The Trojans were the enemies of the Greeks in Homer’s famous Iliad. However, what do we really know about them? Do we even know what language the Trojans spoke? Is there any conflict between what Homer suggests about this and what we know from historical sources? One would have to take a deeper look.
The most common answer to the question of what language the Trojans spoke is that they likely spoke Luwian. This was a language that was very common across much of Anatolia in the Bronze Age. For this reason alone, it is tempting to think that the Trojans may have spoken this language.
Even more notably, at least one artifact with a Luwian inscription was found in Bronze Age Troy. This seemingly confirms that the Trojans spoke the Luwian language.
However, like with many things, the truth is not so straightforward. As already noted, Luwian was a very widespread language in Bronze Age Anatolia. In fact, it was used so widely that it was essentially a lingua franca of the region. Therefore, many nations that spoke other languages almost certainly used Luwian as a means of international communication.
Thus, the fact that a Luwian inscription was present at Troy really does nothing at all to prove that it was the primary language of the Trojans.
Although Homer did not write the Iliad to provide an overview of the history of the Trojans, he does reveal much about them as a nation. For example, he provides insight into their culture, religion, and heritage.
Notably, Homer presents the Trojans as worshippers of the same gods as the Greeks, having essentially the same culture as the Greeks, and he even suggests that they spoke the same language. While Homer sometimes refers to the barbarian tongues of the Trojans’ allies, he never makes such remarks regarding the Trojans themselves.
The strong implication that the Trojans spoke Greek is supported even further by the heritage that Homer provides for this nation.
According to the Iliad and later records, the Trojans ultimately stemmed from the Greeks. They had two notable founding figures.
One was Teucer, alleged to be from Crete. In the time during which he lived, Crete was already in the possession of the Greeks. The second founding figure was Dardanus, alleged to be from Greece itself.
Therefore, the Trojans of the Iliad were supposedly of Greek descent. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in the first century BCE, even described the Trojans as being “a nation as truly Greek as any.” Thus, the language of the Trojans would presumably have been Greek.
Of course, Bronze Age Trojans were definitely not Greeks. It is almost certain that Homer’s description derived from the inhabitants of Troy shortly before his own time. While it was uninhabited for much of the seventh century BCE, after having been recently destroyed, its inhabitants immediately before then were Greek descendants.
The answer to the Trojans’ descent is not as simple as this, however. There is good evidence that, prior to the time of Homer, inhabitants of the Troad spoke a language that we could call Proto-Tyrsenic.
Proto-Tyrsenic is the hypothetical ancestor language of Etruscan. No actual traces of it have been found yet. Professor Alwin Kloekhorst, a Dutch linguist, demonstrated in a 2021 paper that this ancestral language of the Etruscans can be traced back to Anatolia in the Late Bronze Age.
The Etruscans inhabited Italy in the Iron Age. Their language first appeared there around 700 BCE based on available evidence. We see another descendant of Proto-Tyrsenic on Lemnos, an island just off the coast of Troy. This is attested on inscriptions dating to the sixth century BCE.
The close similarities between Etruscan and Lemnian suggest that they did not diverge from each other until around 700 BCE. Notably, Greek historians described how the Etruscans traveled from Western Anatolia to Italy, stopping off at Lemnos on the way. The archaeology of Etruria shows a sudden influx of Anatolian influence around 700 BCE, precisely when Lemnian and Etruscan appear to have split off.
The aforementioned evidence strongly supports the conclusion that the Etruscans migrated from Anatolia to Italy around 700 BCE, during which some of them settled on Lemnos. Since Lemnos is just off the coast of Troy, this would strongly suggest that they came from the region of Troy itself.
If this were the case, then it heavily indicates that the inhabitants of the Troad (or much thereof) spoke Proto-Tyrsenic. This is the conclusion of Professor Kloekhorst in the aforementioned paper.
in addition to the geographical proximity between Lemnos and Troy, it is also significant that Aeneas of Troy appears to have been viewed by the Etruscans as a founding figure. We see this from the popularity of figures of Aeneas (especially Aeneas fleeing from Troy) in early Etruria. This suggests that the Etruscans came from Troy.
Therefore, the evidence strongly indicates that the primary language of the Trojans was Proto-Tyrsenic, the ancestral language of the Etruscans. This language apparently endured in the Troad until at least as late as around 700 BCE. However, since the ruling class of the Trojans was of Greek descent, the Trojans seem to have also spoken the Greek language.
