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Chryse

Plausible9/12MediumThe TroadHomeric name(s): Χρύση

Where the Iliad starts. A priest of Apollo comes from Chryse to ransom his daughter, Agamemnon refuses, and the god's plague sets the whole poem in motion.

Chryse is a coastal town with a temple of Apollo, close enough to the Achaean camp for a ship to return the girl and be back quickly. The poem's opening quarrel is a dispute over her, and the first hundred lines are effectively a piece of local geography.

Ancient geographers argued about the exact site and modern survey has not settled it. What is not in doubt is the region: the southern Troad, the same coast Achilles raids for plunder throughout the war.

Identifications proposed

  • The southern Troad coast

    Proposed by: Strabo, Geography 13.1

    Plausible9/12Medium

    Strabo already discussed where Chryse stood and reported more than one candidate, all on this coast within a day's sail of the Achaean camp — which is what the poem requires. No excavated site has been tied to the name.

    39.5500, 26.6000· Area

    • Primary textStrabo, Geography 13.1
    • ArchaeologyArchaeological survey of the southern Troad and the Adramyttian gulf, where the coastal sites of the Iliad's raids are sought
    • Primary textHomer, Iliad (trans. A. T. Murray, Loeb, 1924)
    Confidence
    9/12 · Medium confidence
    Textual
    3
    Archaeological
    1
    Scholarly
    2
    Geographic
    3

Why this class

Plausible: the region is secure and the specific site is not, which is the normal state of the Iliad's minor Troad towns.

What is disputed

Which of the candidate coastal sites is Chryse, and whether the raids the poem attributes to Achilles reflect a real pattern of coastal warfare in the Late Bronze Age.

Sources

  • Primary textHomer, Iliad (trans. A. T. Murray, Loeb, 1924)
  • Primary textStrabo, Geography 13.1
  • ArchaeologyArchaeological survey of the southern Troad and the Adramyttian gulf, where the coastal sites of the Iliad's raids are sought