Intellectual Legacy of Troy in the Middle Ages: Homer as a Basic Part of Byzantine Cultural Life

Although location of Troy remained unknown during the Middle Ages and the area played no key role in this period, the topic still attracts scholars of Medieval history in terms of Troy’s place in memories and cultural lives of the Medieval societies. Unlike many other Medieval societies, the Byzantines had the opportunity of a direct access to the works of Homer and they kept their touch with these texts uninterrupted until the 15th century. In the course of this relationship the Byzantines benefitted from these works in many fields of study from education to literature, they admired language and wisdom in them, they made copies of them, preserved them, studied them, cited them, interpreted them, they adapted them according to the needs of their time, and they transmitted them to the other nations. This study aims to provide meaningful panorama of this dynamic and multi-dimensional relationship of Byzantium with intellectual legacy of Troy with reference to the questions of how works of Homer were transmitted to Byzantium and how the Byzantines made use of them