city, seat (1839) of Pike county, southeastern Alabama, U.S., about 50 miles (80 km) southeast of Montgomery. Originally known as Deer Stand Hill (an Indian hunting ground) and first settled about 1824, it was later known as Zebulon and then Centreville before being renamed Troy (1838), either for Troy, New York, or for Alexander Troy, a Montgomery resident. An old military road (completed 1824) passes through it.

Agriculture (including poultry, livestock, and peanuts 【groundnuts】), timber, and industry (including food processing, aircraft refurbishing, and the manufacture of missiles, computers, building materials, lead, plastics, and apparel) are the economic mainstays. The city is the home of Troy State University (1887). The Pike Pioneer Museum has exhibits on 19th-century life; the Peanut Butter Festival, held in October in nearby Brundidge, celebrates the area's peanut farming heritage. Inc. 1843. Pop. (1990) 13,051; (2000) 13,935.

city, seat (1793) of Rensselaer county, eastern New York, U.S. It lies on the east bank of the Hudson River, opposite Watervliet and the junction of the Hudson with the Mohawk River and the New York State Canal System. With Albany and Schenectady, it forms an urban-industrial complex. Its site was originally part of the Kiliaen van Rensselaer patroonship (estate) granted by the Dutch West India Company in 1629 to encourage Dutch colonization. In 1707 the Vanderheyden family acquired the property, which was laid out in 1786 as Vanderheyden's Ferry and renamed in 1789 for the ancient city of Troy.

Troy is said to be the source of the U.S. national symbol Uncle Sam. During the War of 1812 (1812, War of), large contracts for U.S. Army beef were filled by businessman Samuel Wilson (locally called “Uncle Sam”) of Troy. Government purchasers stamped “U.S. Beef” on the barrels, misinterpreted as “Uncle Sam's beef” (Uncle Sam); according to tradition, this gave rise to the popular symbol.

Troy was an early seat of the American iron and steel industry. The city's clothing (clothing and footwear industry) industry supposedly originated with the invention in the early 1800s of the detachable collar by a Troy housewife. Clothing dominated the city's economy after the introduction of the sewing machine in 1852, but a more diversified economy (including auto-parts, high-technology, clothing, and heavy gardening equipment industries) now prevails. Troy is the home of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1824), Russell Sage College for women (1916), and Hudson Valley Community College (1953) of the State University of New York (New York, State University of (SUNY)) system. Inc. village, 1798; city, 1816. Pop. (1990) city, 54,269; Albany-Schenectady-Troy MSA, 861,424; (2000) city, 49,170; Albany-Schenectady-Troy MSA, 875,583.

ancient city in northwestern Anatolia that holds an enduring place in both literature and archaeology. The legend of the Trojan War is the most notable theme from ancient Greek literature and forms the basis of Homer's Iliad. Although the actual nature and size of the historical settlement remain matters of scholarly debate, the ruins of Troy at Hisarlık, Tur., are a key archaeological site whose many layers illustrate the gradual development of civilization in northwestern Asia Minor.

Ancient Troy commanded a strategic point at the southern entrance to the Dardanelles (Hellespont), a narrow strait linking the Black Sea with the Aegean Sea via the Sea of Marmara. The city also commanded a land route that ran north along the west Anatolian coast and crossed the narrowest point of the Dardanelles to the European shore. In theory, Troy would have been able to use its site astride these two lines of communication to exact tolls from trading vessels and other travelers using them; the actual extent to which this took place, however, remains unclear.

The Troad (Troas) (Greek Troias; “Land of Troy”) is the district formed by the northwestern projection of Asia Minor into the Aegean Sea. The present-day ruins of Troy itself occupy the western end of a low descending ridge in the extreme northwest corner of the Troad. Less than 4 miles (6 km) to the west, across the plain of the Scamander (Küçük Menderes) River, is the Aegean Sea, and toward the north are the narrows of the Dardanelles.

