This book is part of a series, Archaeological Histories, aimed at general readers, yet giving scholarly-level breadth of information on the historical, political and cultural context of key archaeological sites. M.S.’s work proves not only a valid addition to the series but a precious means of navigating the otherwise intimidating maze of work surrounding the various aspects of a place, which, in history, myth and culture, is a symbol as much as a city: Troy. It is a rare feat that an author has managed to convey so much information within such limited space so that one leaves this slim book with the impression of having read a much heftier volume.

Maps of the Troad and of the excavation site at Troy, a chronological table and a short introduction precede the three main sections: ‘Myth’, ‘City’ and ‘Icon’; footnotes are kept to a minimum and reserved for the end of the volume. A guide to further reading, a bibliography and an index complete the work. Each of the three sections is divided into chapters and then into subsections. The result is that the general index also reads like a detailed synopsis of the book's contents. For instance, readers eager to know about one of the most significant milestones of Troy's early mythologising could easily refer to Part 2 (‘City’), Chapter 9 (‘Troy in the Hellenistic World, 334–85 bce’), pp. 84–5: ‘Alexander at Troy (334 bce)’.

M.S. is equally at ease with all three aspects of her subject, although the archaeological part accounts for half of the book – and perhaps unsurprisingly so, in a series of Archaeological Histories. Her control of the scholarship is evident throughout, but it never impinges on the clarity of her writing, nor does she resort to tedious quoting from secondary sources.

In Part 1, M.S. takes nothing for granted in retracing a myth that most of us think we are already familiar with, yet with an original approach. Her concise assessment of the Iliad is in this respect exemplary (pp. 12–15): in her view ‘the central theme of the poem is not the Trojan War per se. Rather, the Iliad is about something rather more complex – conflict and reconciliation, in many different forms and at many different levels’, and Achilles is the central figure used to explore all these conflicts among individuals, between individuals and communities, and among communities. The real focus of the poem, M.S. claims, is the city of Troy, depicted in the eighth-century Iliad as a paragon of the well-built and well-regulated polis at a time when the concept of polis was only just beginning to emerge (p. 15).

Part 2, ‘City’, explores the nine cities of Troy through the nine archaeological levels devised by Wilhelm Dörpfeld in the late nineteenth century. Maps, drawings and photographs punctuate the text, as M.S. puts each of the nine levels into its own historical context, presenting the reader with material evidence from the excavations, but still managing to convey the larger cultural significance that Troy commanded in its many incarnations, all equally fascinating before and after the onset of the myth. We thus learn for instance that Troy VIIa (c. 1300–1180 bce) was a city pervaded by a climate of fear, due to the tensions between the Anatolian-based power of the Ahhiyawans and the Aegean-based power of the Hittites over the control of Wilusa-Troy. We learn furthermore that written sources preserve the name of a Wilusan king as Alaksandu, strikingly reminiscent of Alexandros-Paris. The whole scenario ‘is an attractive hook for those seeking to ground the Homeric poems in historical truths’ (p. 57) although we are warned against ‘reading too much into the source material’.

Despite the sobering statement, early on, that ‘[w]e should not hope to find traces of Hector or Achilles in the archaeology of Troy’ and that to ‘seek such literal parallels between Homeric poetry and the archaeology of Troy would be to miss the point’ (p. 36), M.S. is clear that site and myth became ‘inextricably linked’ soon after the Iliad’s composition. ‘The poem's popularity spread rapidly … images from the myth came to influence the everyday reality of life at Troy, and ideas from Homer shaped the practical place of Troy in the wider world. Troy the myth began to have a crucial impact on Troy the city’.

The interplay between the myth, its larger cultural resonance and Troy's physical site is deftly explored in Chapters 8–10. From the start of the myth, generation after generation in the ancient world modelled themselves in relation to Troy, which was still a thriving city, that came to acquire an ever-changing and ever more layered significance in the eyes of its beholders. For the Greeks, Troy and the Trojans shifted from a paragon of aristocratic behaviour in the Archaic age, to ‘quintessential Other – fundamentally different and opposite’ (p. 80) in the age of the Persian Wars. In the Hellenistic age the fascination of Alexander the Great for the story of Troy meant a period of prosperity for the city of Troy (pp. 84–5), and the popularity of the myth under the Seleucids proved instrumental to strengthening the city's hold over its territory (p. 87).

With the Romans came another dramatic turn in the city's fortunes: the myth of Aeneadic descent meant that just as Alexander before them, Roman rulers were eager not only to show their reverence to the myth in the form of privileges granted to the city, but also to posit themselves as living heirs of the Homeric heroes. The material survival of the city went hand in hand with the flourishing of its immaterial legacy. The reshaping of the myth, where ‘the fall of Troy was reimagined as the birth of Rome’ (p. 103), was mainly the deed of Augustus and of the Julio-Claudian dynasty; but the image of Troy as mother-city of Rome survived for the whole duration of the Roman Empire and beyond, well after the final decay and disappearance of Troy as an actual city.

The vanishing of material Troy led to the city's rebirth as an ‘Icon’ (Part 3). Chapters 11–14 explore the role of Troy respectively as ‘a tool for the construction of identity, a symbol of love, a model for war, and a lens through which to reflect on the human condition’ (p. 111). I found Chapter 11, ‘All Roads Begin at Troy’, of special interest, with its careful reconstruction of different European groups’ claims to Trojan origins and of the narratives backing such claims.

Chapter 12, ‘All you Need is Love’, offers an overview of medieval and early modern literature dealing with the central theme of Trojan love (Benoit, Chaucer, Shakespeare) as well as an intriguing foray into the art depicting it, from Tintoretto to, amazingly, Ming tapestries.

The last two chapters assess the significance of Troy in recent times. Chapter 13 has war at its centre, with a special stress on the Gallipoli Campaign (1915–1916), a time that envisaged the Trojan War as a ‘commemoration of the dead and reflection on mortality’ (p. 142) rather than a quest for glorification. But war is also the thread that leads M.S. into a dazzling recounting of what Troy and Trojan mean in today's popular culture, from condoms to computer malware (pp. 144–6). Chapter 14, ‘Troy Today’, explores the ever-adapting significance of Troy as symbol and by-word for a tragedy sprung from senseless violence: in literature, poetry, song and politics.

M.S. succeeds at disentangling the threads that have been woven into the cultural construct that we know as Troy without ever detracting from its charm. To borrow her closing words, ‘Troy, like the greatest of cities, the greatest of stories, and the greatest of symbols, defies categorization. Understanding it is a quest of a lifetime’ (p. 153).