The expansion of the Neo-Assyrian empire and its perpheries: military, political and ideological resistance

This article is devoted to the study of the impact of the Assyrian imperial expansion in the whole Near East on the Greek world and culture during the VIIIth cent. BC. The article is a commentary upon the thesis put forward by the Austrian writer Raoul Schrott who suggested that Homer was an Assyrian scribe and that Troia is to be located in south-eastern Anatolia (Cilicia) rather than in Hissarlik (extreme western Anatolia). While Schrott's main thesis is rejected due to the presence of many linguistic and historical errors, it is suggested that the main basic concept underlying the general structure of the Iliad is an intellectual and ideological reaction to the Assyrian imperial expansion. The basic story of the poem, the fragmentation and the weakening of the Greeks for Achille's wrath and the consequent defeats they suffered by the Trojans, would be an ideological literary metaphor suggesting that only a strict union between Greeks may stop impending dangers coming from external attacks, which may be identified in the aggressive policy of the Assyrian kings in Eastern Anatolia where Greeks were active since a long time and even in Central Anatolia against the Phrygian and Lydian empires.