ALICE ROBERTS: The Aegean Sea and its collection of beautiful islands
are framed by the coastlines of mainland Greece and Turkey.
Millions of tourists of all nationalities
come here every year.
3,000 years ago it was just as popular.
The ports of the Aegean
would have been crammed with families, workers,
soldiers and kings,
travelling for trade and to fight.
The cities of Ancient Greece were often at war with each other.
I want to find out more about this vast and complicated civilisation,
to dig out the real stories behind the myths.
And I'm not just going to the well-known tourist spots.
Of course not.
I'm headed off the beaten track.
I'm Alice Roberts,
and I'm travelling hundreds of miles
through what is now Greece and Turkey,
looking into the flowering of Classical civilisation
from Ancient Greece to the Romans...
Oh, my goodness!
That's wonderful.
..to discover this region's vital role
as the birthplace
of Plato, Socrates and Alexander the Great,
mythology, theatre and democracy.
I'm in Kusadasi, a port town on the Aegean,
and I'm embarking on the final leg of my adventure.
My first stop will be the famous ancient city of Ephesus.
From Selcuk Station
I'll head 45 miles north
to the ancient city of Smyrna, modern Izmir...
..before travelling a further 60 miles
to Pergamon, modern Bergama...
..and my journey ends at the legendary city of Troy.
I've arrived in Ephesus
and I'm meeting Nesrin, a local historian.
Nesrin!
Hi, Alice! Hello!
Welcome to Ephesus.
I can't believe I'm here. This is absolutely fantastic.
And this is just the beginning.
Yes.
What's incredible is just the scale of this, isn't it?
(LIVELY MUSIC PLAYS)
The history of Ephesus goes right back to the Neolithic,
when early farmers settled here 9,000 years ago.
By 3,000 years ago
it had grown into an important Ionian Greek city
and it continued as a regional capital under the Romans.
Today, it's one of the ancient world's best preserved sites.
The archaeology that we can see here, do you know when this dates to?
This is 1st century BC till 2nd century AD,
and it was the fourth-largest city in ancient world.
The fourth-largest city? Yes.
So, what were the other three then?
Rome... Yeah.
..Alexandria, Athens
and Ephesus.
Really? Definitely.
Yeah. So, incredibly important.
Definitely. Yeah.
Plus it was a cosmopolitan city,
so, there were Greek-speaking people in this area,
there were Latin-speaking people
and there were Asian people here,
there were Egyptians here.
So, it was a colourful... Yeah, yeah.
..a cosmopolitan metropolis of antiquity.
Can you believe that quarter-million people lived in this city?
I've heard that estimate. I mean, that seems incredible.
Yes. Quarter-million people. Yeah. Yeah.
And what is it that makes Ephesus? Why did it develop here?
We are in between two hills.
Yes, yeah. Mt Bulbul and Mt Panayir.
So, that's naturally a defensible city.
And it ends in the harbour,
so, it's a perfect location to set up a grid-plan city.
So, if we'd been here in the 4th century BCE,
we'd have been looking at the sea just there.
Yes, you would have a sea view...
Yeah. Yeah. ..down there.
The water used to come that close to the city,
and anyone standing on this side
would see a wonderful sea view from this point
and would see the ships...
Yes. Just there. ..carrying goods
to the port of Ephesus back at that time.
It's hard to imagine Ephesus as a port today,
but it was on the river Kestros.
Over time the estuary has silted up
and, today, the shoreline is a staggering 17 miles away.
Back in ancient times
the location of Ephesus as a port
made it a key trading hub on the Aegean,
with the Ephesians becoming very rich.
Imagine that on both sides of us
there used to be pillars like this and a pavement after...
Yeah. ..and then the shops.
So, this is the main road?
This is the main road. The main road of Ephesus.
Ephesus -
standing on the very end of the Eastern Royal Road.
So, the goods of the Eastern world, like spices and silks and cottons
and leather, everything, the perfumes...
