Where is the City of Troy?

Pergamon matches the description of the Plain of Troy

Question: Where is the City of Troy?
Position‹3 of 3: The ruins of Troy are in the Ancient Greek city of Pergamon
Argument‹3 of 3: Pergamon matches the description of the Plain of Troy

The Plain of Troy is where the Trojan war occurred in The Iliad, and we are given a much more extensive description of this land compared to the city itself.

The argument

In his book, John Crowe provides evidence that the Plain of Troy really did exist, and was not a myth. He argues that the Ancient Greek city of Pergamon must have been the location of the Trojan plain, and therefore the city of Troy could be at Bergama. The author John Lascelles, also wrote a book on the same topic called 'Troy: The World Deceived: Homer's Guide to Pergamum'. For 9 years, the Trojans confined the Greeks to a fortified beachhead on the shore. Homer's description of the Trojan plain where the war took place correlates with Pergamon's location and landscape. It lies to the east of the island of Lesbos, and in between Lesbos and Phrygia, in 'the uplands'. Achilles says to Priam in Book 24, 'We hear that once you were happy; how of all that towards the sea Lesbos, the seat of Macar, encloses, and Phrygia in the upland, and the boundless Hellespont, over all these people, men say, you, old sit, were pre-eminent'. This means the southern tip of Lesbos had a view of the southern boundary of Troy. The island of Lesbos is opposite the modern city of Bergama, where Pergamon is situated, so this is very telling. John Crowe claims the well-known features of the Trojan plain still remain at Pergamon today, such as the site of Kallikolone and the Wall of Herakles.

Context

In John Crowe's book 'The Troy Deception Vol 1 - Finding the Plain of Troy', he explains that there are more lines in Homer's Iliad that describe the plain of Troy than descriptions of the city itself. He, therefore, believes that it is easier and more reliable to find the plain of Troy, and this will lead us to the true destination of the famous city.

Premises

[P1]Authors John Crowe and John Lascelles argue the Plain of Troy was real and locate it at the Ancient Greek city of Pergamon, near modern Bergama. [P2] Homer's description of the Trojan plain—east of Lesbos, between Lesbos and Phrygia in "the uplands," with Lesbos overlooking Troy's southern boundary—matches Pergamon's landscape, and features like Kallikolone and the Wall of Herakles reportedly remain there. [C] Therefore, because Pergamon matches Homer's description of the Plain of Troy, the ruins of Troy lie at the Ancient Greek city of Pergamon.

Counter-arguments

Not that many people have written about this topic, and there is a notable lack of scholarly material from classicists and other academics supporting this view. Therefore, the claims made by John Crowe and John Lascelles may just be the unfounded claims of avid Homer fans. Using Homer's Iliad as a guidebook to locate Troy and the battlefield could be taking his words a bit too literally. Ultimately, he is a poet and a storyteller, and the topography in the poem might not be accurate, especially thousands of years later.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Two authors advancing a thesis is not evidence for it, and no reason is offered to prefer them beyond their having written; the counter notes the absence of support in the scholarly literature, which naming a second book on the same side does not answer. [Rejecting P2] The quoted passage lists the extent of Priam's former dominion — Lesbos, Phrygia, the Hellespont — placing his realm relative to those regions rather than fixing a site, and the premise reads a boundary out of it. Treating epic verse as topography is the difficulty the counter raises, and features that "reportedly remain" is not the excavated evidence such an identification would need.