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Did Troy exist? Did the Trojan horse take place? The answer. says Latacz, is yes, and it takes him 260 pages to come to that conclusion. I read it with interest, and once you admit the existence of Troy (and the war with the Hellenes), you are in. There are 2 very good reasons for placing the war and the poem BEFORE the Dark Ages of Greece (and the Middle East): 1) no Hellenes are mentioned among the attackers in the Hellenic field (the Hellenes arrived in Anatolia only after the year 1,000 BC; and 2) all the weaponry in Homer is Bronze Age, no question (even though Latacz does not seem to be aware of it). And then there is the way it is written, with Achaiians and Danaioi etc. etc. all pointing to a text that was written before 1300 BC but not much later, which is always what I believed. The conclusions are the same, but the belief in the Trojan war is strengthened. The writing is sound, although a little boring (too many repetitions), but the book is worthwhile. Recommended.

I have just finished reading Latacz's book. It was tough going, yet for the persistant, some really interesting insights. Much of the text is involved with analysis of the structure, development and geographical relationships of ancient writings. He also spends much time discussing artifacts and clay tablets unearthed in the pertinent Balkan regions and what they indicate about interrelationships of ancient kingdoms. Mostly the focus is on those pertaining to the Hittite, Greek, and surrounding cultures. He establishes what Homer could likely have known, what was handed down by oral tradition, and what the real focus of his poems may have been. No, there are no definitive answers on the historical reality of this particular "war" here. But much background evidence is provided that it could well have taken place and subsequently "romanticised" by the poet Homer for his contemporary audience.

This little book makes a fitting heir to the work of Manfred Korfmann, who died rather suddenly before being able to see his theories become more widely accepted.

Of course Latacz, as one of Korfmann's collaborators, and having studied so much of the evidence, tries hard to establish a certain viewpoint. Therefore the book should not be read in isolation. It does assume a fair amount of knowledge of the ancient world. Readers should also understand archaeological and historical evidence and what each can and cannot provide. A good concept of oral tradition, the way epic poetry comes into being and is received and transmitted to new generations, would also be a plus.

This book marshalls all of the arguments in favor of the view that the Trojan War, as reflected in the Homeric Iliad, was a real historical event. It presents both the most up-to-date archaeological developments in Anatolia, Greece and Egypt and the philological arguments based on studies of the Homeric poems that support this view. It is accessible to the general reader as well as the specialist.

Prof. Latacz's conclusion is that, in light of recent developments, it is now quite plausible that the Trojan War was a real historical event and that the Iliad preserves some memory of that event, even if this has not yet been proven.

The philological arguments purportedly show that, based on studies of the language and metrics of the Homeric poems, the oral tradition underlying the Homeric poems can be traced back to Mycenean times, i.e., the time period in which the Trojan War is supposed to have taken place, and that the oral tradition would be capable of preserving some factual material about the Trojan War if it did occur. I have some familiarity with these arguments and I have reservations about the certainty Prof. Latacz ascribes to them. Some of them are still controversial and have not achieved the scholarly consensus that Prof. Latacz suggests they enjoy. Prof. Latacz presents these technical arguments in a manner that is accessible to non-specialists.

I am not in a position to assess the validity of the archaeological evidence. The claim put forth in this book is that the late Prof. Korfmann's recent excavations at the site in northwest Turkey that has traditionally been identified as "Troy" have shown that this site was a much more important community than had previously been thought. Prior to those most recent excavations, only the citadel at the site had been excavated, and Trojan War skeptics asked why the Mycenean Greeks would have mounted a huge expedition to capture what appeared to be a small community. Prof. Korfmann's excavations purportedly uncovered a large and wealthy Bronze-age city below the citadel, one that would be a rich prize for a power that was apparently in the process of extending its reach from Greece to Asia Minor during the period in question. However, readers should know that Prof. Korfmann's claims were the subject of a very lively and, indeed, vituperative dispute in Germany in 2002 from one of his colleagues at Tuebingen, Prof. Kolb, and Prof. Korfmann apparently scaled back some of them in response.

In addition, the identification of the site with "Wilusa" mentioned in the Hittite records, and, hence with one of the Homeric names for Troy, (W)ilios, an identification which scholars have suspected since the 1920s, has been made more secure by Hittite specialists, and the important role of Troy in Bronze-age Anatolian trading patterns has been elucidated. Finally, Hittite and Egyptian records have been brought to light that are said to attest to the importance of the "Mycenean" Greeks as a major power in the eastern Mediterranean world of the later second millenium BCE.

For anyone interested in Troy, Homer, or the Bronze Age in Greece and the eastern Mediterranean region, these are intriguing arguments, and this book brings all these arguments together in a single narrative.

In my view, Prof. Latacz exaggerates the case for confidently situating "Homer" in 8th century BCE Ionia. There is considerable scholarly controversy on this point and on the question of when and how the Homeric poems came to be written down and to assume the shape in which they have been transmitted to us; in fact, there seems to be a growing consensus in favor of a later date for the reduction of the poems to writing--perhaps as late as the 6th century BCE or even later. In addition, Prof. Latacz's portrait of the social conditions in 8th century Greece that gave rise to the Homeric poems is less well established than he acknowledges. However, these issues are not essential to his assertions conclusions about the ability of the oral tradition to preserve a memory of events in Mycenean times down to the era of alphabetic writing in Greece, which did in fact begin in the 8th century BCE.

The book contains a large number of useful maps and diagrams. The translation is not very elegant: it reads like a book translated from German.

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Update 11/25/2012.

Since originally writing this review, I've come to be more skeptical about the extent to which memories of the Bronze Age, and, in particular, the reality of a Trojan war, may have been preserved in the Homeric poems. In particular, the findings of the recent archeological campaigns at Troy have been disputed (I've changed the review to reflect this). A more cautious book about these issues is Trojans and Their Neighbours: An Introduction (Peoples of the Ancient World) by Trevor Bryce, a distinguished expert on Bronze Age Anatolia, and in particular, on the Hittites. If you are interested in this subject (and who isn't?), you will want to read both books. Latacz goes deeper into the philological aspects; Bryce is better on Bronze Age Anatolian history and archeology (and is written much more clearly).

My husband is a great fan of Homer and of Troy. This book is a wonderful combination of both. Factual yet written interestingly and with ferver.

If I can ever get my husband to put it down, for a moment, I might get to read it, too.

IT IS A PERFECT DESCRIPTION OF ALL THE EXISTING DATA FOR TROY. IT INCLUDES NOT ONLY THE MOST RECENT EXCAVATION RESULTS BUT ALSO ALL THE EXISTING DATA FROM HITTITES AND EGYPT. I HAVE IN MY LIBRARY THE MOST OF THE BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES OF MR LATACZ BOOK. HE HAS SUMMARIZED UP THE WHOLE VOLUME OF IT.