Submitted by Lucie Goulet on Tue, 01/12/2010 - 13:19
The life of Heinrich Schliemann is as legendary as the city he claimed to have discovered. A quintessential 19th century adventurer and amateur archaeologist, his obsession for Troy took him around the world and to Turkey and Greece. Fascinated by Homer’s epic narration, Schliemann stopped at nothing to discover the historical sites named by the poet. The veracity of his findings is however often questioned. Heinrich Schliemann: fanatic obsessed by his boyhood dreams or successful antiquarian?
A Boyhood Dream
Born in 1822 to a poor Protestant minister father and an unpublished literary critic mother who died when he was nine, Schliemann had a rag to riches life. Like many children of his time, he had to leave school at 14 to take up a job, selling herring and candles.
Ithaca, a small island in the Ionian Sea, had a troubled history, including periods of occupation by the Romans, the Ottomans and the French. It was first occupied during Neolithic times, but was at its height during the Myceneaan period (1500–1100 BC), when it was the capital of Cephalonia.
Its fame however comes from the central role it plays in Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey as Ulysses’ home and final aim of his travels.
However, the current landscape does not match Homer’s description. The Odyssey says it is “low-lying”, far West and surrounded by the islands of Doulichion and Same, whereas the island is mountainous and more Eastern than other Ionian Sea islands, and some historians doubt it really ever was Ulysses’ home.
