^{page 1 note 1} The main argument of this paper was first presented, naturally in very different form, on the Third Programme of the BBC on October 24, 1963 and then published in the Listener on November 7th.

^{page 1 note 2} I hope no one will remind me of the single bronze arrowhead found in Street 710 (Troy iv (1958) 12, 51) or of the sunken pithoi. Even if one accepts Blegen's not wholly convincing deduction (Troy and the Trojans 156) that the pithoi show ‘that there was an emergency of some kind’, they reveal nothing about the source of the danger.

^{page 2 note 3} For all this, see LeGentil, P., La Chanson de Roland (Paris, 1955) chs. i–iii.Google Scholar The Roland tradition is also used, I think in the wrong way, by Nylander, C., ‘The Fall of Troy’, Antiquity xxxvii (1963) 6–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar, to support his argument that ‘Homeric Troy’ is Troy VI.

^{page 3 note 4} It does not matter for my purposes which school of Nibelungenlied scholarship one prefers; see either Heusler, A., Nibelungensage und Nibelungenlied (5 ed., Darmstadt, 1955)Google Scholar, or Panzer, F., Das Nibelungenlied (Stuttgart, 1955), esp. chs. vii–viii.Google Scholar It is not without malice aforethought that I quote the latter's final sentence (p. 285) dismissing all efforts to find historical roots for Siegfried and his family: ‘Die Verselbigungen von Personen und Vorgängen des Epos mit geschichtlichen waren doch nirgends ohne weitgehende Umdeutungen, ohne Gewaltsamkeit und inneren Krampf durchzuführen and blieben damit unbefriedigend.’

^{page 3 note 5} See Braun, M., Das serbokroatische Heldenlied (Göttingen, 1961) 100–2Google Scholar; Subotić, D., Yugoslav Popular Ballads (Cambridge, 1932) ch. ii.Google Scholar Subotić writes (p. 87): ‘It remains a mystery why the Yugoslav heroic poetry should have made him [Marko] out to be the greatest national hero, while converting Vuk Branković into a traitor.’.

^{page 4 note 6} Blegen, et al., Troy iv 10.Google Scholar

^{page 4 note 7} Jacoby, F., Atthis (Oxford, 1949) 201.Google Scholar

^{page 4 note 8} See Mertens, P., ‘Les Peuples de la Mer’, Chr. d'Eg. xxxv (1960) 65–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In what follows I shall cite neither sources nor modern literature as I do not enter into any controversial matters except on the identification with the Achaeans of the Akiyawasa or Akawash of the Merneptah stele, on which see Page, op. cit., 21 n. 1.

^{page 5 note 9} Neither this suggestion nor some of the arguments which follow are new; see, e.g., briefly Heubeck, A. in Gnomon xxxiii (1961) 115Google Scholar; Nylander, op. cit. (who unnecessarily complicates matters by an unimpressive dating argument, among other things); Starr, C. G., The Origins of Greek Civilisation (London, 1962) 66 n. 3.Google Scholar

^{page 5 note 10} See Otten, H., ‘Neue Quellen zum Ausklang des Hethitischen Reiches’, Mitt. d. Deutschen Or.-Gesellsch. zu Berlin xciv (1963) 1–23Google Scholar; cf. briefly Schaeffer, C. F. A., Ugaritica iv (1962) 39–41.Google Scholar

^{page 5 note 11} The need to fit the Trojan War and the events of mainland Greece into a general eastern Medi terranean context is persistently overlooked. Thus, MrsVermeule, , in her review in Gnomon xxxv (1963) 495–9Google Scholar, rightly criticizes the new CAH chapter (ii ch. 36), ‘The End of Mycenaean Civilization and the Dark Age’, by V. R. d'A. Desborough and N. G. L. Hammond, because neither author ‘really grapples with the question of their relation to contemporary destructions in the east’. Her own article, ‘The Fall of the Mycenaean Empire’, Archaeology xiii (1960) 66–75, makes a serious attempt to do so and comes to very different conclusions from mine on the central question, largely, I believe, because she does not abandon the Greek tradition, even to such pseudo-problems as trying to reconcile the archaeology with the tradition of ‘the mutual exhaustion of the Trojan War’. On this general question see Starr, op. cit., 66–8. Desborough, 's The Last Mycenaeans and their Successors (Oxford, 1964)Google Scholar appeared just as this article was going to press. It seems to contribute nothing new to this particular discussion. His conclusion that the Trojan War took place between 1250 and 1230 is based not on any archaeological evidence for these two decades but on the argument that, if the tradition is to be preserved, no other dates are compatible with the archaeology (pp. 220 f., 249).

