It attracted a great deal of criticism, principally for its ethnically-neutral casting and 'deviations' from the 'historical' sources, specifically Homer's Iliad.
However, the Iliad as we have it, for there would have been many Iliads, coming as it did from an oral tradition told by many poets to many audiences over many centuries, spans just 54 days, at the near-end of what we are told was a ten-year siege, from the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon, to the funeral of Hector. The other sources we have - the flashbacks in The Odyssey, the Greek plays (the few, just 30, we have of hundreds lost), Virgil's Aeneid (Roman), Ovid (also Roman), the fragments of the Cyclic Epics, Eratosthenes, and other variable poetic accounts - are but a fragment, perhaps less than 5% of those stories, songs, poems that were actually written down.
If it took place at all, and I fancy there were a long series of wars, conflict and sieges rather than just one, and the archaeological evidence bears this out, it was in the late Bronze Age, say 12th century BCE. After the fall of the Mycenaean culture and the collapse of the other Greek city-states, maybe a century or so later, the art of writing was lost, and there was only the oral tradition , until circa the 8th century BCE when the Phoenicians reintroduced it to what we now call 'the Greek World'. What we now call Ancient Greek writing derives from the Phoenician alphabet. This is when, it is normally taken to be, when the Iliad and the Odyssey were written down. But, again, we don't know if this is the only text that was written down? Quite possibly there were several, perhaps many several, Iliads and Odysseys that were written down, but have all now been lost.
The city of Troy itself existed, and its ruins can be visited, near the town of Hisarlik in Anatolia, Turkey, not far from the Hellespont.
Personally I like the series. Despite knowing the story well, the material is mythically-malleable, and can continue to be told and retold, whether it's 2800 years later, or 2800 years from now.
However, the Iliad as we have it, for there would have been many Iliads, coming as it did from an oral tradition told by many poets to many audiences over many centuries, spans just 54 days, at the near-end of what we are told was a ten-year siege, from the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon, to the funeral of Hector. The other sources we have - the flashbacks in The Odyssey, the Greek plays (the few, just 30, we have of hundreds lost), Virgil's Aeneid (Roman), Ovid (also Roman), the fragments of the Cyclic Epics, Eratosthenes, and other variable poetic accounts - are but a fragment, perhaps less than 5% of those stories, songs, poems that were actually written down.
If it took place at all, and I fancy there were a long series of wars, conflict and sieges rather than just one, and the archaeological evidence bears this out, it was in the late Bronze Age, say 12th century BCE. After the fall of the Mycenaean culture and the collapse of the other Greek city-states, maybe a century or so later, the art of writing was lost, and there was only the oral tradition , until circa the 8th century BCE when the Phoenicians reintroduced it to what we now call 'the Greek World'. What we now call Ancient Greek writing derives from the Phoenician alphabet. This is when, it is normally taken to be, when the Iliad and the Odyssey were written down. But, again, we don't know if this is the only text that was written down? Quite possibly there were several, perhaps many several, Iliads and Odysseys that were written down, but have all now been lost.
The city of Troy itself existed, and its ruins can be visited, near the town of Hisarlik in Anatolia, Turkey, not far from the Hellespont.
Personally I like the series. Despite knowing the story well, the material is mythically-malleable, and can continue to be told and retold, whether it's 2800 years later, or 2800 years from now.