Volume 9, Number 2 · August 3, 1967
Digging the Trojans
By M.I. Finley
The Palace of Nestor at Pylos in Western Messenia: Vol. I, The Buildings and Their Contents
by Carl W. Blegen, by Marion Rawson
Princeton, Part 1, 470 (text) Part 2, 484 illustrations pp., $40.00
Mycenae and the Mycenaean Age
by George E. Mylonas
Princeton, 251 pp., $18.50
Defending his acceptance of the legendary history of Britain, John Milton wrote, 'Yet those old and inborn kings, never to have been real persons, or done in their lives at least some part of what so long hath been remembered, cannot be thought without too strict incredulity.' No historian of Britain takes such an argument seriously today, nor does anyone solemnly repeat that English history began with Brute (or Brutus) the Trojan, or Roman history with another Trojan, Aeneas. But suggest, as I and others have done, that on present evidence it is an open question whether the legendary history of Bronze Age Greece isn't also unhistorical, that as individuals even Agamemnon and Nestor may be as fictitious as Brute and Aeneas, and down come torrents of scorn, anger, and sometimes pity. Study the work of several generations of archaeologists, is the crushing reply, and you will find all the proof a reasonable man could ask for.
Review, 2985 words
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