Searching for Ancient Greece - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 179

provising with practical behavior and intuiting solutions to difficult and dangerous prob-
lems. Homeric dialogues never cease, which is another way of saying that for 3,000 years,
Homer's readers have pondered his epics, seeking to understand war and its consequences,
seeking to understand the ways in which chance, divine intervention, and human motives
determine the outcome of war and its aftermath.
Figure 12.5. Homer, British Museum
WHERE IS TROY?
From the Renaissance on (around the mid-1500s), as western scholars learned to read clas-
sical Greek, it was generally assumed that Homer's stories were no more than stories, bits
and pieces of folklore, told and retold until woven into a seamless narrative by a teller
(or perhaps tellers) of tales known by a traditional name, Homer. Traces could be found
of Homer's Greek cities. But where was Troy? The answer, as it unfolded, would lie with
Heinrich Schliemann.
Schliemann was born in north Germany in 1822. Like one of Homer's heroes, his life
was built around improbable events, some of which Schliemann may have fabricated. This
much, though, is true. He was a gifted linguist, a highly successful businessman, and an