- 2 days ago
A woman in a white robe walks on the beach while Nimoy narrates the basics of the Iliad. Helen, stolen away, the Greek army comes after, besieges Troy
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00:00She was the most desirable woman in the world, the fabled Helen, wife to the Prince of Sparta.
00:11So beautiful was she that her rival prince stole her away to the kingdom of Troy.
00:17Thus, Helen became the face that launched a thousand ships, each ship carrying a hundred Greek warriors bent on revenge.
00:24For ten years, the ships were beached while the army laid siege to Troy.
00:32The great walls of the city could not be breached, but the Greeks found another way.
00:39For Helen and the Battle of Troy, just the dreams of an ancient poet.
00:54Homer wrote that Achilles chased Hector around the walls of Troy.
01:17Three thousand years later, a man of flesh and blood would relive the chase.
01:21He was a man possessed.
01:28His mission, to find the fabled city and the Trojan hoard of gold.
01:40This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture.
01:45The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanation, but not necessarily the only ones, to the mysteries we will examine.
01:52The place where Europe ends and Asia begins is as mysterious as its mountains are imposing.
02:08Where they meet the sea, rich farmlands were for centuries protected by great stone battlements.
02:14The ancient Greeks called this land Ionia.
02:21Modern men call it Turkey.
02:24Relatively few Westerners travel to Turkey these days.
02:28Fewer still venture into the exotic countryside beyond the graceful minarets of Istanbul.
02:33A long time ago, things were different.
02:36What we now call Turkey once seemed to be the great crossroads of the known world.
02:41Adventurers from all over the Mediterranean sailed for her shores.
02:46What were they looking for?
02:49Ten centuries before Christ, the Greeks were just beginning to probe the strained seacoast that lay to the east.
02:55The inhabitants of Ionia was said to be rich in precious metals and trade goods from even more distant lands.
03:09Eventually, the Greeks would establish colonies, new cities, and a new civilization.
03:17Even as the new cities prospered, however, mainland Greece was on the brink of collapse.
03:22For a time, the colonies represented the only real hope for the future.
03:30The Greek settlers had brought with them their pantheon of gods.
03:39Clearly, the Greeks of this troubled period wanted to keep alive the glories of the past.
03:44With their gods came mortal heroes, somehow bridging the gulf between heaven and earth.
03:54Of these heroes, it was said, each could do what two men could not do, such as now live upon the earth.
04:01No one helped preserve these illusions more than the great bard, Homer.
04:08Some scholars believe Homer traveled through the great cities of Ionia in the 8th century before Christ.
04:15As he would pass through a city, he would pause to recite a tale or hear one told.
04:27Under graceful columns and along busy thoroughfares, storytellers would gather to recite verse.
04:34Perhaps it was in this way that Homer first heard the story of Troy.
04:37He may have visited the place where the great battle was supposed to have happened.
04:49Whether Troy's location was known to Homer or not,
04:52he certainly drew inspiration for his retelling of the story from the countryside of its birth.
04:58The result was Homer's epic poem, The Iliad.
05:01The poem described the invasion of the Greeks,
05:08but nowhere does it mention the gift horse filled with soldiers.
05:14By the 18th century, most scholars had concluded that the fall of Troy described by Homer was pure fiction
05:20or related to something that happened somewhere else.
05:23Many felt that Homer never lived at all,
05:25that the work ascribed to him was merely an anthology of folktales told by many writers.
05:30There were a few eccentrics, however, who believed otherwise.
05:34The most remarkable of these was a self-made millionaire named Heinrich Schliemann.
05:39As a boy, Schliemann had taught himself to read the Iliad in Greek.
05:44His fascination with Homer's poem was to become a lifelong obsession.
05:50By 1870, Schliemann had made two fortunes in Russia and another in the California gold fields.
05:57He arrived in Turkey determined to spend every penny of his great wealth, if need be,
06:02on realizing his dream, the discovery of ancient Troy.
06:09When Schliemann committed himself to an objective,
06:13it was with an all-consuming passion uncommon in average men.
06:17As Schliemann began his search,
06:19he looked over the plain that might once have played host to the armies of Hector and Achilles.
06:24Schliemann came armed with the Iliad
06:30and took up residence in the small village of Bunurbashi.
06:35The few scholars who were prepared to even consider the possibility
06:38that Troy once existed generally placed it here.
06:41So he began his survey of the Turkish countryside,
06:48looking for landmarks mentioned by Homer.
06:55Schliemann had given himself a good layman's education in archaeology.
07:03An examination of the area others thought likely
07:06revealed nothing to his eye that could possibly relate to Homer's Troy.
