The Iliad and the Odyssey, epic poems passed down from the ancient Greek singer Homer, tell fantastic stories about a war between Greeks and Trojans and the journey home from that war. They're so fantastic — full of vengeful gods and supernatural peril — that it's hard for modern people to credit any part of them as true.

Yet history is in them, history that became more tantalizing in the late nineteenth century, when the city of Troy turned out to be a real place, one of many ancient Troys built in just the place Homer described. Each rose and fell. Another rose on top of it. The old one was forgotten.

What happened to show that any of them were ever real? An eccentric German executive dug them up.