The Siege and Fall of Troy.

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Superb First Folio Edition

The Iliad has it all, war, corruption, greed, power, and the passions of both gods and men. In this detailed retelling, Robert Graves draws the major characters of this timeless classic in broad, gritty strokes, making Agamemnon, Paris, Odysseus, and others accessible for young readers. The Siege and Fall of Troy is nevertheless exhaustively researched and compelling enough to be of interest to both students of history and adult readers.

Troy or Ilion was an ancient city located in present-day Hisarlik, Turkey. It is best known as the setting for the Greek myth of the Trojan War. The archaeological site is open to the public as a tourist destination, and has been added to the UNESCO World Heritage list as of 1998.

Troy was repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt during its 4000 years of occupation. As a result, the site is divided into nine archaeological layers, each corresponding to a city built on the ruins of the previous. Archaeologists refer to these layers using Roman numerals, Troy I being the earliest and Troy IX being the latest.

Troy was first settled around 3600 BC and grew into a small fortified city around 3000 BC (Troy I). Among the early layers, Troy II is notable for its wealth and imposing architecture. During the Late Bronze Age, Troy was called Wilusa and was a vassal of the Hittite Empire. The final layers (Troy VIII-IX) were Greek and Roman cities which served as tourist attractions and religious centers because of their link to mythic tradition.

The site was excavated by Heinrich Schliemann and Frank Calvert starting in 1871. Under the ruins of the classical city, they found the remains of numerous earlier settlements. Several of these layers resemble literary depictions of Troy, leading some scholars to conclude that there is a kernel of truth underlying the legends. Subsequent excavations by others have added to the modern understanding of the site, though the exact relationship between myth and reality remains unclear and there is no definitive evidence for a Greek attack on the city.

Review: Robert Graves was the 20th Century's arch populariser of ancient stories; his two part account of the life of the Emperor Claudius ("I Claudius" and "Claudius the God") brought early Roman Empire and his timestory to life for millions of people both directly and through the TV series based on the novels. Graves' novelised account of the life of Count Belisarius, though less well known, is equally brilliant. Here he turns his skills to writing an account of the legend of the Trojan War. Essentially this book is a popular version of the story as related by Homer, and pitched at a level which is meant to be accessible to older children as well as adults. This is a novelised version of the full legend, complete with all the stories about competing Gods intervening on both sides, magic shields, etc, etc. It isn't, unlike Graves' novels about Claudius and Belisarius, a detailed attempt to describe from a human perspective what the real historical events of the story might actually be like.

ROBERT GRAVES (1895-1985) was an English poet, translator, and novelist, one of the leading English men of letters in the twentieth century. He fought in World War I and won international acclaim in 1929 with the publication of his memoir of the First World War, Good-bye to All That. After the war, he was granted a classical scholarship at Oxford and subsequently went to Egypt as the first professor of English at the University of Cairo. He is most noted for his series of novels about the Roman emperor Claudius and his works on mythology, such as The White Goddess.