^{page 6 note 12} Op. Cit., 21.

^{page 6 note 13} Blegen, , Troy and the Trojans 165–6Google Scholar and ch. viii generally.

^{page 6 note 14} Op. cit., 5–6.

^{page 7 note 15} Op. cit., 68.

^{page 7 note 16} W. C. Hayes et al., ‘Chronology’, rev. CAH i ch. 6 (1962) 67–8 (Rowton), 75–6 (Stubbings); cf. Desborough, op. cit., 12.

^{page 7 note 17} Blegen is acutely aware of this difficulty and he tries (Troy and the Trojans 163–4) to get round it by dating the destruction of Troy VIIa midway in ‘the ceramic phase IIIB’ (about 1260), the destruction of the mainland centres ‘toward, or at the end of’, the phase (by or about 1200). If that distinction is untenable, as other experts on the pottery say, then the whole structure of his chronological argument falls.

^{page 7 note 18} I do not propose to waste time on other, fanciful, possibilities, such as the existence and preservation of a written Order of Battle; see Page's review of Jachmann, , Der homerische Schiffskatalog und die Ilias, in CR, n.s. x (1960) 105–8.Google Scholar

^{page 8 note 19} This point has been made in a review by Parry, A. and Samuel, A. in CJ lvi (1960) 85.Google Scholar

^{page 8 note 20} The basic discussion is now Kirk, G. S., The Songs of Homer (Cambridge, 1962) chs. vi–vii.Google Scholar

^{page 8 note 21} See SirBowra, Maurice, The Meaning of a Heroic Age (Earl Grey Memorial Lecture, Newcastle, 1957).Google Scholar

^{page 8 note 22} It is enough to cite the classic article of Lowie, R. H., ‘Oral Tradition and History’, reprinted in his Selected Papers in Anthropology (Berkeley, 1960) 202–10.Google Scholar

^{page 9 note 23} I do not propose to re-enter that controversy here (for the latest critical survey of the literature, see Vidal-Naquet, P. in Annales xviii (1963) 703–19)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, or to repeat the reasons for my view that one may legitimately reject the narrative as fiction but not the social and cultural institutions.

^{page 12 note 1} See Finley's n. 9 for references.

^{page 12 note 2} Nilsson, M. P., Homer and Mycenae (London, 1933) 185.Google Scholar

^{page 12 note 3} Cf. e.g., Bowra, C. M., Heroic Poetry (London, 1952) 43–5Google Scholar; H. M., and Chadwick, N. K., The Growth of Literature (Cambridge, 1932) i 482–4.Google Scholar

^{page 13 note 4} Cf. Malone, K., Anglistica xiii (Copenhagen, 1962) 77–9Google Scholar; Bowra, op. cit., 415 and 435 f.

^{page 14 note 5} Cf. Bowra, op. cit., 371.

^{page 16 note 6} The Songs of Homer (Cambridge, 1962) ch. 6.

^{page 18 note 1} Mr Finley writes: ‘The Greek tradition does not … provide a proper historical context and a motivation for the … destruction of Troy’; bad feeling between two powerful kingdoms is not, historically, an unprecedented motive for war. As for historical context, archaeology and the Hittite documents have filled the gap more than adequately. Mr Finley writes also: ‘Page has conjectured a political struggle between Ahhijawa and Assuwa. I prefer the hypothesis that Achaeans joined a marauding force of northerners.’ This is not so simple a preference as it sounds: my conjecture is based on documents which show Ahhijawans and Assuwans active in contiguous territories in the same period, both warfaring peoples; Mr Finley's hypothesis postulates a marauding force of northerners for whom, at this time and in this area, there is no evidence whatsoever.

^{page 19 note 2} A hypothesis is not necessarily the more probable for being ‘economical’; imagine how misleading it would be to apply the principle of ‘the most economical hypothesis’ to the northern (or eastern) frontiers of the Roman Empire at sundry periods; or to Central Europe during the wars of Frederick the Great; or to the European occupation of Northern America.