And everything coming in from the Mediterranean as well.
And yes, the Mediterranean world. Yeah. Yeah.
Olive oil, wine.
They were all here for sale in these shops.
And the elite of Ephesians were living in this neighbourhood.
It was a prosperous neighbourhood.
Yeah. (LAUGHS)
Now, this is the newly excavated part, isn't it?
Yes.
The terrace houses.
This is a wonderful place to get the idea
about the domestic life...
Yeah. ..of the wealthy Ephesians.
(GASPS) Yes. The rich Ephesians.
The absolute...
Yes.
..creme de la creme.
Creme de la creme. Definitely. Yeah.
So, we need our tickets here. Yes.
Yes. You just put it there.
Here you go. Off we go.
There's paintings on the wall.
All these paintings and mosaics on the ground.
So, it is a special place.
(GASPS) It's incredible.
Definitely. Wow!
And we are in the house of number six.
Size-wise the biggest house.
(GASPS) Look at this marble!
Yeah. Look. (CHUCKLES) Oh, my goodness.
There we are. Yes. Look at that little niche!
And the water pipe coming down carrying water here.
They've got running water? Running water.
In the house?
Definitely. That's just amazing, isn't it?
Definitely.
Wow! Running water, sewage canals.
And everything designed for keeping the standards high, actually.
Yeah. I mean, it's just strikingly modern, isn't it?
Definitely.
Incredible marble floor as well.
Yes. Wow!
I wonder who lived here.
We know who lived in that place.
Their last name was Apti.
Aptus was the high priest of Dionysus temples.
Really?
So, he had a key position in the society.
And that makes him a very senior official in the city?
Yes. And a wealthy merchant.
We will go up the steps. Look at this marble!
I mean, it's absolutely dripping with opulence.
Definitely.
Should we go right to the top? We will.
And the interior collection of this house
is gorgeous
with the floor mosaics. (GASPS) Look at that.
Look at them. Look at it! Wow!
Look. A lion.
A lion enjoying his meal. (LAUGHS)
You can see the details there.
A beautiful frame around the lion figure.
Yeah. It's just stunning.
It's beautiful. Wow!
And the walls...
Birds painted in those panels. Yeah.
I mean, that's just gorgeous, isn't it?
Definitely. So, when is this abandoned then?
Last quarter of the 3rd century AD
Ephesus experienced a severe earthquake,
then the series of earthquakes demolished the city.
So, the wealthy people first left...
Yeah. Yeah. ..the city
because there was no more trade activities in the city.
And the city was not that glorious city anymore, back in the old days.
Yeah. Yeah. So, they left the city.
So, you've got several things conspiring
to spell the end for Ephesus then -
the harbour silting up
and then recurring earthquakes causing damage as well.
Definitely.
One of the last earthquakes to hit Ephesus
destroyed one of its greatest structures.
The great Library of Celsus was left in ruins.
But in the 1970s
archaeologists recovered and reconstructed
the facade of this architectural marvel.
That is beautiful.
That is stunning, isn't it?
It is amazing.
It's really a masterpiece.
Goes back 2nd century AD.
And... So, it's Roman.
It IS Roman.
Yeah. But the building is not the first library.
The library was famous going back before the Romans here.
Before the Romans.
Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes.
And this library had 12,000 scrolls in it.
But it's just incredible, isn't it?
And there must have been people coming to Ephesus to learn,
you know, it had that reputation as a seat of learning.
Definitely, definitely. Yeah.
And as a public library,
it has... Yeah.
..I mean, it's really important too.
When we look at the details,
we see an intricate work on the facade of the library.
Look.
The capitals.
Corinthian capitals. Each of them are Corinthian.
Yeah.
Imagine that this is all carved by hand and solid marble pillars.
You can see there.
Oh, my goodness! Yeah.
Single solid marble piece. Wow!
We know that till 13th century AD
there was a continuous living on this site.
Right. Yeah. So, it's not that far.
13th century AD.
