Archaeology: Homer's Achilles Heel

No epic has so thoroughly captured the imagination of men through the ages as blind Homer's tale of the siege and sack of Troy. Yet many classical scholars and archaeologists have long suspected that the Iliad and the Odyssey are far more laudable as poetry than as history. The latest skepticism about the poet's recounting of the Trojan War comes from a distinguished German classicist, Dr. Helmut Berve, who has spent most of his life studying ancient Greece. Disturbed by what he calls a "readiness to believe in the historical core behind...

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