The Trojan War and Ancient Language To Ithaca.

Homeric mythological island Ithaca is a landscape of adventure, heroism, and distant return, and a hub of ancient myth and ancient language. That passage is one of belonging to just one such mythology of the myth of the Trojan War, retold since millennia ago and conditioning historic study and imagination and culture and defining it in its aftermath as well. What if, then, the tradition of Troy does not so much end with the ancient sources and oral tradition but go on somehow up onto the shores of Ithaca itself?

The Trojan War, if more mythical than any of the Greek mythic wars, has been at least known to such works as Homer's Iliad for millennia. It was fought between Troy and a number of the city-states of the Greeks, provoked to conflict by Paris's abduction of Troy's princess, Helen. It was the Greeks who besieged Troy for ten years before they were able at last to employ the legendary ruse of the Trojan Horse to slip inside and win at last. A story of conquests and loves, of honor and deceit, of the gods' moods and courage, a Greek world of virtues and virtues in little.

And so what then is the Trojan War but Ithaca? Homer's Odyssey's native island of Odysseus, Ithaca, is the titular center of the Trojan War and its orbit of war. Odysseus embarks on a quest of dubious origin to his island home following the sack of Troy, confronted at every turn by incredulously diverse sets of ne'er-do-wells and monsters. No less psychological than emotional and physical, it is a battle for him as he contends the price of war, heroism, and human pride with the intent and will of the gods and fate.

Ithaca has also been the focal point of academic interest in the Trojan War with recent findings of linguistic traces and evidence that bring one to the island as being the linchpin for part of the languages of war. Mycenaean Greek dialect is also being studied because they would be the soldiers of the Trojan War and what happened to their languages to eventually create the following Greek dialects. Other writers are not afraid to say that Ithaca artifacts and inscriptions explain such earlier Mycenaean Greek constructions and write more about the effect of the war on the island's language. Least surprisingly of the finds has been discovering clay tablets and inscriptions prior to classical Greek alphabet in otherwise unexploited Greek of post-classical dialects.

The tablets, discovered among the ruins of a palace on the Greek island of Ithaca, were previously dated to 1450-1200 BCE as having been made by the Mycenaean civilization. This is the time, of course, when the Trojan War was being waged, firmly placing Ithaca on a war rhetoric and timeline. The books, read as they are, do have some quite fascinating social castes, rituals, even everyday strife. Most importantly, the meaning of the find cannot be phrased. The Trojan War in myth does have historical roots. By revealing this Mycenaean cultural and linguistic gem in these inscriptions, the historians can make a more enlightening explanatory statement regarding the voids left in history and legend and an educated guess regarding how the lifestyle most probably was among any given sub-group of Mycenaeans during the years the war was being waged.

Ithaca, the legendary home of Odysseus, is where myth and history intersect today, a material link between Homer's master poems and historical civilizations that influenced them. Free-standing and self-sufficient witness of the word's, the island itself is a treasure-house of archaeological wisdom. From yesteryear's palaces to yesterday's shattered temples, Ithaca is a piece of history that brings the Trojan War alive in this new age and time. To the visitor who somehow finds himself on the island, one can sail or chart his course of Odysseus's journey that inspired one of the most marvelous stories in the world. In a sense, the Trojan War and the lost Mycenaean language arrived on Ithaca, both literally and figuratively. The island, held in abeyance in Homer's work, is now a line between history and legend, an introduction to modern-day readers from a world that held one of the West's most glorious myths. In recovering lost books of bygone days or reclaiming excavations, Ithaca is a place where then and now converge, reintroducing the legend of the Trojan War and forgotten words.