In terms of history... All the people would have been living here amongst the ruins.
Yes. Yeah, yeah.
And we've got some inscriptions up here.
Latin.
So, we've got, "Emperor Cassari..."
The very last line -
"Mazaevs."
And on the second block
you can read, "Mithridates."
Yeah. Two brothers.
They were slaves of Augustus family,
1st century BC.
Due to their good manners, due to their loyalty to the family,
they granted their freedom
and sent as tax collectors to Ephesus.
Right. OK.
To show their loyalty to Augustus family,
they had...
..they wanted to put a mark to the city that they appointed to.
And that's the gate giving access to the commercial agora of Ephesus.
That's what we see beyond there.
So, we've got the library, we've got this magnificent gate,
and then we've got the agora, the forum, the marketplace.
Marketplace. Yeah.
The commercial agora of Ephesus was established in the 3rd century BCE
and was like a modern-day market square.
Behind the colonnades were 100 rooms
serving as shops, workshops
and meeting places for guild associations.
Just beyond the agora is the vast theatre
where the people of Ephesus enjoyed their entertainment.
Shall we settle down here, wait for the performance to start?
Imagine that there are another 25,000 people.
Yeah. (CHUCKLES)
Plus us. I mean, it's absolutely enormous.
You know, by today's scale it's enormous.
You know, this would be a huge theatre to go into.
It is the largest in the world.
Is it? With 25,000 people.
Yeah.
Of course, the front seats were for... (CHUCKLES)
..elite. The elite.
The people who lived in those lovely houses.
(LAUGHS) Yes.
Would have had a season ticket, wouldn't they, down the front there?
Definitely.
And this would have been open.
Open. Yeah. Of course.
It's far too big to roof over, isn't it?
(LAUGHS) Yes. It's absolutely enormous.
You think there were gladiatorial events here
as well as plays performed?
Yes, yes.
Gladiator fights was so popular.
And there was a gladiator school in Ephesus.
Right.
Besides this,
every four years Ephesus used to organise festivals.
Right. For the name of Roman emperors.
Oh, really? Yeah. This was a big thing.
Because it's such an important city in the Roman Empire.
The capital of Asia Minor province.
Yeah.
I think what's astonishing is that it's just all here
as it was in the late Roman period.
It is a little bit like Pompeii in that respect
that it just seems to have stopped...
Yes. ..and then it's been frozen in time.
But it's the destiny of every ancient city.
Yeah.
They born, they have glorious years and then they fall down.
Yeah, yeah.
Ephesus is magnificent.
It's amazing to be able to explore such an intact ancient city.
Tomorrow I'm back on the train heading north
and I'm going in search of another Greek city,
which, unlike Ephesus, still thrives to this day.
ALICE ROBERTS: It's early morning in Turkey
and time to get back on the train
for the next leg of my Ancient Greek adventure.
Merhaba! Merhaba.
Izmir'e bilet lutfen.
Kac kisi?
How many person?
One.
One person email, please.
Email.
It's 14 lira, please.
Tesekkurler.
OK. Please fill out form.
Lovely.
Tesekkur ederim.
From Selcuk Station
I'm heading 35 miles north to the city of Izmir,
ancient Smyrna.
Izmir!
(BRAKES SQUEAL)
Train travel in Turkey is staggeringly cheap,
with most journeys costing just the equivalent of a few pounds sterling.
(BLOWS WHISTLE)
(WHISTLE BLOWS)
The face of Ephesus really was sealed by that changing environment,
the harbour silting up over time
so that eventually
ships just couldn't make it all the way through.
And at that point the city really started to fade.
It was inhabited for a few centuries after that into the Byzantine period,
but eventually it was completely abandoned.
And that's really the reason that it's so wonderfully preserved today.
Well, I'm on my way to another port city,
but this time
one that persisted through the centuries,
grew bigger and bigger.
It was ancient Smyrna.
It's modern Izmir.
And because that city has just grown through time
I'm really intrigued to see how much of the ancient Smyrna is still here.
