Nobody reading Homer’s Iliad or Virgil’s Aeneid has ever failed to wonder ‘was this real?’ and ‘where was Troy? ’ . Homer’s Troy lay across the Aegean from Greece, whence the angry Greeks sailed to avenge the abduction of Helen. Since Homer’s time, Troy was known to have been near, if not below, the Roman city of Ilium, in the north-western tip of Anatolia ( now Turkey ) , immediately south of the mouth of the Dardanelles. In his poem Civil War , Lucan describes Julius Caesar visiting Ilium , fascinated by the myths of Aeneas, who he believed to be his ancestor. Every rock had some myth attached to it. Once, says Lucan, Caesar walked into some tall grass
