In the Iliad, the poet Homer provides us with numerous details about the city of Troy. One of these details is that the city had a hot and a cold spring in its immediate vicinity. Interestingly, there is no hot spring today at Hisarlik, the site generally agreed to be ancient Troy. What is the explanation for this? Was Homer wrong, or is there another possibility?
Homer’s description of the hot spring at Troy
Homer’s Iliad, written in the seventh century BCE, describes the final year of the Trojan War. In one part of the narrative, a battle between the Greek hero Achilles and Hector of Troy occurs. In the account of Hector fleeing from Achilles, we find the following description:
“On they flew along the waggon-road that ran hard by under the wall, past the lookout station, and past the weather-beaten wild fig-tree, till they came to two fair springs which feed the river Scamander. One of these two springs is warm, and steam rises from it as smoke from a burning fire, but the other even in summer is as cold as hail or snow, or the ice that forms on water.”
According to this, outside the walls of Troy were two springs; one of them was hot and the other was cold.
To be clear, this does not mean that there were only these two springs near Troy. There may have been other hot and cold springs near the city. Nevertheless, what this does reveal is that there was at least one hot and one cold spring in the vicinity of Troy.
An ancient mystery
In ancient times, the consensus was that the site of Homer’s Troy was on the site of the Greek city of Ilion and the Roman city Ilium. Some ancient rulers even visited that place to pay homage to the Homeric heroes. Today, the modern consensus agrees with this, placing Homer’s Troy at Hisarlik.
Yet despite this consensus, certain ancient commentators found an apparent issue. The ancient geographer Strabo, apparently using information from Demetrius of Scepsis from the second century BCE, explained the following:
“It is a matter of argument what the poet means when he says: ‘And they came to the two far‑flowing streams, where well up the two springs of eddying Scamander; for the one flows with soft water’ (that is, with ‘hot water’), and the poet adds, ‘and round about a smoke arises from it as if from a blazing fire, whereas the other even in summer flows forth cold as hail or chill snow.’ But, in the first place, no hot waters are now to be found at the site.”
As we can see from this, there is a conspicuous absence of any hot spring at the site traditionally identified as Troy. This is not something that only modern scholars have pondered over.
Strabo’s explanation
One possible explanation for this is found in the following passage from Strabo’s writings. The passage continues:
“It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, that the hot spring has given out.”
This explanation would probably be the simplest one. It is suggested that the hot spring once existed in the past, but has long disappeared. Is this plausible? In principle, there is no issue with it.
Springs exist at points where there is an opening in the ground below the local water table. If the level of the water table changed sufficiently, this would cause the spring to dry up. Alternatively, an earthquake could close up the opening itself. Since the Troad is an earthquake-prone region, this is not unlikely.
Modern scientific research into Troy’s missing hot spring
A recent hydrochemical investigation in the Troad attempted to address this exact issue. This study, published in 2021, was conducted by Christian Wolkersdorfer, Susanne Stadler, Anja Bretzler, Claudia Müller, and Claudia Zedler.
This extensive study examined the area’s geology and came to an intriguing conclusion. There is no hot spring at Troy, and there apparently never was. Regarding the potential geological traces of hot springs, the authors of the study wrote:
“None of such types of mineral crusts are reported for the area around the National Park by any of the dozens of travellers to the Troad, nor could the geological mapping give any indication for a geothermal field that could have existed prior to a potential earthquake.”
The researchers concluded that there is no scientific basis for the existence of a hot spring at Troy.
The real hot spring at the city of Troy
The researchers conclude by suggesting that Homer may have actually been referring to a single spring. By this logic, the spring had a mild temperature, which was warm compared to the average air temperature in winter but cold compared to the average air temperature in summer.
To support this conclusion, they highlight a passage in Plato’s description of Atlantis. The researchers claim:
“A very similar description of a set of springs can be found in Plato’s Kritias where he describes a cold and a warm spring within the range of his castle flowing out of the same location… Though he writes about two springs, he explains that in fact he only means one spring with hot and cold water.”
However, despite this claim, there does not appear to be any support for it within Plato’s actual text.
There is a more plausible explanation. The researchers uncovered two springs at the site of the underground tunnels just next to the walls of Troy. They were only 110 meters (328 feet, just slightly less than the length of an American football field) apart. Although they had generally similar temperatures, one of them remained substantially warmer than the other during the winter.
Therefore, it is likely that the warmer of these two springs is the hot spring mentioned by Homer. Its location is also a very reasonable fit for the account in the Iliad.
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