± 1964
"FOOLS WALK IN, WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD..."

"I think the Reader might be interested in learning something about how and when I acquired an insaciable curiosity about Homeric Questions. The story unfolds more or less as follows—

In those days when the Mexican Government spouted its endless cornucopia of idotic dicta about "social justice" and "redistribution of wealth —specifically, "how the Government had the unlimited power to print wealth..."— I became interested in learning about the nature, or statues quo, of a society-at-large, of about 1,000 BC, strictly from the von Mises praxiological point of view.

I thought the Iliad might be a good source of information, and, besides, the academic world might yield some intersting information, if not specifically about the economics of the day, certainly, about the nature of social structures. Thus, it was important to locate the city of Ilios, also called Troy, and so better understand how trade routes —a popular thesis of the time— gave the Dardanelles control of wheat markets in the Agean brought from the Ukraine. Furthermore, an adequate understanding of these (theoretical) trade routes might yield an even clearer, sounder, notion about he logistics involved in a Trojan War, since, Achaeans gone far from their sources of production in Hellas will have required a measure of wealth —ie, savings— in order to assail the Trojans for ten years. Likewise, the Trojans, pent-up within their mighty fortres for ten years, also will have required a measure of wealth to sustain a siege.

I had not the slightest idea of what I was getting into, not unlike that beautiful romantic song "Fools walk in, where angels fear to tread...". As it was, in those days I was also reading Robert Graves, avidly, and his The White Goddess, an historical grammar of poetic myth, had made my life change dramatically: the world of business and banking in which I was reared was simply not for me. I suppose that those who reads this work draw from it what best suits them, but for me it was forging an incontrovertible loyalty with poetic truth. Poets unerstand what I mean, but those who only speak in prose will think I am prosaic. I have read this work many times since, and I still think it is not only a work of exquisite beauty, but also of transcendental literary importance. I decided I must study the Iliad directly, and not the scholars who said what Homer said (I had learned elementary Greek at Saint John's College, in Annapolis, where upon a time I had to read the wretchedly boring Iliad and Odyssey).

I discovered that Ilios (called Ilion only once), also called Troy, was a marvellous city: it was surrounded by a wall, with a wide door and a robust elm (or oak?) beside it, and further on, a rock, where lads were wont to court maidens; inside, on high, were the royal dwellings, but, at a certain place further down, there was a royal treasure chamber, and, more or less in front of it, a temple. I did not think it possible to interpret this city in architectural terms, like a Bronze Age fortress, nor as a Freudian "city". What is more, it did not seem unlikely that Ilios was, simply, a literary city, like the New Jerusalem mentioned in Revelation (21, 2), "...prepared as a bride adorned for her husband", or Virgil's Troy at Buthrotum (on the border of Albania and Epirus).

1965

Modern opinios about the location of Troy were set squarely on the archaeologial discovered made by Heinrich Schliemann at Hissarlik (Turkish "fortress"). Prior to this time it was generally believed Troy had been located further inland, at a place called Bally Dag, and, before that, someplace in the northwestern corner of Asia Minor, at the entrance to the Dardanelles. However, a location well to the north of Hellas, in the Dalmatian Coast, implied that Greeks had sent expeditionary forces into the north... indeed, that Virgil had failed to understand that Homer's Troy had been located still further north than the Troy he knew at Buthrotum, founded by Trojan stragglers, and thereby missed the unique opportunity of equating the Dorian Invasions that followed after the Fall of Troy as a Trojan vengeance on the Greeks.

There could be little doubt that I was loosing —or had already lost— contact with reality (to boot, enhanced by the Salinas Family's ostracism for holding to "bizarre" and "egotistical" social and economic principles. Still, towards the end of the year, while browsing the new arrival of books at Libreria Britannica, I found a book that caught my attention. The following quote stunned me—

Chapter 18. In the books of Step'annos there is to be found an account of the destruction of the city of Ilion and the building of Rome.
In the days of Abdan the Judge Ilion was taken as follows. This city was in the land of the Achaeans adjacent to the Peloponnese west of Macedonia in the land of Europe. At that time there was no king of Greece, the whole land being ruled by princes. Ilion was a great city and there was not its like on earth. In those days a certain young man from among the princes of the city went to the town of Thessalonica, which is in the east of Macedonia, in search of diversion, and was received by the nobles of the town. Falling in love with the daughter of a great man, he abducted her and brought her to the city of Ilion. When her parents sought for her, they realized that she had been carried off by the youth, and writing a letter to the people of Ilion, they received an arrogant reply. He [the father] read it aloud to his people, and thirsting for revenge, they summoned all the neighbouring peoples to help them. They drew up a numberless army and waged war with Ilion for fifteen years, laying the whole country waste...

1966

Aeger bonus, now there were two of us! Surely, what Mouses Dasxuranci had stated with clarity was no secret to the intelligentsia of the day, but why this fact conflicted with what had once been a popular knowledge about the site of Troy, I could not answer. Indeed, as I write these words some forty years after the fact, I am only now beginning to understand some of the factors that contributed to a generally jejune unerstanding of a would-be folksy Homeric world-view.

All this while my life was busy running a hotel, publishing books, raising a family, and keeping in touch with the FEE (Leonard E. Read's Foundation for Economi Education). I decided that one thing was the study Homer per se, and the other the study what the Graeco-Roman world of antiquity thought about Homer. As it was, the Iliad was Homer, the Odyssey, most likely, was —as Victor Berard had pointed out— a Phoenician composition with little relevance to the Iliad. Oh, how wrong I was!

[1] The History of the Caucasian Albanians de Movses Dasxuranci, trans. C. J. F. Dowsett, London: Oxford University Press, 1961.

Movses Dasxuranci or Kalankatuaci, about whom little is known, his History compiled ± 981-1001 AD, is the source of information on the Atluank', the classical Albanians.
Step'annos, Bishop of Siwnik', IIIrd Century, obtained in Rome (Constantinople) books useful in Christian proselytism which he took to Armenia.