I’ve been curious about this for a long time, but recently began thinking about it more after watching the movie “Troy.”
Was the Trojan War an actual event? Or is it fictional? I know that in the Iliad, Homer seems to describe the events of the war and the famous figures that took part in it, but were those events and people real, or were they simply invented as part of the Greek mythos?
Also, if the Trojan War did actually happen, how accurate are the works of fiction that portray it? Like, obviously there were no gods involved and there were no invincible Greek warriors like Achilles, but was Achilles based on a real soldier? Did the Greeks actually infiltrate Troy by hiding inside a giant wooden horse (probably not, right)?
Thanks a lot! This is a really cool community and I look forward to hearing back.
First, be aware there's a substantial section of the FAQ devoted to this topic.
There's about as much reason to regard the Trojan War as historical as any other legendary war, like the war of the Seven against Thebes, or Heracles' wars. That is, not very much.
In the Archaic period (say, 700-500 BCE) the Trojan War had a popularity similar to the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece. In epic poetry it had a status comparable to the war between the gods and the Titans. I'd say these are not very encouraging.
The modern reputation of the Trojan War is often (and wrongly) tied to how Schliemann framed his excavations at Ilium in the 1870s. You didn't put it this way in your question, but it's such a common misconception that I'd better lay it to rest first. The perception (which Schliemann encouraged) was that he 'discovered' Troy, he 'demonstrated' it was a real city, he 'proved' the reality behind the legend. In reality he did none of these things. The reality of the city had never been in doubt. Ilium was a big, bustling city from the 700s BCE to 500 CE, and a smaller town for many centuries after that too, and no one had ever doubted that.
What Schliemann really proved was that there was no basis to an argument about the location of pre-classical Ilium. This argument had been prompted by the ancient geographical writer Strabo, who thought that 'ancient' Ilium had been in a separate location from contemporary Ilium. The idea was revived in the 1790s, and it had already been widely rejected since the 1820s. Schliemann's success, such as it was, was in debunking that argument. By finding a Bronze Age city underneath the classical one, he showed that it hadn't moved around. I wrote a piece on this recently with more details. (Below I recycle some material from part 2, which should be online Monday or Tuesday.)
If you have already managed to set aside Schliemann's 'discovery', great! Otherwise, please do so -- it has literally no bearing on the question. So, there are three ways I'd choose to address the actual question. Be advised: they're all extremely sceptical.
(1) From the point of view of classical Greeks, the Trojan War is way way further in the past than many other legendary events, of which some were real, others extremely doubtful, others outright fictional: the First Sacred War (supposedly early 500s BCE), the founding of Cyrene (631 BCE) the Lelantine War (ca. 700), the Boeotian migration, the Ionian migration, the Achaean migration, and the Dorian invasion. Of these, Cyrene is the only one where we can be really confident that it actually happened (and that's mainly only because we know Cyrene did exist, and Greeks must have got there somehow). I suspect the Lelantine War was a real thing too, but it isn't proveable. Taking the Trojan War as real means putting it on a firmer footing than all the others. And that isn't justifiable.
(2) The stories, places, and society depicted in Homer show a great range in terms of how distant in the past they are. Some story-types, and possibly one or two poetic formulae, may go back as far as Proto-Indo-European, or ca. 4000 BCE: phrases like '(my) fame (will be) unfading', certain metrical features, folktales like the Cyclops story. But most cultural and material elements of Homeric society are basically contemporary, that is, early 600s BCE, altered by lots of false archaism to give them an artificial flavour of oldness. The supposed antiquity of the oral tradition that gave rise to the Homeric epics is partly an illusion; where it is real, it doesn't have much to do with the war itself. The age of the Homeric formulaic system (and its age has been challenged!) does not in any way ensure that the content is old. Even if it did, we'd face the same question over the war of the gods and the Titans, and I hope everyone would agree that that wasn't real.
(3) The circumstances in which the Trojan War story developed need to be considered too. The Iliad depicts an ethnic conflict: on one side the Greeks, on the other side an ethnic blend of several cultures, including significant Greek elements (the cult of Athena, Greek names on the Trojan side, etc.). This is an excellent match for the Troy of the 700s-600s BCE. The site had been abandoned from ca. 950 BCE until the 700s, but then Greek colonists settled it, establishing the civic cult of Athena Ilias, which is depicted in Iliad book 6. But it wasn't a Greek-only place: the fact that Troy was never considered part of Aeolis (the Aeolian colonies in western Turkey) indicates a bit of an ethnic mix. I find it simplest to imagine a legend about an ethnic conflict arising in that period, in the 700s and 600s.
Basically, I don't see any way of linking Homer's stories to the Bronze Age, except for a tiny minority of genuinely archaic elements. Homer knows nothing about the Hittites or Arzawa. Almost everything about the Iliad points to the 8th-7th centuries BCE. The fact that Herodotus, Eratosthenes, etc. dated the Trojan War to a point in time that we happen to call 'the Bronze Age' is coincidence: they had much less information about the history of the epic tradition than we do.
The genuinely archaic elements are very few and far between. Aside from archaic linguistic and narrative elements, there's a boar's tusk helmet in Iliad 10 (the part of the Iliad that was composed last!); the names 'Priam' and 'Paris' are genuine Luvian names; the title anax is used in a sense that hadn't existed since the Bronze Age; a few placenames appear which had been abandoned for centuries, in one case since the Bronze Age (Eutresis). But these elements are dwarfed by the enormous amount of 8th-7th century material. A Trojan War isn't impossible, but I see vanishingly little reason to think it at all likely.
For completeness, here are some competing views by authors who think Homer does retain or at least reflect a lot of Bronze Age material.
(Bachvarova outlines the poetic heritage of Homer, and elements that are adapted from Hittite culture: she doesn't argue for a Trojan War. I see Cline as arguing from hypothetical possibilities, rather than likelihoods; Hope Simpson is mostly speculation; Latacz is well grounded, but relies much too much on revelations that he thinks are about to be uncovered.)
Edit. Added a couple more items to the bibliography at the end.
Edit 2. Corrected bibliography, completed one incomplete sentence.