Troas

• f, Τρωάς, Trojan, N., O.— As subst, a Trojan woman, V., O.—The country around Troy, Troad, N.

TROAS (Τρωάς, Τροίη, Τροία, or Ἰλιὰς γῆ), the territory ruled over by the ancient kings of Troy or Ilium, which retained its ancient and venerable name even at a time when the kingdom to which it had originally belonged had long ceased to exist. Homer himself nowhere describes, the extent of Troas or its frontiers, and even leaves us in the dark, as to how far the neighbouring allies of the Trojans, such as the Dardanians, who were governed by princes of their own, of the family of Priam, were true allies or subjects of the king of Ilium. In later times, Troas was a part of Mysia, comprising the coast district on the Aegean from Cape Lectum to the neighbourhood of Dardanus and Abydus on the Hellespont; while inland it extended about 8 geographical miles, that is, as far as Mount Ida, so as to embrace the south coast of Mysia opposite the island of Lesbos, together with the towns of Assus and Antandrus. (Hom. Il. 24.544; Hdt. 7.42.) Strabo, from his well-known inclination to magnify the empire of Troy, describes it as extending from the Aesepus to the Caicus, and his view is adopted by the Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius (1.1115). In its proper and more limited sense, however, Troas was an undulating plain, traversed by the terminal branches of Ida running out in a north-western direction, and by the small rivers SATNIOIS, SCAMANDER, SIMOIS, and THYMBRIUS This plain gradually rises towards Mount Ida, and contained, at least in later times, several flourishing towns. In the Iliad we hear indeed of several towns, and Achilles boasts (Il. 9.328) of having destroyed eleven in the territory of Troy; but they can at best only have been very small places, perhaps only open villages. That Ilium itself must have been far superior in strength and population is evident from the whole course of events; it was protected by strong walls, and had its acropolis. [ILIUM]

The inhabitants of Troas, called Troes (Τρῶες), and by Roman prose-writers Trojani or Teucri, were in all probability a Pelasgian race, and seem to have consisted of two branches, one of which, the Teucri, had emigrated from Thrace, and become amalgamated with the Phrygian or native population of the country. Hence the Trojans are sometimes called Teucri and sometimes Phryges. (Hdt. 5.122, 7.43; Strab. 1. p. 62, 13. p. 604; Verg. A. 1.38, 248, 2.252, 571, &c.) The poet of the Iliad in several points treats, the Trojans as inferior in civilisation to his own countrymen; but it is impossible to say whether in such cases he describes the real state of things, or whether ther he does so only from a natural partiality for his own countrymen.

According to the common legend, the kingdom of Troy was overturned at the capture and burning Ilium in B.C. 1184; but it is attested on pretty good authority that a Trojan state survived the catastrophe of its chief city, and that the kingdom was finally destroyed by an invasion of Phrygians who crossed over from Europe into Asia. (Xanthus, ap. Strab. 14. p. 680, 12. p. 572.) This fact is indirectly confimed by the testimony of Homer himself, who makes Poseidon predict that the posterity of Aeneas should long continue to reign over the Trojans, after the race of Priam should be extinct.

(Τρωάς, sc. χώρα). Now Chan; the territory of Ilium or Troy, forming the northwestern part of Mysia. It was bounded on the west by the Aegaean Sea, from the Promontorium Lectum to the Promontorium Sigeum at the entrance of the Hellespont; on the northwest by the Hellespont, as far as the river Rhodius, below Abydus; on the northeast and east by the mountains which border the valley of the Rhodius, and extend from its sources southwards to the main ridge of Mount Ida, and on the south by the northern coast of the Gulf of Adramyttium along the southern foot of Ida; but on the northeast and east the boundary is sometimes extended so far as to include the whole coast of the Hellespont and part of the Propontis, and the country as far as the river Granicus, thus embracing the district of Dardania, and somewhat more. Strabo extends the boundary still further east, to the river Aesopus, and also south to the Caïcus; but this clearly results from his including in the territory of Troy that of her neighbouring allies (Il. ix. 321, xxiv. 544; Herod.vii. 42; Strab. pp. 581-616). The Troad is for the most part mountainous, being intersected by Mount Ida and its branches: the largest plain is that in which Troy stood. The chief rivers were the Satnoïs on the south, the Rhodius on the north, and the Scamander (Mendere) with its affluent the Simoïs (Dombrek) in the centre.

• Paus. 5.8.11