Virgil’s War—Myth Meets Fact(USE AS GUIDE ONLY) / Virgil’s War—Myth Meets Fact(USE AS GUIDE ONLY)

Virgil’s War—Myth Meets Fact(USE AS GUIDE ONLY)

Virgil’s War—Myth Meets Fact(USE AS GUIDE ONLY)

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Virgil’s War—Myth Meets Fact
For over three thousand years people have heard about Troy and the Trojan
War which was waged between the Spartans and the Trojans, as well as their allies.
The poet Homer wrote about this war from the Greek point of view, the Greek historian
Herodotus also wrote about the war from the Greek standpoint, while Virgil took a
different approach and told his story from the perspective of the defeated Trojans and
Aeneas, their prince. Even with so many different people and cultures writing over the
centuries about Troy and the infamous war that took place there, many historians and
archaeologists who are still divided on whether or not this event actually happened at
all. In spite of this division, there has been some rather overpowering evidence
discovered over the last two hundred years that gives credence to the actual existence
of Troy and the Trojan War as it is described in Virgil’s epic poem, The Aeneid.
Even though Virgil only gives a minimal amount of information concerning the
Trojan War and Troy in The Aeneid—all of which is in retrospect (Virgil Kindle PC
Location 354-688)—both the war and the city were important enough to have been
written about numerous times by many different poets in the ancient world (Johnston 7-
8). In fact, it is quite probable that there are few, if any, other incidents in history that
have aroused the creativity of so many different writers and artists than the Trojan War
has (see figure 1), (Johnston 7-8). The only possible the

Virgil’s War—Myth Meets Fact
A. Harris