РУАЭСТ (RUAEST)
MEMORY OR FORGETFULNESS? THE TROJAN WAR BETWEEN MYTH AND HISTORY
In the early Archaic period, the epic tradition of the Trojan War rose to Panhellenic circulation. It acquired this status by marginalizing the other traditions commemorating the collapse of Mycenaean Greece and offering a new and generally agreed upon version of this historical cataclysm. In an act of self-conscious cultural strategy whose objective was the shaping of collective memory, the Trojan tradition introduced a myth about the destruction of the Race of Heroes in a war that took place on the other side of the Aegean and in which all the population groups presented in historical Greece took part. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that at least some parts of what we find in Homer must go back to earlier periods, including the Late Bronze Age. Memory and forgetfulness exist in Homer side-by-side, keeping an uneasy balance.