Information Related to the Text
1.
Heinrich Schliemann:Born in Germany in 1822, Heinrich Schliemann was the son of a poor pastor.
When he was seven years old, a picture of Troy in flames impressed him deeply and he took it as the
absolute truth that Troy had existed. At the age of 14, he worked in a grocery store, but gave up this
job because of ill health. Then he became a cabin boy. On his way to South America his ship was wrecked and he was
left in the Netherlands, where he found work in business.
In a very short time he mastered 13 major European languages, including both ancient and modern Greek. In 1846,
Schliemann went to St. Petersburg, Russia, where he worked hard and amassed a large fortune. At the age of 41,
he retired and traveled extensively, especially in Greece. After studying archaeology in Paris, Schliemann moved
to Turkey and Greece and started his excavation of Troy in 1868. His discoveries in Turkey and Greece made him a
symbol of the romance and excitement of archeology.
2.
Homer:Tradition tells us that Homer was an ancient Greek poet in what is now the western coast of Turkey.
His two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, are considered the greatest works of art of ancient Greece
and among the greatest treasures of Western literature. Almost nothing is known about Homer, but his poems
suggest that he lived in the last half of the 8th century BC. Some schools even deny that ¡°Homer¡± ever existed.
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