(DYNAMIC MUSIC PLAYS)
Like Ephesus, the port city of Smyrna was an important gateway
between Asia and Europe.
It continued to be a prominent city
within the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires,
and, today, Izmir is the third-largest city in Turkey.
(DYNAMIC MUSIC PLAYS)
(TRAFFIC DRONES)
This is why Izmir is here - the sea,
and the port is really busy this morning,
I can see ferries coming and going.
There's a huge container ship out there.
And the city itself comes right up to the seafront.
We've got Ottoman-era buildings,
we've got big modern tower blocks built of glass, steel and concrete,
and it just doesn't look like there's any room at all for ancient Smyrna.
But I've been told that if I take a 10-minute walk through the bazaar
I might find what I'm looking for.
(HUBBUB)
(ATMOSPHERIC MUSIC PLAYS)
(HUBBUB)
In the 1930s
floodwaters exposed what appear to be archaeological remains.
Excavations began,
and over the decades archaeologists have revealed
one of the most important sites of the ancient city...
..the Agora.
Hello. Can I get one ticket, please?
Tesekkurler. Thank you.
The agora as a meeting place and marketplace
was the beating heart of every Greek city.
(ATMOSPHERIC MUSIC PLAYS)
The Romans adopted the same town plan,
and here in Smyrna they just revamped the existing agora.
Around the central courtyard there's a covered colonnade
where citizens could conduct their business sheltered from sun or rain.
The buildings behind the colonnade included shops
and spaces with civic, legal and religious functions.
The Romans added two extra storeys
on top of the original Greek building, or stoa.
But I'm most impressed by the wonderful basement.
(ATMOSPHERIC MUSIC PLAYS)
This is a great site.
We've got a lot of the archaeology
that would have been, in fact, below ground in the Roman period,
with those wonderful basements and the water supply to the agora,
and then just a little bit of what would have been above ground,
including over there,
you can see just the bottom layer, really,
of what would have been the town council, the bouleuterion,
like a little theatre.
And we've just got fragments of two rows of seats remaining.
(STIRRING MUSIC PLAYS)
This site is like an oasis in the middle of busy Izmir today
and it's intriguing to wander around it,
imagining it bustling with traders and food stalls.
"Damo-xaris."
That would have Damocharis.
"Someone who is...
"..to be remembered for his skills
"in reconstructing the city of Smyrna after an earthquake."
And I presume there would have been a statue of him on top of it.
Damocharis is thought to have been a governor of Asia
in the 4th or 5th century CE.
And this reconstruction of the city after an earthquake
wasn't the first,
and it wouldn't be the last.
Merhaba. Can you take me to Karabel?
(INDISTINCT DIALOGUE)
Before I leave Izmir
there's one more ancient thing I'd like to see.
This time it's not Greek.
So, we're headed out of the city, out of Izmir.
I think it's going to be about a 40-minute drive
up into the hills, up to this pass
where there's some very, very ancient rock art.
And it's really busy.
But this isn't a new thing.
This city's been busy for thousands of years.
In the 5th century BCE
Herodotus, the Ancient Greek historian,
wrote his Histories,
and in them he said that on the road from Smyrna to Sardis inland
there was a figure of a man cut in the rock
holding in his right hand a spear and in his left are bow and arrows.
And he also said that there was an inscription on it
in Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.
So hidden!
I need to see this for myself,
if I can find it.
Doesn't feel like many tourists come up here.
Oh, dear.
You know, my first thoughts on seeing this
are that I'm just gutted, I'm absolutely devastated,
because this is a rock carving
that has survived more than 3,000 years,
and it just the last few years
it's been hacked away.
So, we can see this figure. We can see his head, his arms.
He's holding a spear.
He's got a bow and arrow as well.
And his knees...
From the knees down, basically, it's all been hacked away.
And, yeah, that's really, really recent damage.
It's so sad.
