The Trojan War in Homer and History - Recorded Books

LECTURE FIVE
One of the most important of these lost epics is the Cypria, which apparently
came immediately before the Iliad in terms of telling the story of the Trojan
War. Within the Cypria, which starts out with the gods and goddesses interacting,
we are told about the original journey made by the Trojan
Paris/Alexander to the kingdom of Menelaus and Helen, and the fact that
Menelaus then goes off to Crete, leaving Paris and Helen alone—in other
words, here is the beginning to the story that everyone knows, which then
continues along familiar lines, including the gathering of the Mycenaean
forces at Aulis and the preparations for an attack on Troy.
However, then comes a rather interesting element to the story, which is not
usually told. When the Mycenaeans first set out from Aulis to attack Troy,
they—apparently mistakenly—attacked a city on the Anatolian coast named
Teuthrania, rather than attacking Troy itself. Only after capturing the city did
they realize their mistake and return back to Aulis to regroup before venturing
out again, this time to properly attack Troy and retrieve Helen. It is unclear
how long a period of time elapsed between these two expeditions, that is, the
first mistaken one to Teuthrania and the second one to Troy itself; some
authorities suggest that as many as eight years elapsed, which would go a
long way toward explaining why the Trojan War took ten years in all. Even
more interesting is that there is some evidence that the attack on Teuthrania
may well be a memory of a small war in which the Mycenaeans apparently
took part during the fifteenth century BCE, that is, approximately two hundred
years before Homer’s Trojan War.
There is a German school of thought, known as the Neoanalytical School,
which contends that there are strands within the Epic Cycle, as well as in
the Iliad and the Odyssey, that contain fragments of even older epics and
stories, from events that took place even earlier during the Middle or Late
Bronze Age, and that were woven by Homer and others into these stories of
the Trojan War proper. For example, the hero of Ajax seems to be a figure
from an earlier period who has been inserted into the story of the Trojan
War, for his huge rectangular shield, described as hitting him on his neck
and his ankles as he walks with it slung over his back, is a type known as a
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