Watch In Search of the Trojan War

Name: In Search of the Trojan War
Genre: Documentary & Biography
Released: 1985-02-24
Cast: Michael Wood

1985
1 Season
8.7 (303)

In Search of the Trojan War is a historical documentary series from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) that first aired in 1985. Hosted and presented by Michael Wood, a historian and broadcaster who is well-known for his documentaries on ancient history, this series examines one of the greatest legends of Western civilization: the Trojan War.

The Trojan War is a story that has been told and retold for thousands of years. It is most famously recounted in Homer's epic poem, the Iliad, which tells the story of the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek armies, in order to reclaim the beautiful Helen of Troy, who had been abducted by the Trojan prince Paris. Many of the most famous episodes of the story have become familiar to us all, such as the Greek warrior Achilles and his heel, the Trojan horse, and the tragedy of Hector and Andromache.

In In Search of the Trojan War, Wood sets out to explore the historical and archaeological evidence for this legendary conflict. The series is divided into eight episodes, each focusing on a different aspect of the story. Wood begins by examining the existing literary sources for the Trojan War, looking at the works of Homer, as well as other ancient authors who wrote about the war in passing. He then moves on to look at the archaeology of Troy itself, examining the ruins of the ancient city and the layers of history that have been unearthed by archaeologists.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the series is the way in which Wood uses the story of the Trojan War as a lens through which to examine wider historical and cultural themes. For example, in one episode, he explores the role of women in ancient society, using the character of Helen of Troy as a springboard. In another episode, he looks at the way in which the Greeks and Trojans viewed the gods, and how this influenced their actions.

Throughout the series, Wood is an engaging and enthusiastic guide, bringing the story of the Trojan War to life through his storytelling and analysis. He is clearly passionate about the subject matter, and his love for the story is infectious. As he travels through Greece and Turkey, where Troy is located, he is constantly making connections between the ancient world and our own, drawing out the relevance and importance of this story for modern audiences.

Overall, In Search of the Trojan War is a fascinating exploration of one of the most enduring legends of Western civilization. It is a testament to Wood's skill as a historian and presenter that he is able to take such a well-known and oft-told tale and make it feel fresh and exciting once again. Whether you are a lover of ancient history or simply enjoy a good story, this series is sure to captivate and entertain you.

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Seasons

6. Fall of Troy

March 31, 1985

With the evidence amassed on the search, can we now link the archaeological, the historical, and the literary evidence together to discover what may have happened? If Troy was not destroyed by the Greeks, then who destroyed it? And who in turn burned many of the Greek palaces within decades of the Trojan War? Tablets found in the archives of those Greek palaces seem to speak of desperate and hasty defence plans, a state of emergency with home guard units quickly dispatched before the palaces fell. But is it Egypt that offers us some clues, with Egyptian accounts speaking of a terrible attack by some seaborne raiders the Sea Peoples who had swept up from the Aegean and overturned even the mighty Hittite Empire.

5. Empire of the Hittites

March 24, 1985

This program looks at the latest remarkable discoveries form the former capital of the Hittite Empire in central Turkey: a Bronze Age archive containing diplomatic letters and other artifacts from the Age of Agamemnon in which Paris, the legendary lover of Helen, may appear. This program reconstructs the diplomatic crisis surrounding the historical Trojan War, and retraces a 500 mile journey to the Aegean coast by the emperor of the Hittites, one of the most powerful men in the ancient world, a journey which leads to confrontation with the ?Great Kings of Greece?. This reconstruction is made possible by the survival of letters on clay tablets in East Berlin, and it is to these that we return at the end of the program for the latest discovery, which may disclose the real disaster that befell Troy around 1260 BC.

4. The Women of Troy

March 17, 1985

Homer was a storyteller who lived in the 8th Century BC. His epic poem about Troy, ?The Iliad,? is 16,000 lines long. Yet the events he so vividly describes in this poem ,if indeed they are real, took place five hundred years before his time, during a period in which writing ceased to exist in Greece. When he retold this tale at courts and festivals around the Aegean, Homer relied on an oral tradition, which had passed down the story of Hector and Achilles for more than ten generations. The third program in the series attempts to show how the story of Troy, as told by Homer, could actually go back to a Bronze Age war poem about a real event. In Mayo in the West of Ireland we see a Gaelic storyteller demonstrating his art, then we travel to Kars in Turkish Armenia to see a professional bard delivering to a live audience part of a 500-year-old Turkish epic the length of Homer?s ?Iliad.?

3. The Singer of Tales

March 10, 1985

2. The Legend Under Siege

March 3, 1985

Heinrich Schliemann?s successors attempt to give substance to his romantic dream and prove Homer?s tale true. Expeditions led by the Germans in the 1890s and by the Americans in the 1930s dug into the hill of Troy looking for hard facts, but came up with conflicting interpretations. The Germans found a beautiful walled city, apparently demolished and burned; Americans found a city of shanties, a Bronze Age refugee camp with prefabs, a small kitchen, storage jars, even bodies in the streets. But which city was the true site of Homer?s Trojan War Some thought the war had not happened at all, and chief among them was the celebrated British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans. We see Evans sensational finds at Knossos in Crete, finds which he believed wiped out any possibility of using Homer to reconstruct the Greek Bronze Age.

1. The Age of Heroes

February 24, 1985

The story of Troy is perhaps one of the greatest stories ever told, a story which has gripped the Western imagination for almost three thousand years. But is this story a myth or does it go back to real events and real people The search for the Trojan War begins in Berlin with the shattered remnants from Troy, which escaped allied bombing 40 years ago in February 1945, and the intriguing unsolved modern mystery surrounding the disappearance of a priceless Bronze Age treasure The Jewels of Helen. This gold was found by German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann at what we now call Troy, near the Dardanelles in Turkey. The first program tells the story of the enigmatic Schliemann, the father of archaeology, now accused of being a liar. Schliemann?s incredible finds set the ball rolling: the gold treasure at Troy in 1873; the gold masked bodies of the rulers at Mycenae in Greece.

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