The approximate location of Troy was well known from references in works by ancient Greek and Latin authors. But the exact site of the city remained unidentified until modern times. A large mound, known locally as Hisarlık, had long been understood to hold the ruins of a city named Ilion or Ilium that had flourished in Hellenistic and Roman times. In 1822 Charles Maclaren (Maclaren, Charles) suggested that this was the site of Homeric Troy, but for the next 50 years his suggestion received little attention from classical scholars, most of whom regarded the Trojan legend as a mere fictional creation based on myth, not history. The German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann (Schliemann, Heinrich) deserves full credit for adopting Maclaren's identification and demonstrating to the world that it was correct. In seven major and two minor campaigns between 1870 and 1890, Schliemann conducted excavations on a large scale mainly in the central area of the Hisarlık mound, where he exposed the remains of a walled citadel. After Schliemann's death in 1890, the excavations were continued (1893–94) by his colleague Wilhelm Dörpfeld (Dörpfeld, Wilhelm) and later (1932–38) by an expedition from the University of Cincinnati headed by Carl W. Blegen. After a lapse of some 50 years, excavations resumed (1988–2005) under the leadership of University of Tübingen archaeologist Manfred Korfmann and continued after his death.

Questions of Troy's physical size, population, and stature as a trade entrepôt and regional power became subjects of intense scholarly dispute following the resumption of excavations at Hisarlık in the late 1980s. Although Homeric Troy was described as a wealthy and populous city, by this time some scholars had come to accept the probability of a lesser Troy—a more minor settlement, perhaps a princely seat. Beginning in 1988, Korfmann's team investigated the terrain surrounding the citadel site in search of wider settlement. Korfmann's findings at Hisarlık, drawn from geomagnetic surveying and isolated excavations, led him to conclude in favour of a greater Troy—that is, a settlement of some size and prosperity. His presentation of this perspective in a 2001 exhibition, accompanied by a controversial model reconstruction of the city, sparked especially intense scholarly debate over the city's true nature.

Before excavations began, the mound rose to a height of 105 feet (32 metres) above the plain. It contained a vast accumulation of debris that was made up of many clearly distinguishable layers. Schliemann and Dörpfeld identified a sequence of nine principal strata, representing nine periods during which houses were built, occupied, and ultimately destroyed. At the end of each period when a settlement was destroyed (usually by fire or earthquake or both), the survivors, rather than clear the wreckage down to the floors, merely leveled it out and then built new houses upon it.

The nine major periods of ancient Troy are labeled I to IX, starting from the bottom with the oldest settlement, Troy I. In periods I to VII Troy was a fortified stronghold that served as the capital of the Troad and the residence of a king, his family, officials, advisers, retinue, and slaves. Most of the local population, however, were farmers who lived in unfortified villages nearby and took refuge in the citadel in times of danger. Troy I to V corresponds roughly to the Early Bronze Age (c. 3000 to 1900 BCE). The citadel of Troy I was small, not more than 300 feet (90 metres) in diameter. It was enclosed by a massive wall with gateways and flanking towers and contained perhaps 20 rectangular houses. Troy II was twice as large and had higher, sloping stone walls protecting an acropolis on which stood the king's palace and other princely residences, which were built of brick in a megaron plan. This city came to an end through fire, and Schliemann mistakenly identified it with Homer's Troy. In the “burnt layer's” debris were found a trove of gold jewelry and ornaments and gold, silver, copper, bronze, and ceramic vessels that Schliemann named “Priam's treasure.” The burning of Troy II seems to have been followed by an economic decline; each of the citadels of Troy III, IV, and V was fortified and somewhat larger than its predecessor, but the houses inside the walls were much smaller and more closely packed than in Troy II.

Troy VI and VII may be assigned to the Middle and Late Bronze Ages (c. 1900 to 1100 BCE). Troy at this time had new and vigorous settlers who introduced domesticated horses to the Aegean area. They further enlarged the city and erected a magnificent circuit of cut limestone walls that were 15 feet (4.5 metres) thick at the base, rose to a height of more than 17 feet (5 metres), and had brick ramparts and watchtowers. Inside the citadel, which was now about 650 feet (200 metres) long and 450 feet (140 metres) wide, great houses were laid out on ascending, concentric terraces. Troy VI was destroyed by a violent earthquake a little after 1300 BCE. Dörpfeld had identified this stage as Homeric Troy, but its apparent destruction by an earthquake does not agree with the realistic account of the sack of Troy in Greek tradition. Moreover, the city's date, as indicated by imported Mycenaean pottery found in the earthquake debris, is too early for the Trojan War.

