[bukdez]

As a classics major (study of ancient greece and rome) i can say that in regards to myth or fact, the answer is both. Henrich Schliemann found troy in the late 1800's, he was a german "archaeologist", i put that in qoutes as at that time it was not realy the science it is today. Anyway, sclhiemann used the accounts in Homer's Iliad (story of trojan war) and Odyssey (story of Greek warrior Odysseus returning from trojan war) to locate the area he thought Troy would be. He was lucky and very smart and instead of finding the city of Troy, he found 7 of them. The cities were stacked on top of each other, built up over time. He estimated that the oldest (troy 7) or maybe troy 6 to be the famed city of troy. he dug alot up and found some amazing evidence. The one downfall is that scholars now think it was more like troy 4 or 5. Meaning that Schliemann did alot of damage to the site... basically he just dug down to where he wanted to excavate and desrtoyed much of the upper layers. so yes there was a Troy, and as others mention there is deffinate evidence of wars fought there. The Greeks always warred with people, especially those across the mediterrainian sea, where Troy is located... The reasons behind the story are likely myth, although there are scholars who think that the people of Crete worshipped a goddess in statue form named Helen, and that Trojans stole the statue (likey cuz it was gold) and due to alliances among greeks, many city-states sent armies/navies to Troy to sack it, return the statue, and split the wealth...

And i am dreading the release of the Alex the great films, although they have a chance to expose some one of the most interesting stories of the ancient world to our world, i fear they will make some lame inaccurate hollywood movie, like gladiator...

It looks like Troy may be accurate, and yeah Brad Pit is Achillies, hope he does a good job!