<P> These identifications were rejected by many scholars as being improbable or at least unprovable . However, Trevor Bryce championed them in his 1998 book The Kingdom of the Hittites, citing a piece of the Manapa - Tarhunda letter referring to the kingdom of Wilusa as beyond the land of the Seha River (the classical Caicus and modern Bakırçay) and near the land of "Lazpa" (Lesbos). Recent evidence also adds weight to the theory that Wilusa is identical to archaeological Troy . Hittite texts mention a water tunnel at Wilusa, and a water tunnel excavated by Korfmann, previously thought to be Roman, has been dated to around 2600 BC . The identifications of Wilusa with Troy and of the Ahhiyawa with Homer's Achaeans remain somewhat controversial but gained enough popularity during the 1990s to be considered majority opinion . That agrees with metrical evidence in the Iliad that the name _̓ Ιλιον (Ilion) for Troy was formerly Ϝιλιον (Wilion) with a digamma . </P> <P> Such was the fame of the Epic Cycle in Roman and Medieval times that it was built upon to provide a starting point for various founding myths of national origins . The most influential, Virgil's Aeneid, traces the journeys of the Trojan prince Aeneas, supposed ancestor of the founders of Rome and the Julio - Claudian dynasty . In a later era, the heroes of Troy, both those noted in Homer and those invented for the purpose, often continued to appear in the origin stories of the nations of Early Medieval Europe . The Roman de Troie was common cultural ground for European dynasties, as a Trojan pedigree was both gloriously ancient and established an equality with the ruling class of Rome . A Trojan pedigree could justify the occupation of parts of Rome's former territories . </P> <P> On that basis, the Franks filled the lacunae of their legendary origins with Trojan and pseudo-Trojan names: in Fredegar's 7th - century chronicle of Frankish history, Priam appears as the first king of the Franks . The Trojan origin of France was such an established article of faith that in 1714, the learned Nicolas Fréret was Bastilled for showing through historical criticism that the Franks had been Germanic, a sore point counter to Valois and Bourbon propaganda . </P> <P> In similar manner, Geoffrey of Monmouth reworked earlier material such as the Historia Brittonum to trace the legendary kings of the Britons from a supposed descendant of Aeneas called Brutus . </P>

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