What We'll Never Know

We cannot pull hard fact from epic poetry with the evidence we have. What we can say:

• A wealthy Bronze Age city stood at Hisarlik and was violently destroyed near the legend's date
• Hittite records name a troublesome place called Wilusa, which linguists tie to Homer's "Ilion"
• Those same records mention the Ahhiyawa, possibly the Greeks of the story

A war at Troy probably happened. Whether a wooden horse ever stood at its gates is a different question — and the tale has outlived every empire that told it.