Schliemann of Troy

Standing proudly on a hill near Hisarlik, Turkey, in 1868, Heinrich Schliemann claimed that beneath his feet lay the ancient city of Troy, immortalized by Homer in the Iliad. To the consternation of contemporary scholars, Schliemann substantiated his claims and popularized the belief that the Homeric legends have some basis in fact. He unearthed "Priam's Treasure" at the site, bringing a glimmering but pivotal age into much sharper focus. By the time he excavated Mycenae in 1876 and delivered to the world the golden "Mask of Agamemnon," he had earned a huge reputation that went largely unchallenged for decades. However, in Schliemann of Troy, classicist David Traill investigates the archaeologist's own legends, and argues convincingly that Schliemann regularly distorted facts in both his personal and professional lives. Basing his biography on a thorough reexamination of the vast collection of Schliemann papers in Athens and including many previously unpublished excerpts from his letters and diaries, Traill demonstrates that his subject was a remarkably unscrupulous and untruthful individual. At once a gripping portrait of a duplicitous man and a reinterpretation of some of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time, Schliemann of Troy shakes the dust off of the Schliemann corpus and rewrites one of history's most exciting chapters.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.