Although there's less of it to see today,
it seems likely that this IS the rock carving mentioned by Herodotus,
which he thought depicted an Egyptian conqueror
because of these hieroglyphics.
But it's not an Egyptian pharaoh.
It's a local king.
And those hieroglyphics have now been decoded, they've been read.
They're written in a local Anatolian language, Luwian,
and they commemorate this king,
whose name was Tarkasnawa.
He was king of this Kingdom of Mira,
part of the bigger Hittite Empire
in the Late Bronze Age.
The carving is thought to date from the 13th century BCE.
It was already very ancient when Herodotus wrote about it.
(AMBIENT MUSIC PLAYS)
ALICE ROBERTS: As night falls
I'm back on the train for the next leg of my journey
to visit a Greek city
that spearheaded an intellectual revolution.
Next stop is Bergama,
or, as it was known in ancient times, Pergamon.
And I'm particularly excited about visiting ancient Pergamon
because it was a renowned centre of learning.
Its library was second only to the one at Alexandria,
bigger than the library at Ephesus.
And it was particularly well-known for medicine.
I'm really interested to go there
because it was the birthplace of Galen.
He was a famous, famous physician.
He started his career in Pergamon.
He was learning medicine at the Asclepeion,
the temple of healing there,
and later on he would become doctor
to the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius.
Bergama, or, as the Ancient Greeks knew it, Pergamon,
is 60 miles north of Izmir.
This train will take me only as far as Soma,
where tomorrow I'll complete my journey by taxi.
In the second half of the first millennium BCE,
empires came and went,
but Pergamon was always an important city.
It was part of the Persian Empire,
then Alexander the Great's Macedonian Empire
and then it was the capital of the smaller Kingdom of Pergamon.
Baby girl, it's so lovely to see you!
Yeah! Lovely to see you too!
Welcome! Beautiful day in a beautiful place.
Mwah! Oh!
Welcome. Upstairs.
A cable car up to an acropolis. This is just fantastic!
Yes. Oh, my goodness!
I'm taking a cable car with my historian friend Begum.
A thousand feet up to reach the acropolis
on top of this impressive hill.
'Acropolis' means, quite simply, 'high city'.
Oh, this is lovely.
Look - we're about to emerge into an olive grove.
And I can see the ancient stones of Bergama at the top of the hill.
Or, as I should say, Pergamon.
Oh, look - there's some archaeology poking up. Poking out up there.
Here is called Kale Hill.
What does that mean?
'Kale' means 'castle'.
Castle Hill. Right.
OK, so, this is what we're looking at then,
the walls of the castle there. Castle Hill.
If you translate it. Yeah. Yeah.
With A couple of these towers here. Mm-hm.
And cattle grazing around them.
Oh, look, we're here! We're here, we're here!
After you, Begum. Here.
Ooh!
From the 3rd century BCE
Pergamon was the royal seat
of the Greek king Attalus and his descendants,
and an important cultural centre.
Like many Greek cities,
it had a citadel or acropolis
where magnificent temples were constructed
dedicated to Athena, goddess of wisdom and warfare,
and Dionysus, the Greek god of wine,
as well as a colossal altar to Zeus.
The Romans, when they arrived, added a temple to the emperor Trajan.
And down below
there's more architecture hugging the steep hillside.
We are now in the theatre.
Oh, my goodness, it's just there!
The spectacular Pergamon Theatre.
Look at that. It's incredibly steep.
Oh, my goodness!
(WIND WHOOSHES)
The wind is whistling up the steep side of the acropolis.
And then fitted onto the side of the hill here we've got that theatre.
It's so steep!
Very steep.
One of the steepest in the ancient world.
Is it really? Yes.
Yeah, I can believe that.
You'd be worried, wouldn't you, if you were sitting up here at the top,
that you'd just end up tumbling all the way down to the stage?
The theatre is 36 metres tall,
and with 78 rows of seats it could hold 10,000 people.
Pergamon's rulers were patrons of culture.
As well as that vast theatre
they built a huge library,
transforming the city into a centre of learning.
