Expert: Maria - 11/8/2007

Question
Do you think that in the war of Troy participated greeks? I have read many books about it and i think that greeks came in the balkans in the 8th BC century while the War of Troy took place in the 12th century BC. Many historians think they are pelasgians, the ancestors of illyrians macedonians and thrachians. what do u think?

Answer
Hello,

As we read in Homer's Iliad, the Achaeans, i.e. the  Greeks, participated in the Trojan War.

In fact the Achaeans, i.e. specifically the inhabitants of the region of Achaea in the north central part of the Peloponnese, were certainly Greek as they were part of the Mycenaean civilization that dominated Greece from ca. 1600 BC.

On the other hand Homer says that  Agamemnon, the commander in chief of the coalition that attacked Troy, was the  King of Mycenae; his brother Menelaos was the king of Sparta; Odysseus was the king of Ithaca; Nestor was the king of Pylos, etc.
In short, all these warriors came from Greece, which is of course in the southern Balkans, where the Greeks had come NOT in the 8th BC century, but in the late 3rd millennium BC, i.e.  around 2000 / 1900 BC, when  some Indo-Europeans tribes (Achaeans, Aeolians, Ionians, Dorians) had occupied the ancient Greek mainland.

To conclude,we can say that:

1-the Achaeans, whose name appears also in some Hittite texts  of the 14th century BC, settled in Greece long before the 12th century BC, when the Trojan War took place and when the name Achaeans came to mean exactly all the Greeks.

2-they  certainly participated in this war whose real cause was not the legendary  Rape of Helen, the wife of Menelaos,  but the fact  that Troy collected tolls from ships passing the Hellespont Strait (today the Dardanelles) and the Greeks, who traded with the Black Sea peoples, did not want to pay this toll anymore.

Finally, with regard to the Pelasgians, they preceded the Hellenes, i.e. the Greeks, and spoke a barbaric, non-Greek  language, according to some ancient Greek authors like Herodotus for example, while Homer considers them as a people allied to Troy.

Anyway the ancient Greek references to the Pelasgians are really confusing and  no secure archaeological evidence  has been found.
Therefore it’s still difficult to state that they  were the ancestors of the Illyrians,  Macedonians and Thracians, though Homer says that they  stand between the Hellespontine cities and the Thracians of south-east Europe, i.e. on the Hellespontine border of Thrace (See Iliad, book 2, lines 840-843).

Best regards,
Maria