The survivors of the earthquake quickly rebuilt the town, thus inaugurating the short-lived Troy VIIa. The ruins were leveled and covered over by new buildings, which were set close together and filled all available space inside the fortress. Almost every house was provided with one or several huge storage jars that were sunk deep into the ground, with only their mouths above the level of the floor. Troy VIIa probably lasted little more than a generation. The crowding together of houses and the special measures to store up food supplies suggest that preparations had been made to withstand a siege. The town was destroyed in a devastating fire, and remnants of human bones found in some houses and streets strengthen the impression that the town was captured, looted, and burnt by enemies. Based on the evidence of imported Mycenaean pottery, the end of Troy VIIa can be dated to between 1260 and 1240 BCE. The Cincinnati expedition under Blegen concluded that Troy VIIa was very likely the capital of King Priam described in Homer's Iliad, which was destroyed by the Greek armies of Agamemnon.

The partly rebuilt Troy VIIb shows evidence of new settlers with a lower level of material culture, who vanished altogether by 1100 BCE. For about the next four centuries the site was virtually abandoned. About 700 BCE Greek settlers began to occupy the Troad. Troy was reoccupied and given the Hellenized name of Ilion; this Greek settlement is known as Troy VIII. The Romans sacked Ilion in 85 BCE, but it was partially restored by the Roman general Sulla that same year. This Romanized town, known as Troy IX, received fine public buildings from the emperor Augustus and his immediate successors, who traced their ancestry back to the Trojan Aeneas. After the founding of Constantinople (324 CE), Ilion faded into obscurity.

The Classical legends of the Trojan War developed continuously throughout Greek and Latin literature. In Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the earliest literary evidence available, the chief stories have already taken shape, and individual themes were elaborated later, especially in Greek drama. The story of the Trojan origin, through Aeneas, of Rome helped to inspire Roman interest; Book II of Virgil's Aeneid contains the best-known account of the sack of Troy. Finally there are the pseudo-chronicles that go under the names of Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius.

The Trojan War fought between the Greeks (ancient Greek civilization) and Troy originated in the following manner. King Priam of Troy was wealthy and powerful; by his wife Hecuba and by concubines he had 50 sons and 12 daughters. But his son Paris was invited to judge which of the goddesses Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena was entitled to receive the golden apple marked by the goddess Eris (Discord) “for the most beautiful.” Aphrodite promised Paris the most beautiful woman in the world: he therefore awarded her the apple and went to Greece, where he won the love of, and eloped with, Helen, wife of Menelaus, the king of Sparta.

To recover Helen, the Greeks launched a great expedition under the overall command of Menelaus's brother, Agamemnon, king of Argos or Mycenae. The Trojans refused to return Helen. Small towns in or near the Troad were sacked by the Greeks, but Troy, assisted by allies from Asia Minor and Thrace, withstood a Greek siege for 10 years. The gods also took sides, notably Hera, Athena, and Poseidon for the Greeks, and Aphrodite (who had a son, Aeneas, by the Trojan Anchises, grandson of Assaracus), Apollo, and Ares for the Trojans. The Iliad, which is set in the 10th year of the war, tells of the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles, who was the finest Greek warrior, and the consequent deaths in battle of (among others) Achilles' friend Patroclus and Priam's eldest son, Hector.

The few Trojan survivors included Aeneas, whose descendants continued to rule the Trojans; later tradition took Aeneas's Trojans to Italy as the ancestors of the Romans.

Medieval European writers, unacquainted with Homer firsthand, found in the Troy legend a rich source of heroic and romantic storytelling and a convenient framework into which to fit their own courtly and chivalric ideals. The chief sources for medieval versions of the story were fictitious eyewitness accounts of the Trojan War by Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius. The key work in the medieval exploitation of the Trojan theme was a French romance, the Roman de Troie (1154–60), by Benoît de Sainte-Maure.

Later medieval writers used the Roman de Troie until it was superseded by a Latin prose account, the Historia destructionis Troiae (c. 1287; “History of the Destruction of Troy”), by Guido delle Colonne. The French author Raoul Le Fèvre's Recueil des histoires de Troye (1464), an account based on Guido, was translated into English by William Caxton and became the first book to be printed in English as The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye (c. 1474). See also Trojan War.