The Tudors Were Obsessed With Troy (But Never Actually Read Homer)

I just watched Nolan's Odyssey and went down a rabbit hole: did the Tudors even know this story? Turns out, not the way you'd think.

For most of the dynasty, England's version of the Trojan War came from a completely different, largely invented medieval tradition, one that literally cut the gods out of the story. The real, translated Homer didn't arrive in English until the dynasty was basically over.

In this one: two forged "eyewitness" accounts of the Trojan War, the first book ever printed in English, the Tudors' fake Trojan ancestor Brutus, Cambridge's Greek revival, and why not a single Tudor monarch ever got to read a finished English Homer.

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