Troia

(Τροία). The name of the city of Troy or Ilium; also applied to the country. The mythical account of the kingdom of Troy is briefly as follows. Teucer, the first king, had a daughter who married Dardanus, the chieftain of the country northeast of the Troad (Dardania). Dardanus had two sons, Ilus and Ericthonius, and the latter was the father of Tros, from whom the country and people derived the names of Troas and Troes. Tros was the father of Ilus, who founded the city, which was called after him Ilium, and also, after his father, Troia. The next king was Laomedon, and after him Priam. (See Priamus.) In his reign the city was taken and destroyed by the confederated Greeks, after a ten years' siege. (For details see Achilles; Aeneas; Agamemnon; Aiax; Hector; Helena; Neoptolemus; Odysseus; Paris; and especially Trojan War.) As to the historical facts which may be regarded as established, there is evidence of a considerable city having been sacked and burned at a period which archaeologists put not later than the twelfth century B.C. That this invasion may have been an enterprise of the Achaeans at that time is neither impossible nor unlikely. If the interpretation of recent Egyptian discoveries is right which makes Achaeans appear as assailants of Egypt in the reign of Rameses III., it would follow that the Achaeans of the twelfth or thirteenth century had power and spirit enough for such an enterprise; but in any case the history of Tiryns and Mycenae, as attested by their ruins, is evidence to the existence of their power at that time. There is therefore no reason why the traditions upon which the Iliad is based should not be regarded as true in their main outlines. It is probable enough that to avenge an act of piracy (which is a common and simple explanation of the rape of Helen) the Greeks of the “Achaean” period besieged and sacked Troy and thence returned to hold their own possessions undisturbed until the Dorian invasion. That there was no Greek settlement upon the site of Troy until a much later period is deduced from the remains of towns of a low state of civilization and of small importance which have been discovered above the ruins of the second city. On the literary use made of the legend of the Trojan War, see Cyclic Poets; Homerus; Vergilius.

The site of a large Roman town on the Troia peninsula on the left bank of the Sado river. It was settled at least by the 1st c. A.D. Ptolemy (2.5) mentions a city of Caetobrix S of Tejo, and the Antonine Itinerary cites a Catobriga in the same region. Some house facades, well aligned, were visible on the surface during the 19th c. in a region of Troia known as Rua da Princesa. At least two of these houses had two stories, and there were mosaics on the floors of the upper rooms facing on the main road. In one of the houses was found a hoard of bronze coins of the late Empire. A bath was also excavated; tanks for preparing garum were found along the river; and at the end of the 19th c. an Early Christian church was discovered and a round structure, perhaps a baptistery. One of the cemeteries of the city, Aldeira, contained over a hundred graves with rich grave goods.

The finds are in the National Museum of Archaeology in Lisbon.

There is some speculation that the site of Caetobriga lies in Setúbal, 32 km SE of Lisbon. The name seems to derive from Caetobriga. In the area occupied by the modern city the S. Sebastião hill could correspond to ancient Caetobriga. The Roman finds in Setúbal, although numerous, do not prove, however, that there was anything more than a small village there, like the many others that existed on the right bank of the mouth of the Sado.

Marques da Costa, “Estudos sobre algumas estacões da época luso-romana nos arredores de Setúbal,” O Archeólogo Português 29 (1930-31) 2-31I; F. Castelo-Branco, “Aspectos e problemas arqueológicos de Troia de Setúbal,” Occidente 65 (1963) 21f; F. de Almeida & J. L. Matos, “Frescos da ‘capela visigótica’ de Troia, Setúbal,” Actas do II Congresso Nacional de Arqueológia, Coimbra (1971) 529-33I.