When Homer's Iliad was first written down in the 8th century BCE, the story of the Trojan war was already an old one.
From existing oral tradition, audiences knew the tales of the long siege, the epic duels outside the city walls, and the cunning trick that finally won the war.
In the end, the magnificent city was burned to the ground, never to rise again.
But had it ever existed?
By the time the field of archaeology began to take shape in the 19th century, many were skeptical, considering the epic to be pure fiction, a founding myth imagining a bygone heroic era.
But some scholars believed that behind the superhuman feats and divine miracles there must have been a grain of historical truth - a war that was really fought, and a place where it happened.
Frank Calvert was one such believer.
He had spent his youth traveling and learning about ancient civilizations before accompanying his brother Frederick on a diplomatic mission to the northwest Anatolian region of ? anakkale.
It was here that Homer described the Greek encampment at the mouth of the Scamander river.
And it was here that fate brought Frank into contact with a journalist and geologist named Charles Maclaren.
