(Originally posted 04/14/12 at Trojan Horse Productions.)

I mean to include in my audition audio files, a telling of the story of the Trojan horse — or Trojan War. I’ve wanted to conclude that telling, with the story of how the man who discovered the modern location of the actual ancient Troy, supposedly did so based on information he saw in a dream. To verify my information, yesterday I read portions of the book Finding the Walls of Troy, by Susan Hueck Allen. I did not find exactly what I was looking for.

I had already learned in researching this previously, some years ago, that Heinrich Schliemann was a multi-dimensional genius. Tracking down the specific story I was after looked to become something of a needle in a haystack. The man wrote more than 80,000 letters — equivalent to ten a day, every day, for 29 years. One wonders how he had time to do anything else. He also kept diaries in 11 languages. He was also a consummate liar and shameless self-promoter, who re-wrote the stories of his life and his discoveries, as he went on, from day to day.

The specific site that proved to be that of the ancient Troy, he did not find wholly by himself. It was first suggested to him by another explorer, one Frank Carter. The two men happened to share the conviction that wherever the site was, it would be exactly as Homer described it in the Iliad. However, the story that Schliemann first saw it himself in a dream, appears now to have been as mythical as anything else about Troy; as mythical as the myth he himself created of his own life.

(Reblogged 03/16/17.)

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