The Trojan War: From Aulis to Ithaca

In the Iliad's catalogue of ships, the contingent from "the strong city of Mycenae" sails under King Agamemnon, son of Atreus, and his force is "far both finest and most numerous". Archaeology gives the city a real face: the Lion Gate, built around 1250 BC, with two lionesses carved in relief above its lintel. That is the age of the Mycenaean kings, not a proof of Agamemnon himself. The gate and citadel are a UNESCO World Heritage site, and you can still walk in through it.

Visitor guidance: A UNESCO World Heritage site; the Lion Gate is the main entrance to the citadel.

The Iliad remembers Aulis as the place where the Greek ships were held up on the way to make war on Priam and the Trojans. A speaker in the Iliad recalls how a serpent with blood-red stains slid from the altar into a plane-tree, and the seer Calchas read the omen: nine years of fighting, and in the tenth the town would fall. Homer calls it "rocky Aulis"; ancient Aulis lay on the Euripus Strait opposite Euboea, near modern Mikro Vathy.

Location precision: The Iliad names Aulis only in passing; the pin marks modern Mikro Vathy, where the ancient port is placed, not a surviving monument.

Legend: the Greeks besiege Priam's city for ten years. Archaeology: Hittite records name a Late Bronze Age city, Wilusa, now generally identified with the hill of Hisarlik. Troy VI, built about 1750 BC, was destroyed about 1300 BC, and Troy VIIa shows signs of violent destruction too; both are candidates, and neither proves the epic. Korfmann's team also found a lower town with an anti-chariot ditch and a wooden palisade.

Location precision: Hisarlik is generally accepted as the site of Troy, but which layer, if any, lies behind the legend is disputed.

The Iliad has the Achaean tribes pour from ships and tents onto the plain of the Scamander, where the ground rang "as brass under the feet of men and horses". Near Troy two streams, Simois and Scamander, meet. The Scamander is the modern Karamenderes, which flows west from Mount Ida into the Aegean near the Troy Historical National Park; the Iliad's battles are placed in its lower course.

Location precision: The epic's battlefield is only a stretch of the lower river valley; the pin marks the Karamenderes near its mouth.

After the war the Odyssey sends Telemachus to Pylos, "the city of Neleus", where the people are sacrificing black bulls to Neptune on the shore, in nine guilds of five hundred men each. The ruined Mycenaean palace at Epano Englianos is traditionally identified with the home of Nestor, though the identification is tradition, not proof. A fire destroyed the palace around 1250 BC.

Location precision: The palace is only traditionally identified with Nestor's "sandy Pylos"; the epic's own Pylos cannot be located.

Visitor guidance: The site reopened in 2016 under a modern roof with raised walkways.

In the Iliad Odysseus (Ulysses) leads the Cephallenians, who hold Ithaca, with twelve ships. The Odyssey calls it "a rugged isle, but a good nurse of young men". Modern Ithaca is generally identified with Homer's island, and Strabo already thought so, yet the description is argued over: Wilhelm Dörpfeld proposed Lefkada instead. The pin marks the island, not any palace.

Location precision: Ancient and modern scholars dispute whether Homer's Ithaca is the modern island; the pin marks its centre.