This is in the second place
one of the largest in the ancient world.
The second-largest library in the world.
Mm-hm.
And it's believed
that Marcus Antonius gave 200,000 scrolls to Cleopatra...
Yeah. ..as a sign, as a symbol...
From here? From here, as a symbol for his love.
What an incredible gift. Yeah. Yeah.
200,000 scrolls. 200,000 books.
Yes. Yeah.
I'm sure Cleopatra read all of them.
(BOTH LAUGH)
In antiquity
the literature in these libraries
would have been handwritten on long scrolls
made of either paper-like papyrus or parchment.
Now, tell me about parchment
'cause there's a really interesting
story here. Yes.
I think the word is very familiar.
I mean, 'parchment', 'Pergamon,' 'Pergamum' in Latin -
they are all connected,
so, it's believed that parchment is invented here,
and, the Pergamons,
they were the one who first used the parchments.
Nice! Yeah! So, yeah, here is...
That's extraordinary.
I didn't know that. Mm-hm.
I mean, I'm obviously familiar with the word 'parchment',
and that is animal skin...
Oh, yes. Made from animal skin. Yes. ..that's been prepared
so that you can write on it. Uh-huh.
But it actually derives from 'Pergamon'.
'Parchment' - 'Pergamon'. Yes. Yes.
Here is one of the very thriving producer of parchment
to the other kingdoms... Yeah.
..of the Hellenistic world.
I didn't know that. I didn't know that's where the word came from.
Yes. Yes. That's absolutely brilliant.
And it's connected with the second biggest library in the ancient world.
It makes sense. Yes.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
And we'd have been standing right in front of it just here.
There's an incredible collection of monuments up here,
but there's one more I just can't wait to see -
the Asclepeion,
a temple dedicated to Asclepius, the god of healing.
But, in fact, this was more than just a temple.
It was a hospital and a medical school.
And it was here that one of the most famous doctors in history
began his career.
This is where I really wanted to come
because I'm a doctor originally and an anatomist,
and Galen's such... such an important figure
in the history of medicine.
Yes. He is the father of modern medicine.
He is, yeah. And this is... I mean, this is where he was born
and this is where he studied, isn't it?
Yes.
Oh, it's beautiful.
Claudius Galenus, or Galen, as we know him,
was a Roman physician, surgeon and philosopher.
He studied here in Pergamon,
but also did his own research,
dissecting animals to help him understand the human body.
It's incredible to think of Claudius Galenus, Galen, being here...
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He lived here... ..and learning.
..yeah, he taught lectures here.
He invented so many medical treatments.
Yeah. And it's incredible.
And he would have learned, you know,
from this incredible library that they had here,
and he went to other places as well.
He went to Smyrna. He went to Alexandria.
You are right. Exactly.
Great centre of learning, especially for medicine.
But then came back.
Came back here. Yeah.
It's amazing. It's brilliant story.
And his writings were just so, so influential, so powerful.
You know, they kept on being the main medical writings
right through into the Middle Ages. Mm-hm.
And he... You know, he got a few things wrong,
but there's a lot he got right.
Yes!
You know, he thought the mind was associated with the brain,
for instance... Mm-hm.
..and that was a relatively new idea at the time.
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Galen travelled widely,
visiting Smyrna and the Greek islands and mainland
in his quest for medical learning.
He eventually went to Rome
to become physician to the emperor Marcus Aurelius.
And he's still remembered as a pioneer of medicine today.
(MOODY MUSIC PLAYS)
I'm on the last leg of my journey through ancient Turkey,
and I'm on the trail of one of the oldest stories in the world -
the story of the Trojan War, the Iliad as written by Homer.
And I've got so many questions.
Archaeologists think they found the location of Troy.
But how can they be sure?
How can they connect those stones to this ancient story,
which is more than 3,000 years old?
And who was Homer anyway?
At Soma I hopped onto the express train.
