Troy - Unearthing the Legend (History Channel)

Rating:
Summary: The Spartan series was better than the Troy series in here
Review: If I could give two ratings, I would give disc 1 (the rise and fall of Sparta) a 5 and disc 2 a 2. I compromised by giving it a three. The Amazon.com review is actually quite accurate, unfortunately.

The first disc is a history channel series on the rise and fall of Sparta. They go into the cultural aspects of the region and how they evolved into a warrior culture and the mythos of Sparta. A lot of time is spent in describing how conditioned the young people were from the homoioi down to the helots.

From there, the series goes into the war with Persia and into detail about the battle of Thermopolye. After spending a sufficient time describing the battles, the series shifts into the Peloponnisian wars and all the intrigue with it and how it sowed the seeds of Sparta's demise.

Some time is spent on Athens and the democracies/oligarchies of the region but it is kept in context of Sparta instead of being diverted.

The second disc contains three A&E shows on Troy. They all three say basically the same thing and sometimes even a bit contradictory between themselves. What that disc will leave you with is some knowledge about the pre-history of troy, Schlieman who rediscovered it in the late 1800s, and the looting done in Germany by the Russians after World War II. Schlieman's items are currently located in Russia. This disc let me unsatisfied.

Rating:
Summary: Not up to History Channel standard
Review: Sorry to say this two-pack is not up to History Channel usual high standard. DVD 1, on the Spartans (essentially leading up to Thermopylae) is good. However, DVD 2 is very disappointing. First of all, it has three documentaires, but in fact the first one ("The Odyssey of Troy") and the third one ("The Trojan City") are carbon copies of each other, which is somewhat of a fraud... Second, the information given by the historians is good, but the narrative itself is more than misleading -- it leaves the viewer with the impression that the Trojan Horse epic is part of Homer's Iliad. It isn't. Homer finishes the Iliad with the burial of Hector. It is in a "sequel" so to say, by Quintus of Smyrna, written many centuries later, that the story of the Trojan Horse is set down. It is also mentioned in other less complete writings, but certainly not in Homer.
To be fair, the second documentary in DVD 2 ("The Ancient Gold of Troy") is not bad, but does not correct the errors in the other "two" segements.