THE TROJAN

It is hard to identify the period in which Gerson has placed his story. Troy- already knowing the secret of mastering the use of iron -- is conquered by Greeks, still in the Age of Bronze (which places it before 1000 BC). David is king of the Jews and has brought them into a kind of unity, and this is a major factor in Gerson's story and presumably sets it around 970 BC. And yet Gerson has named some of his Trojan characters with names right out of Homer- Priam, Hector, etc., while identifying nothing else with the ninth city, now accepted as Homer's Troy. Be that as it may, this is an adventure story, told in somewhat modern lingo, and haphazardly put together. Hiram, king of Troy, escapes the conquering Greeks and forms a guerrilla stronghold in the hills. Tros, his Captain, is tricked aboard a Phoenician vessel, taken to Sheba on orders from a Sheban woman, known to him as slave to his fiancee -- and freed only when he marries her. Together with Sheban escorts, they go to Jerusalem, the new city of David, and win David's promise of aid for Troy. And- after many adventures, some of them linked with this very factor of the Trojans controlling iron and its use- and the Greeks wanting the secret- the various elements are united, and the Trojan guerrillas with the aid of their allies, the Israelites and the Shebans, retake the city. Tros finds he really loves the girl who had tricked him, and his fiancee, no longer enslaved, returns to Jerusalem with the Israelite officer, a convert to the One God... A story with unusual ingredients and fast pace of action, but the characters are two dimensional, the atmosphere synthetic, and the whole emerges as entertainment -- a time passer- but little more.