I'm travelling 100 miles north to Balikisir,
the nearest railway station to my next destination,
a place that is shrouded in myth and legend -
the city of Troy.
Nobody really knows who Homer was
or indeed whether he was just one person.
But the story of the Iliad
is likely to have been passed on through the spoken word
for generations before it was written down.
It's history that has turned into myth.
As well as kings and warriors
it's full of heroes, gods and goddesses.
It's the story of a battle that kicks off
when a Trojan prince, Paris, steals a Greek queen, the beautiful Helen.
Then the Greeks sail across the Aegean
to wreak their vengeance on Troy.
Mustafa! Hello!
Really lovely to meet you. Nice to meet you too, yes.
Thank you very much.
I'm with Mustafa, who grew up in the local area
and is an expert in the ancient history of Troy.
Two years ago
I was in a field in England
and we were excavating a Roman villa,
and I was brushing the dirt away from a mosaic,
a beautiful mosaic.
And as the mosaic appeared...
..it was clear what it was depicting.
There were two warriors facing each other in chariots.
Then there was another panel
where one of the warriors was dead
and being dragged behind the second warrior's chariot.
And then a third panel,
where a king in a long cloak
was begging for the body
and paying for the body in gold.
And we looked at the mosaic and went, "We know this story."
Yeah, it's Troy's story.
Achilles dragging Hector's dead body.
Yeah. Behind his chariot.
Yeah.
And then later,
Priam, his father, is paying to paying to take his son's dead body.
Yeah. Yeah. Hector's dead body.
Everybody knows something about Troy, you know.
Like, kids in the Western world
grow up with wooden-horse stories and with Troy stories.
Yeah, yeah. Isn't that amazing?
How far back do you think this story goes?
I believe Trojan War was an historical fact
which took place around 1250 BC.
So, late Bronze Age? Yeah.
Some storytellers
went through from one town to another and told these stories.
Yeah.
And Homer was one of them.
So, they're oral histories...
Oral histories. ..and oral mythology.
It's all history mixed up with myth, isn't it? Exactly. Yes, yeah.
So, there's good reason to believe that this is Troy?
No doubt. Yeah.
I mean, I was born here...
..and when I was a child
Troy was my playground,
and I know the topography very well.
Especially when I was reading the Iliad,
I could easily imagine that, "Now they are here, now they are there."
So, it fits very well with the descriptions in there.
Like Mt Ida this way, for example.
Island of Tenedos there.
Imbros there. Dardanelles there.
Rivers there, you know, wind there.
Everything fits.
And then 2,000 years ago
the Romans also believed that they were founding a city
on the site of Troy.
Exactly. They called it New Troy.
The traditions continued. Mm.
I mean, you don't need to be an archaeologist.
I mean, Romans already knew that this was Troy here.
Yeah. The local people knew all about it.
I have no doubt.
Can we have a look at your book? Yes.
Before we go and look at Troy itself.
Yeah. Of course.
OK.
A reconstruction, how it looked like once, you know.
Yeah. During the time of the Trojan War.
That was the acropolis.
OK.
The plan of Troy.
That gives you a good impression of all the different layers...
Exactly, yes. ..of archaeology.
It's confusing, actually.
I mean, this is the bottom level, for example - Troy 1, the smallest,
and the larger one, Troy 2.
But that's the Homeric one. The pink one is the Homeric period.
As soon as you go into the site, you know,
you used to see that wooden horse,
you know. Oh, Yeah!
Which is not there anymore.
But we don't know anything about the wooden horse.
No, exactly. We don't know
whether there was a horse or not. We don't know if it was real. No.
There are different theories about the wooden horse.
Yeah. I mean, one of them, for example...
All you can reasonably say is beware of Greeks bearing gifts.
Bearing gifts. Yeah.
'Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes' in Latin.
Yeah. (BOTH LAUGH)
Oh, yeah.
I think we should go and have a look round.
Don't you? OK. Right. OK.
Have you got a raincoat or an umbrella?
I will have one.
