ABSTRACT
I once attended a conference on Troy at which some forty papers were presented, many of them addressing one or more of three fundamental questions: Was there an actual poet called Homer? Did Troy exist? Was there really a Trojan War? The line-up of speakers constituted a kind of Who’s Who of Homeric scholarship and Bronze Age archaeology. A number of new theories and discoveries were presented, and there was much stimulating discussion. But by the end of it all, most participants admitted that they were even further from providing answers to the questions posed than they had been before the conference began.
