deeds was largely taken for granted by literary commentators and popular masses alike. And even if we can assume some cynicism on the part of those who manipulated their tales for political or ideological purposes, including the original creators of ancient epic and their patrons, this rarely betrays its presence in the literature. Insofar as there is dissent, it tends to be of a minor nature and to concern anomalies or contradictions within epic texts, between epic and other accounts, or between these and monuments believed by contemporary populations to relate to them, rather than the historical basis of epic itself. Thus, in the fifth century bce Herodotus could argue that Helen never actually reached Troy (2.112-20), and in the first century Strabo, following Demetrius of Scepsis, could produce various reasons (including the recognition of changes in the coastline) why the Hellenistic and Roman city of Ilion could not have been Homer’s Troy (Strabo 13.1). None of these, however, questioned the historical reality of either Homer’s Trojan War or Troy itself.
World History
