Archaeologist sacks "Troy"

SING, O GODDESS, the anger of archaeologists who paid good money to see the sword-and-sandal epic "Troy," now playing at theaters near you. That's what Mark Rose, executive editor of the magazine Archaeology, did in a review posted this week in the magazine's online edition.

Never mind that the siege of Troy, which Homer says lasted 10 years, was telescoped by a screenwriter into a mere three weeks. And forget the fact that the Trojan Horse gambit wasn't in the "Iliad," nor did Paris and Helen live happily ever after in the dactylic hexameter version. Maybe Homer got those parts of the story wrong -- after all, he lived in the eighth century BC and was talking about events that had supposedly transpired at the end of the Late Bronze Era, 400 years earlier. What really infuriates Rose are the props and set design of "Troy," which he calls a "chronological train wreck."

The jewelry sported by Trojan princesses in "Troy," Rose points out, belongs in the Early Bronze Age (a millennium before the Trojan War), while Brad Pitt's ship looks to be of 8th-century BC design. Then there are the coins placed on the eyes of the heroes killed in the movie -- even though coins wouldn't be invented for another 500-odd years -- not to mention the "ghastly" statues, apparently inspired by 6th- and 5th-century sculpture, which (to Rose's great relief) are shattered during the sack of Troy. Finally, Rose takes issue with the massive walls surrounding the cinematic Troy; the actual city, he notes, was guarded by a ditch.

But Rose is well aware of the futility of resisting the Hollywood hordes. "`Troy' is a violent film," he ululates. "The evidence of the archaeological record is helpless before its onslaught."