Did the Classical Greeks have any conception of when the Iliad happened?
According to Claude the Classical Greeks not only believed in the historicity of the Iliad—they also had surprisingly accurate dating!
The ancient Greeks generally did believe the Iliad described real historical events, though their understanding of it was more nuanced than simply accepting every detail as literal fact.
Belief in Historical Reality
Most classical Greeks, including prominent historians and philosophers, treated the Trojan War as a genuine historical event. Herodotus, often called the “father of history,” accepted the war’s basic historicity while noting some details might be embellished. Thucydides acknowledged it as real but suggested Homer exaggerated its scale and importance. Even skeptical thinkers rarely questioned whether Troy existed or whether some great conflict had occurred there.
The Greeks saw the Iliad as part of their cultural heritage and genealogical history. Many aristocratic families traced their lineages back to Homeric heroes, and various city-states claimed connections to characters from the epic. This wasn’t just literary appreciation—it was ancestral history that helped legitimize political claims and cultural identity.
Conceptions of Timing
The Greeks developed surprisingly specific chronologies for when they believed the Trojan War occurred. The most widely accepted dating placed it in what we would call the late Bronze Age:
Eratosthenes (3rd century BCE) dated the fall of Troy to 1184 BCE
Apollodorus placed it around 1184-1174 BCE
Other chronographers generally agreed on dates in the late 12th century BCE
These dates weren’t arbitrary guesses. Greek scholars used genealogical calculations, counting generations backward from known historical figures and events. They also cross-referenced different mythological and semi-historical traditions to create coherent timelines.
The Greeks distinguished between the “heroic age” (when the Trojan War occurred) and their own classical period, understanding that considerable time had passed. They saw this earlier era as one when gods more directly intervened in human affairs and when individual heroes possessed greater strength and courage than contemporary people.
Alexander: this lines up very well with current day estimation of historicity of Troy—where the Iliad is a orally transmitted epic poetry referring to some garbling of real events, places and names about a Hittite(-allied) city state Wilusa in West Anatolia in the late bronze age around 1200 BC.
btw: Eratothenes is quite an impressive fellow [ Wikipedia]: Eratosthenes of Cyrene (/ɛrəˈtɒsθəniːz/; Ancient Greek: Ἐρατοσθένης [eratostʰénɛːs]; c. 276 BC – c. 195/194 BC) was an Ancient Greek polymath: a mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist. He was a man of learning, becoming the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria.
He is best known for being the first person known to calculate the Earth’s circumference, which he did by using the extensive survey results he could access in his role at the Library. His calculation was remarkably accurate (his error margin turned out to be less than 1%).[2][3] He was the first to calculate Earth’s axial tilt, which similarly proved to have remarkable accuracy.[4][5] He created the first global projection of the world, incorporating parallels and meridians based on the available geographic knowledge of his era.[4]
Eratosthenes was the founder of scientific chronology;[6] he used Egyptian and Persian records to estimate the dates of the main events of the Trojan War, dating the sack of Troy to 1183 BC. In number theory, he introduced the sieve of Eratosthenes, an efficient method of identifying prime numbers and composite numbers.
Did the Classical Greeks have any conception of when the Iliad happened?
According to Claude the Classical Greeks not only believed in the historicity of the Iliad—they also had surprisingly accurate dating!
How did you check Claude’s claims here?
I spotcheked the first claim about eratosthenes.
The second part on eratothenes is directly from wikipedia.