07:10The springs which Homer described weren't of much help either.
07:16Surely their course must have changed dozens of times
07:19in the 30 or more centuries since Troy.
07:23Before giving up on Bunurbashi,
07:26Schliemann decided on another test.
07:30Homer had said precisely how long it took Achilles
07:33to chase Hector around the walls.
07:35There was only one thing for Schliemann to do.
07:37There was only one thing for Schliemann to do.
07:38It was also a trick to human being tried,
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08:03Wrong. The time was wrong.
08:13Bunurbashi just didn't fit Homer's facts.
08:16Schleeman's detractors had a field day,
08:18more convinced than ever that he was a fool or simply crazy.
08:25Even Schleeman had to admit he'd picked a big haystack
08:29in which to search for his needle.
08:30But a grossest apprentice who had the brains and energy
08:34to make himself a multi-millionaire doesn't quit easily.
08:38He began to search again, a short distance north of Bunurbashi.
08:47There, he would encounter his destiny on a hill called Hisalik.
08:52The site was less than an hour's mark from the sea.
09:02If well fortified, it could command the whole plain below.
09:13Even an eye less astute than his couldn't miss the archaeological evidence.
09:17Schleeman was convinced he had realized a 40-year-old dream.
09:23In his journal, he wrote,
09:25I have set foot on Trojan soil at last.
09:31He selected the highest mound on Hisalik and ordered his men to dig.
09:39Homer had said the Temple of Athena stood on the highest ground in the city,
09:44ringed by walls built by the gods.
09:47Still, the critics scoffed.
09:53Although Schleeman had taught himself to read and write 18 languages,
09:57the scholars of the day dismissed him as an unlettered boor,
10:00living in a fantasy world.
10:03Schleeman only worked harder,
10:05driving his men to dig deeper into the mound.
10:07Surely now, he would find the proof to quiet those who laughed.
10:16Find it, he did.
10:17Here, indisputably, were the remnants of a lost civilization.
10:27But were they the fabled walls of Troy?
10:29Schleeman's trove of artifacts shook the academic world.
10:34What must the builders of this city have been like?
10:40What hands made these beautiful things?
10:42Clearly, the ancient craftsmen used techniques more advanced than many in use today.
10:49Why did they vanish after accomplishing so much?
10:55Schleeman discovered hundreds of spindle whorls,
11:02just like the ones still favored by local residents for spinning wool yarn.
11:07Other implements were found similar,
11:13if not identical, to those in everyday use by villagers along the Turkish coast.
11:22Schleeman might have been struck by how little some things change in 3,000 years.
11:29But he would need more to prove his city was the Troy of Homer.
11:37Heinrich Schleeman's life had been one long love affair with the legend of Troy.
11:45It had taken four years to excavate the ruin he thought was Troy.
11:50Now, as he walked his ancient pavements,
11:53he believed he was following the path Homer had taken so long ago.
12:00Schleeman seeing, as through Homer's eyes,
12:04the skilled Trojan craftsmen at work in their stalls.
12:07Touching a dish that might have been set before Helen,
12:16the hostage princess who spawned ten years of war.
12:20Admiring a lion's head carved in crystal,
12:23what great warrior might have carried it as a charm into battle?
12:27Schleeman could place on his own hand a ring made 30 centuries ago.
12:36Restore a brush whose bristles had turned to dust
12:38in the age of gods who walked with men.
12:44Still, Schleeman was not satisfied.
12:47He had in fact discovered nine cities.
12:49He had no way of knowing for sure which one was the city of his dreams.
12:58Some early inhabitants imported bronze cast in ingots the shape of ox hides.
13:03There were ships' anchors of chiseled stone
13:06and ships' cook stoves of bronze.
13:08These Schleeman found in the ruin he called Troy, too.
13:13But was this Homer's Troy?
13:17The answer was obscured by evidence of a great catastrophe.
13:21Violence more terrible than war had seared the very masonry of the walls.
13:36Jewelry was fused into shapeless blobs of metal.
13:44The whole countryside must have been laid waste by the disaster.
13:51Those who survived lived in squalor.
13:55The floors of their huts built on compacted garbage.
14:03If nothing else, Schleeman had unearthed the monument to the tenacity of man.
14:08Fire and sword had raged.
14:10Again and again, a city of the living had been raised on a city of the dead.
14:15Schleeman numbered the ruins from one for the oldest to nine for the most recent.
14:26He assumed his objective was among the older ruins, possibly Troy, too.
14:33Yet in Troy, six, he found massive walls that could have been the ones described by Homer.
14:38If they were the walls that hid Helen from the armies of her betrayed husband,
14:45it would be easy to see why the battle raged ten years.