In the 19th century
Heinrich Schliemann, a wealthy German businessman,
was determined to find the lost city of Troy.
Whilst many scholars believed Troy was just a myth,
Schliemann was convinced it was true.
In 1868 he arrived in Turkey,
where an Englishman called Frank Calvert
had already started to excavate at the site of Hisarlik Hill...
..and Schliemann continued the excavations,
eventually uncovering a whole ancient city.
(ATMOSPHERIC MUSIC PLAYS)
Yeah, we're going to start our tour from the monumental city walls.
So, these are the acropolis walls.
We are already inside of the lower town
but outside of the acropolis.
Yeah.
So, as we come up here,
you start to appreciate that this really is an acropolis.
It really is dominating the landscape all around.
During the time of the Trojan War
it was just like that.
Topography was like...as you see, it was described in the Iliad.
So, the battle would have taken place down there.
Exactly. That's the battlefield in front of us there.
Imagine the Greeks attacking from the Dardanelles,
Trojans on a commanding spot could easily see them coming, you know.
Sometimes the Trojans push them all the way to their boats.
Sometimes Greeks push them all inside of the city walls, you know.
They'd have seen the ships coming. Yeah.
Imagine, I mean, thousands of ships, you know, coming here.
That's what the Iliad describes.
And the Greeks and the Trojans fought for Helen.
What do you think about that?
Do you think they fought for a beautiful woman?
No, I think they fought for THAT.
For that access between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
Yeah. Yes. It's a magical location.
Yeah, yeah. All economical reasons.
Yeah.
But, actually, cause of the war was a beautiful woman, you know.
But what you need is an excuse, you know.
Yeah.
I think Helen was a beautiful excuse.
Yeah.
But it's beautiful story. It's a great story.
Never let the truth in the way of a good story.
(LAUGHS) And I love this story. (LAUGHS)
And it's persisted all these centuries.
(LAUGHS) Yes! Yeah, yeah.
So, when Schliemann found this impressive gateway,
he said this was the famous Scaean Gate.
Achilles-Hector duel took place just outside of that gate, Scaean Gate,
between the city walls and the river Scamander.
Yeah, yeah.
Just imagine that took place just in front of us there.
And when I was a child, you know,
I was around here.
So, when I started reading the Iliad,
I said, "Oh, that event took place just in front of us there."
So, I could easily visualise it. I can imagine it.
Yeah, yeah. It's a true story, I think.
You think it's true? Yeah. It's not a legend.
Yeah. Yeah. It's a true story.
I mean, what we have seen - only 10%.
90% is still there.
There's a lot to do for the icons. Yeah, yeah.
Especially in the lower town.
Yeah, especially in the lower town. Yeah. Yeah.
I hope they discover new things
and I hope we tell different stories.
The story is still emerging. Yes.
Yeah. Yes.
OK.
Thank you so much.
No, it was very special to be shown around Troy by a Trojan.
(CHUCKLES)
I'm at the end of my adventure, my odyssey,
and I've learned and seen so much.
Wow!
That's incredible.
The Ancient Greeks gave us philosophy, science, medicine, art,
theatre and democracy.
(VIBRANT MUSIC PLAYS)
(GASPS)
There's violence in there. Yes!
And yet at times it was brutal,
with Greeks battling it out with Persians, Romans
and between themselves
on land and at sea.
And yet at Delphi they worked out a way of coming together,
high politics happening alongside festivities
and a sporting competition.
Ancient Greek civilisation flowered in the first millennium BCE,
with its ideas flowing on into the Roman period and beyond,
a culture born out of the connections offered
by the Aegean and the Mediterranean.
May I pick that up?
And I'll treasure the connections I've made,
all the wonderful people who've shared their research, their stories
and their passion for Ancient Greece.
Archaeology, history AND mythology.
It's all coming together. Yes. Yes. Of course.
(THEME MUSIC PLAYS)
Captions by Red Bee Media (c) SBS Australia 2025