History According to Bob - Trojan War

Heinrich Schliemann Part 2:

Schliemann was also looking for a suitable wife who would accompany him on the dig. He had divorced his Russian wife and decided on a Greek wife, and he decided that because he liked the sound of the Greek language, especially when it was spoken by a woman. Everywhere Schliemann traveled, he had Greek books. He saw actually the world through Greek eyes and even became a fanatical supporter of Greek claims to control of Constantinople, which is now Istanbul. So obviously a Greek wife would be ideal. But how to find one?

Now he wrote to a priest friend of his, a Greek Orthodox priest named Vimposs [sp?] and described to him the kind of qualifications he was looking for in a wife. He wanted her to be poor. Obviously, he's very wealthy, and I think he wanted somebody with roots in the masses... She of course, had to be beautiful, and she needed to be a Homer enthusiast. She should have dark hair, should be well educated, and have a good and loving heart. That was his prerequisites, if you will.

Well, the priest selected a group of women from Athens who met those categories, had pictures taken of them, and then sent the pictures to Schliemann, who then looked through the pictures and decided on a winner. He selected a 17 year old girl named Sophia. Then he went to meet her and her family in Athens. And there, he had to talk and ask her some questions. So for example, he wanted to know if she would like to go on long journeys. He wanted to know, ask her all kinds of history questions. And then of course, the big moment was when she had to recite passages from Homer by heart. In a short time they were married, and then Schliemann was off to Troy. Now initially, he left her in Athens, but ultimately she will indeed arrive on the site to be with him when they find the “Trojan” treasure


Trojan War Pt 1:

Eris determined to make trouble. She threw into the banquet hall, a golden apple marked for the fairest. Of course, all the goddesses wanted it. After long discussions, only the three great goddesses Hera, Pallas Athena and Aphrodite remained. They went to Zeus and asked him to judge between them. Now Zeus of course, is a man who knows a lot about women since he sits, I swear sits on Mount Olympus looking for good little looking chicks to go and have sex with. But he is smart enough to understand that this is not something that he should do. So wisely, he said he would have nothing to do with the matter because he didn't want to make any of them angry. He told them to go to Mount Ida and find Paris, a Royal Prince who was working there as a shepherd and was an excellent judge of beauty. This sort of tactic to get rid of the trouble from Mount Olympus was a good deal… the two goddesses that he passed over, Hera and Athena immediately started making plans for the destruction of Troy


Trojan War Pt 2:

A lot of times, when you read ancient documents, you see numbers in the thousands, 10 thousand or more, frequently, that term simply means a large number of people. I doubt there were 1000 ships in the whole Agean at this time, that is warships and to put X number of men on the ships and then leave them for, quote, 10 years, which probably is just a while or it, would have left the whole of Greece defenseless, so they couldn't take them all. But remember, this is a piece of literature. So it has other ideas and reasoning behind uses. Certainly, there was a large number of people and it was a long siege, but they may have gone back and forth every so often...

The allies of both sides have actually been found in a Hittite document that pretty much patterns everything on Anatolia, on the islands close to where Troy is, they’re on Troy's side and then the Mycenean world is with Agamemnon. So this is an interesting point

Ed: Christian apologetic logic - archaeological evidence for some of what it says means the Iliad is a valid historical document and the Greek Gods are real!


Trojan War Pt 5:

He ended up killing Paris. Paris’s death was not a great loss, being the cause of all the sufferings, nobody was really sorry because of his death. Once his brother Hector had scold him as follows: Paris, you pretty boy, you women struck seducer, why were you ever born? Why were not you killed before your wedding day? Yes, I wish it so. Far better than to be a disgrace to the rest of us as you are and the object of contempt. How the long hair Achaeans must laugh when they see us make a champion of a prince because of his good looks, forgetting that he has no strength of mind, no courage and carried off a beautiful woman from a distant land and a warlike family to be a curse to your father, to the city and to the people as a whole.

After the death of Paris, the Trojans were strong as before, and the walls still stood intact. They never really had been threatened. But for the greater part of the fighting had actually taken place at a distance from Troy's walls...

The Trojan wall was badly damaged by a very large earthquake, which of course, is part of Poseidon’s abilities. And since he is anti Trojan, and a horse is an example of creatures that are dedicated to him that comes into play. There's also the discussion of a horse, if you will, the Assyrians use as a battering ram, perhaps that was something