Freeling Paul - Children of Achilles: the Greeks in Asia Minor since the days of Troy

John Freely was born in New York and joined the US Navy at the age of seventeen, serving with a commando unit in Burma and China during the last years of World War II. He has lived in New York, Boston, London, Athens and Istanbul and has written over forty travel books and guides, most of them about Greece and Turkey. He is author of The Grand Turk, Storm on Horseback, The Cyclades, The Ionian Islands (all I.B.Tauris), Crete, The Western Shores of Turkey, Strolling Through Athens, Strolling Through Venice and the bestselling Strolling Through Istanbul (all Tauris Parke Paperbacks).

In memory of my beloved brother Jim

Published in 2010 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd
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Copyright John Freely 2010

The right of John Freely to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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ISBN 978 1 84511 941 6
eISBN 978 0 85773 630 7

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Typeset in Sabon by Dexter Haven Associates Ltd, London

MAPS

) Ancient districts of Asia Minor (from George Bean, Aegean Turkey)

) Modern Turkey (from Roderick H. Davison, Turkey, a Short History)

) Ancient Greek cities on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor (from J. M. Cook, The Greeks in Ionia and the East)

ILLUSTRATIONS

) The Tomb of Achilles on the Trojan plain (from Choisseul-Gouffier)

) Yeniehir village above the Trojan plain (from Choisseul-Gouffier)

) The walls of Troy VI and the South Gate (Anthony E. Baker)

) Doric colonnade of the temple of Athena at Assos (Anthony E. Baker)

) The theatre at Miletus (Anthony E. Baker)

) Ionic stoa of Capito Baths at Miletus (Anthony E. Baker)

) Ruins of the Hellenistic Artemesium at Ephesus (Anthony E. Baker)

) Partially reconstructed church of St John the Theologian at Ephesus (Anthony E. Baker)

) Temple of Athena at Priene (Anthony E. Baker)

) Temple of Artemis at Sardis (Anthony E. Baker)

) Temple of Apollo at Side (Anthony E. Baker)

) Head of Alexander the Great from Pergamum, Istanbul Archaeological Museum (Anthony E. Baker)

) Temple of Apollo at Didyma (Anthony E. Baker)

) Temple of Zeus at Euromus (Anthony E. Baker)

) Theatre at Perge (Anthony E. Baker)

) Outer and inner gates at Perge (Anthony E. Baker)

) Baths of Herodes Atticus at Alexandria Troas (Anthony E. Baker)

) Castle of St Peter at Halicarnassus (Bodrum) (Anthony E. Baker)

) The Trajaneum at Pergamon (Anthony E. Baker)

) The acropolis at Pergamon (from Thomas Allom)

) View from the port at Smyrna (Izmir) (from Thomas Allom)

) The citadel at Smyrna (Izmir) from the caravan Bridge (from Thomas Allom)

) A street in Smyrna (Izmir) (from Thomas Allom)

) Church of St Theodore at Pergamon (Bergama) (from Thomas Allom)

) A church in Magnesia-ad-Sipylum (Manisa) (from Thomas Allom)

) Dance of the Maidens, relief from the Temple of Zeus on Samothrace, ca. 340 BC, Samothrace Museum

) Greek women dancing at a festival in Ottoman Turkey, late eighteenth century (from M. dOhsson, Benaki Museum, Athens)

) Musicians at a Greek festival in Smyrna (Izmir), 1900 (Pan. Kounadhis Archives)

) Greek refugees from Asia Minor at an encampment on Chios, 1922 (Pan. Kounadhis Archives)

I first visited the site of ancient Troy in April 1961, on my spring vacation at Robert College in Istanbul, where I had started teaching the previous September. My wife Dolores and I and our three small children set out from Istanbul aboard a ship of the Turkish Maritime Lines, which brought us to the port of anakkale on the Asian shore of the Dardanelles, the Greek Hellespont. We were accompanied by my student Andreas Dimitriadis, an ethnic Greek with Turkish citizenship, who had decided to join us at the last moment, when he learned that we were going to visit Troy.

Tourism had not yet begun in Turkey, and so we had the site of Troy all to ourselves, except for a Turkish gendarme who was guarding the ruins. I had reread Homer in preparation for our visit, as well as the works of the archaeologists who had studied the site, starting with Heinrich Schliemann, who in 1870 began excavating the huge mound on the Trojan plain known as Hisarlk, hoping to find Homeric Troy.

Schliemann excavated the Hisarlk mound in seven major campaigns between 1870 and 1890. He originally thought that the Homeric city was the second stratum from the bottom of the multilayered palimpsest of ruins, which he called Troy II, now dated ca. 25002300 BC. This was more than a thousand years too early for it to have been destroyed in the Trojan War, traditionally dated to ca. 1200 BC. During his 1890 campaign he and his assistant Wilhelm Drpfeld came upon fragments of Mycenaean pottery in the sixth layer like those they had unearthed at Mycenae and Tiryns, which he had dated to the period of the Trojan War. Schliemann died the following year, but Drpfeld continued the excavations, and in 1893 and 1894 he discovered the massive fortification walls and great houses of Troy VI, along with much Mycenaean pottery. Drpfeld estimated that Troy VI had lasted from ca. 1500 to 1000 BC, its destruction layer agreeing roughly with the traditional date for the Trojan War. This convinced him, as he wrote in 1902, that The long dispute over the existence of Troy and its site is at an end... Schliemann has been vindicated.

It was a beautiful spring day, and after we explored the ruins we had a picnic under a valonia oak on the peak of the Hisarlk mound, which was still deeply scarred by Schliemanns excavation trenches. The mound commanded a sweeping view to the north-west, the noonday sun glinting on what Homer called the fair waters of the Skamandros river as it meandered through the blossoming meadow of the Trojan plain, on its way to join the swift flowing Hellespont just above the Asian promontory at Kum Kale, where the strait joins the Aegean.

A short way to the south of Kum Kale we could see two conical mounds standing close by one another near the Aegean shore. I realised that these were the tumuli that Schliemann had identified as the tombs of Achilles and Patroclus. Andreas and I decided that we would hike out across the plain to Kum Kale to have a close look at the tumuli, while Dolores watched the children as they played among the ruins on the mound. I estimated from my map that Kum Kale was about six kilometres distant, which shouldnt take us much more that an hour. But it took at least twice as long because our way was blocked by the Scamander, which we finally managed to cross near Kum Kale on a primitive Tarzan-like bridge made from two cables, one to tightrope walk on and the other to grasp hand over hand.