Trojans of all classes enjoyed a nice jug of wine

Homer’s The Iliad recounts one of history’s greatest legendary epics. It also describes a round of drinks shared by the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus.

“Hephaestus spoke, then stood up, passed a double goblet across to his dear mother… As he spoke, the white-armed goddess Hera smiled,” Homer writes. “She reached for her son’s goblet. He poured the drink, going from right to left, for all the other gods, drawing off sweet nectar from the mixing bowl.”

It doesn’t take long for the deities to soon begin laughing “irrepressibly” while “all that day they dined, until sunset.” In the end, “No one’s heart went unsatisfied.”

According to recent analysis of ancient relics recovered from the real ruins of Troy, wine wasn’t restricted to Greek divinity and wealthy humans. It was likely enjoyed by everyday residents, too. The new findings published in the April edition of the American Journal of Archaeology also further support a longstanding theory that Homer based The Iliad on actual historical events.

The ruins of Troy were rediscovered over 150 years ago by a German businessman and amateur archeologist named Heinrich Schliemann. Among the artifacts Schliemann recovered in present-day Hisarlik, Turkey, were a number of slender, two-handled drinking vessels made from clay. Experts have since excavated over 100 of these depas goblets (depas amphikypellon) from Trojan dig sites, which date back to 2500-2000 BCE. More have also been found across the Aegean, Asia Minor, and Mesopotamia. Each depas goblet measures roughly 4.7–15.75 inches tall, and can hold between 0.25–1 liter of liquid.

Today, the University of Tübingen in Germany’s classical archeology collection contains one depas goblet and two vessel fragments from Schliemann’s original excavations. At the time, Schliemann believed depas goblets were used for communal celebrations similar to those described in The Iliad. But without modern chemical analysis methods, his hypothesis could not be tested.

That recently changed thanks to a collaborative team from the Universities of Tübingen, Bonn, and Jena. After milling a two-gram sample from each of the two vessel fragments, researchers heated them to 716-degrees Fahrenheit and analyzed the mixture with gras chromatography and mass spectrometry equipment. Two types of molecules stuck out in the results: succinic and pyruvic acid.

“They only occur when grape juice ferments. So now we can state with confidence that wine was actually drunk from the depas goblets and not just grape juice,” study co-author Maxime Rageot at the University of Bonn said in an accompanying statement.

Depas goblets weren’t everyday items, however. Wine was the most expensive drink available during the Bronze Age, and the majority of recovered goblets have been found in palaces and temples. Experts previously believed this implied that wine consumption was primarily relegated to societal elites. But in their same study, researchers also conducted a similar analyseis of common Trojan cups found outside the city’s central complex. Those results also proved wine was more accessible than researchers once thought.

“These vessels also contained wine,” confirmed study co-author Stephan Blum from the University of Tübingen. “So it is clear that wine was an everyday drink for the common people, too.”

Just how often middle- and lower-class residents of Troy drank wine remains unclear. But with the latest findings, historians and archeologists now know that fermented grapes weren’t only reserved for the likes of Hera and Hector.

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