Troia
（
Τροία). The name of the city of Troy or Ilium; also
applied to the country. The mythical account of the kingdom of Troy is briefly as follows.
Teucer, the first king, had a daughter who married Dardanus, the chieftain of the country
northeast of the Troad (Dardania). Dardanus had two sons, Ilus and Ericthonius, and the latter
was the father of Tros, from whom the country and people derived the names of Troas and Troes.
Tros was the father of Ilus, who founded the city, which was called after him Ilium, and also,
after his father, Troia. The next king was Laomedon, and after him Priam. (See
Priamus.) In his reign the city was taken and destroyed
by the confederated Greeks, after a ten years' siege. (For details see
Achilles;
Aeneas;
Agamemnon;
Aiax;
Hector;
Helena;
Neoptolemus;
Odysseus;
Paris; and especially
Trojan War.) As to
the historical facts which may be regarded as established, there is evidence of a considerable
city having been sacked and burned at a period which archæologists put not later
than the twelfth century B.C. That this invasion may have been an enterprise of the
Achaeans at that time is neither impossible nor unlikely. If the interpretation of recent
Egyptian discoveries is right which makes Achaeans appear as assailants of Egypt in the reign
of Rameses III., it would follow that the Achaeans of the twelfth or thirteenth century had
power and spirit enough for such an enterprise; but in any case the history of Tiryns and
Mycenae, as attested by their ruins, is evidence to the existence of their power at that time.
There is therefore no reason why the traditions upon which the
Iliad is based
should not be regarded as true in their main outlines. It is probable enough that to avenge an
act of piracy (which is a common and simple explanation of the rape of Helen) the Greeks of
the “Achaean” period besieged and sacked Troy and thence returned to hold
their own possessions undisturbed until the Dorian invasion. That there was no Greek
settlement upon the site of Troy until a much later period is deduced from the remains of
towns of a low state of civilization and of small importance which have been discovered above
the ruins of the second city. On the literary use made of the legend of the Trojan War, see
Cyclic Poets;
Homerus;
Vergilius.
