Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Byron in 1810. Diagonally across from Gallipoli (starboard) is Cannakale, near the site of
ancient Troy. The Trojan War is one of the defining myths and memories of western civil-
ization. Fought sometime around 1250 BCE, the war is memorialized in Homer's two great
epic poems (composed sometime around 800 BCE), the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey
. The
Iliad
tells the story of the Trojan War and the Greeks' ten-year siege of Troy. Outside its walls
Achilles fought his great fight, and it was at the siege of Troy that Odysseus (Ulysses) cun-
ningly contrived to hide warriors inside a great wooden horse, which, when dragged in-
side the gates of Troy, allowed Greeks concealed in the horse to open Troy's gates to the
war's end, Odysseus sets sail for his home on Ithaca, a journey (the Odyssey) that will take
twenty years of wisdom, cunning, and mysterious adventure to complete. Homer's tale is
the prototype for all the great adventure stories of western literature, replete with villains,
improbable beings, bravery in the teeth of great odds, and a quick-thinking, resourceful
hero.
Tradition gives blind Homer the honor of creating the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey
; more
likely the epics are the product of an ancient minstrel tradition with many singers, each con-
tributing stories and details. Archaeology confirms that several cities and eras are layered
one over the other at the site of Troy. Research also suggests that a war pitting besiegers
against Trojans was a war between cultures (ancient Greeks versus Hittites from Anatolia)
as well as a war to dominate trade in the eastern Mediterranean.
But whatever the precise historical details, both epics, composed almost 3,000 years
ago, remind us of the continuity of the human condition and human aspiration: how pride
can destroy admirable people; how quick we humans are to blame the gods for personal
failings; how stubbornly we cling to our mistakes; how loath we are to admit to making
them; and perhaps most important of all, how we compare the most imperfect life in this
world with expectations of a glorious life in the next. When Odysseus descends to Hades
to speak with the shades of fallen heroes, the great Achilles laments,
By god I'd rather slave on earth for another man—
Some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—
Than rule down here over all the breathless dead.
[164]
WHAT IS THE GOLDEN HORN?
The Dardanelles flows into the Sea of Marmara (the Marble Sea), and from there the Sea
of Marmara adjoins the Golden Horn, an estuary about five miles long fed by two streams
called the Sweet Waters of Europe. Just where it joins the Bosphorus, carving and shap-
ing a scimitar-shaped peninsula, the Golden Horn serves as Istanbul's harbor, offering shel-
ter from winds and currents. For mariners both ancient and modern, the Golden Horn is
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