14:53It all seemed to fit Homer's description.
14:57A city fashioned by the gods.
14:59Yet the design of houses in Troy, six, was remarkably similar to those of the more ancient second city.
15:09A major difference among the various ruins seemed to be evidence of the increasing influence of outside cultures.
15:16By the time of Troy, six, newcomers from the north were introducing a completely new kind of pottery.
15:25The other arts were also affected by the immigrants.
15:28Alexander the Great was a latecomer to Troy, but among the first to build an altar to the old gods.
15:35From inscriptions, it is clear Alexander read Homer as fact.
15:39More years passed, and the Romans became masters of the Ionian coast.
15:50The poet Virgil took up in Latin, where Homer left off in Greek.
15:54Embellishing the story and giving it new credibility, Rome made Troy a sacred city.
16:02Emperors came to worship and be entertained.
16:06Augustus even considered making Troy the capital of his empire.
16:09Through it all, minstrels kept alive Homer's poem of glory.
16:16This was the world Heinrich Schliemann felt he had rediscovered.
16:20But was he seeing only what he wanted to see?
16:24So complete was Schliemann's dedication to Homer's Troy that he had taken a young Greek woman to be his bride.
16:31He thought she had Helen's blood coursing through her veins.
16:34And in a way, all this effort had been intended to restore her heritage.
16:40The greatest prize he had not been able to give her.
16:44Yet as he was about to give up, Schliemann made his most fantastic discovery.
16:50The glint of metal had caught his eye.
16:53Schliemann ordered his wife to send the workers away.
17:04Sophia was confused.
17:06But she had come to trust her husband's uncanny instincts.
17:09She did as she was told.
17:10In four years, Schliemann's men had moved 325,000 cubic yards of earth.
17:30Now, he was moving alone, deep into the excavation of the ancient second city.
17:3828 feet down was the lower level of the wall Schliemann identified with Homer's palace of Troy.
17:49It was here he had seen the flash of treasure.
17:54Schliemann had chanced everything for his dream.
17:56Even with all he'd accomplished, scholars still considered him a fraud or a madman.
18:02Now, he knew they would have to believe him.
18:06The treasure of Troy was surely only inches from his grasp.
18:13Then, his fingers touched it.
18:21There were 31 large objects of beaten gold.
18:26Had this once adorned Helen, daughter of the gods?
18:37The workmanship was unmistakable.
18:40Surely, this was all the proof the world would need.
18:47The hoard included 9,000 small pieces.
18:51Rings, buttons, and charms.
18:53It was wealth beyond imagining.
18:57More important, it seemed that a lifetime's quest had finally been realized.
19:08In spite of promises to share the treasure with the Turkish government,
19:13Schliemann smuggled most of it out of the country.
19:15He held onto it long enough to dress Sophia in splendor.
19:22Somehow, Schliemann knew he had fulfilled his destiny and hers
19:26by finding the lost treasure of Troy.
19:30The collection eventually found its way to the Berlin Museum.
19:36Schliemann would go on to other triumphs in archaeology.
19:39The Trojan treasure, however, would vanish.
19:46In the closing days of World War II,
19:49the Americans and the Russians marched on Berlin from opposing flanks.
19:52Someone may have hidden it from the bombardment,
20:05then died without revealing the secret of its location.
20:09It's possible the Nazis stole it for their own use in the headlong flight from the advancing allies.
20:15No one really knows.
20:21Happily, perhaps, Schliemann didn't live to see the day
20:24that the prize he struggled so hard to win
20:26would vanish again without a trace.
20:29Little has changed in Turkey
20:35in the hundred years since Heinrich Schliemann came here
20:38to play out his dream of finding Troy.
20:41Caravans still follow trade routes
20:43that were ancient even in Homer's day.
20:48Old men still sit in the shade and tell stories.
20:53It is the custom here
20:54and was so long before Homer's time.
20:58Tragedy and disaster are also familiar in this fabled land.
21:10In 1976, an earthquake killed hundreds of people
21:14and left thousands homeless.
21:17There was no warning,
21:18just sudden and savage destruction.
21:22A dazed and heartbroken people began to rebuild
21:25even as they mourned their dead.
21:29Modern archaeologists believe the same fate overtook ancient Troy.
21:34That around 1300 B.C.,
21:37a violent earthquake leveled the mighty city.
21:39Before the city could be rebuilt,
21:47barbarians attacked from the north
21:49and put the survivors to the sword.
21:52Perhaps we can be forgiven
21:54for preferring to believe
21:55that Troy met its end gloriously
21:58and for the sake of love.
22:00The
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