Troy: the revenge of the gods on the victorious Greeks?
Everyone knows the story of the Trojan War, don't they?
Achilles the great warrior, cunning Odysseus, the Trojan horse. That last, at
least, has become common parlance. In recent years fewer and fewer people
seemed to have heard it, but now things are changing. I have no doubt that some
of us have been watching Troy: the Fall of a City, on BBC TV. More, I suspect,
were watching the first episode of Civilizations. Imagine my delight when the
focus moved to the excavations of Pylos, city of King Nestor. Why? Because this
is the setting for my novel The Last Hero and the discoveries of archaeologists
like Sharon Stone, who appeared in that episode, underpin my narrative
"Within two or three generations after the victory over Troy, cities like Mycenae and Pylos had been so completely destroyed that for hundreds of years everyone believed that they had never been anything more than a myth."
Within two or three generations after the victory over Troy,
cities like Mycenae and Pylos had been so completely destroyed that for
hundreds of years everyone believed that
they had never been anything more than a myth. It was not until Schliemann
uncovered the remains of Troy and then of Mycenae at the end of the nineteenth
century that people understood that these stories were founded in fact. How was
that possible? That was the question I set out to answer.
When I began to research the story that became The Last Hero, I
found a wealth of information to work on. Some of it came from ancient legends
which had been passed down over the centuries, like the story of the Trojan
War, immortalized by Homer, or the murder of Agamemnon by his wife and her
lover Aegisthus and the revenge of his son Orestes, as retold in the plays of
Aeschylus and Sophocles. To the Greeks of the classical era, these stories were
history, not myth, and subsequent excavations by archaeologists have proved
that they do have a basis in fact.
"To the Greeks of the classical era, these stories were history, not myth, and subsequent excavations by archaeologists have proved that they do have a basis in fact."
Pursuing the archaeological evidence I found that it reveals a
fascinating story. There is no doubt that the city of Mycenae existed. Once
only the Lion Gate was visible but now the ruins are there for all to see.
Grave goods have shown that it was indeed a rich and cultivated society, where
the royal dead were buried with masks of beaten gold over their faces. What
interested me particularly was the evidence that over a period of years, after
the victory over Troy, the city suffered partial destruction and re-building.
Some time around 1200 BCE. a house belonging to an oil merchant outside the
walls was burnt down and about the same time parts of the city and the palace
were destroyed and rebuilt, with some of the walls being strengthened and a
secret passageway constructed to a spring which fed a cistern. Was this
evidence that the city had been attacked and expected the attackers to return?
Even more evidence came from excavations by Professor Carl
Blegen of the University of Cincinnati at the site of Pylos, on the west coast
of the Peloponnese. Here, legend had it, was the palace of King Nestor, who
plays a large role in the Iliad; and excavations proved that it was so. A
magnificent palace once stood on the hilltop of Epano Englianos, 17km north of
the modern town of Pylos. It had columned courtyards and a throne room whose
walls were decorated with beautiful frescoes. There were storerooms full of
fine pottery and olive oil jars labelled to show their different flavours. 
Most
interesting of all were the many clay tablets inscribed with writing in two
different scripts, which had only been found before in the ruins of Knossos,
the city of the Minoans on the island of Crete. Neither script had been
translated and they were given the names Linear A and Linear B. Eventually, in
1952, Michael Ventris and John Chadwick succeeded in deciphering Linear B and
discovered that it represented an early form of Greek.
"We even have the names of the men in charge. ‘To the headquarters of Klymenos near Metapa, the Count Alectryon with 100 men’ etc etc."
This sparked a great
controversy. Did this mean that the MInoans, hitherto believed to have been a
different race altogether, were also Greek? Or had the Mycenaeans conquered and
colonized Knossos? Arguments raged among scholars, but what interested me was
the information the tablets revealed. Most were simply records kept by the
palace administration of taxes received and supplies dispensed but in the
highest, and therefore most recent deposits, the tone changes. These tablets
record orders that suggest Pylos was preparing for an attack. 
The number of
available chariots is to be recorded, and chariots repaired where necessary.
Ships are to assemble and watchers are to be sent to various points along
the coast. We even have the names of the men in charge. ‘To the headquarters of
Klymenos near Metapa, the Count Alectryon with 100 men’ etc etc. Most
significantly, bronze vessels are to be requisitioned from the temples to be
melted down for weapons.These tablets were found it a layer of ash, left from the fire
that razed the palace to the ground. The preparations were unavailing.
"The characters who people the story are not myths. They are not descended from gods or nymphs, though they believe their ancestors were divine. They are human beings with all the strengths and faults of all humans"
Who were the attackers? Tradition suggests a tribe called the
Dorians, who believed themselves to be the descendants of Heracles. This, I
decided, would be the basis for my novel. The characters who people the story are not myths. They are not
descended from gods or nymphs, though they believe their ancestors were divine.
They are human beings with all the strengths and faults of all humans. They
loved and suffered and hoped and feared as we all do. Their existence is
attested by the records. Alkmaion was the son of King
Sillos and the grandson of Thrasymedes, who fought at Troy. His cousin and
rival, Antilochos, would have been the heir instead of him, if his grandfather
had not died in that war. The royal family of Mycenae are all recorded as the
descendants of Orestes. Even Alkmaion’s lover, Alectryon, was a real person, as
I have shown above, though their relationship is a product of my own
imagination.
"In short, The Last Hero has as much historical validity as novels about Roman Emperors or Queen Boudicaa or Viking invaders."
In short, The Last Hero has as much historical validity as
novels about Roman Emperors or Queen Boudicaa or Viking invaders. We may not
have as much documentary evidence for it as we do for the Wars of the Roses,
but the Myceneans were as real as Edward lV or Richard lll and they loved and
fought with the same intensity as the men and women who lived through both
World Wars. Conditions change, but human nature does not.
Hilary Green trained as an actress but has spent most of her working life teaching drama and theatre studies, most recently at Birkenhad Sixth Form College. Having achieved an MA in Creative Writing at Liverpool John Moores University, she is now concentrating on being a full-time writer. She published three novels, all thrillers, in the 1980s but is now concentrating on historical novels. She won the Historical Novel Society's Kythira Prize for a short story in 1998.