The Trojan War was a war waged, according to legend, against the city of Troy in Asia Minor by the armies of Greece, following the kidnapping (or elopement) of Helen of Sparta by Paris of Troy. The war figures centrally in Greek mythology and was narrated in a cycle of epic poems of which only two, the Iliad and the Odysseyof Homer, survive intact. The Iliad describes an episode late in this war, and the Odyssey describes the journey home of one of the Greek leaders. Other parts of the story, and different versions, are elaborated later Greek poets, and by the Roman poet Vergil in his Aeneid.
Ancient Greeks believed that the events Homer related were basically true. They believed that this war took place in the 13th or 12th century BC, and that Troy was located in the vicinity of the Dardanelles in what is now north-western Turkey. By modern times both the war and the city were widely believed to be mythological. In 1870, however, the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann excavated a site in this area which he believed to be the site of Troy, and at least some archaeologists agree. There remains no certain evidence that Homer's Troy ever existed, still less that any of the events of the Trojan War cycle ever took place. Most historians now believe that the Homeric stories are a fusion of various stories of sieges and expeditions by the Greeks of the Bronze Age or Mycenean period, and do not describe actual events. Those who think that the stories of the Trojan War derive from some specific actual conflict usually date it to between 1200 and 1300 B.C.
The Trojan War of Greek myth
Background
Peleus and Thetis, the apple, and the judgment
Zeus became king of the gods by overthrowing his father Kronos; Kronos in turn had overthrown his father Ouranos. Zeus came to learn of a prophecy that he himelf would be overthrown by a son of his. (Within the extent of Greek myth, though, this never happened.) Another prophecy said of the sea-nymph Thetis, with whom Zeus had an affair, that her son would be greater than his father. Possibly for one or both of these reasons, Thetis was betrothed upon Zeus' orders to a now-elderly human king, Peleus. To Peleus and Thetis a son was born, named Achilles. It was prophecied that he would die, young, at Troy. Hoping to protect him, when he was an infant his mother bathed him in the river Styx, making him invincible everywhere except the heel by which she held him. He grew up to be the greatest of all mortal warriors.
All of the gods were invited to Peleus and Thetis' wedding, except Eris, or Discord. Insulted, she attended invisibly and cast down upon the table a golden apple on which were incribed the words Kallisti, (To the fairest one). The apple was claimed by Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. They quarreled bitterly over it, and none of the other gods would venture an opinion favouring one contender for fear of earning the enmity of the other two. Eventually, Zeus ordered the matter to be settled by the judgment of Paris, the youngest prince of Troy, who was being raised as a shepherd because of a prophecy that he would be the downfall of Troy. Athena offered Paris wisdom, skill in battle, and the abilities of the greatest warriors; Hera offered him political power and control of all of Asia, and Aphrodite offered him the love of the most beautiful woman in the world. Paris awarded the apple to Aphrodite, and returned to Troy.
The abduction of Helen
The most beautiful woman in the world was Helen, one of the daughters of Tyndareus, king of Sparta. Her mother was Leda, who had been seduced by Zeus in the form of a swan; accounts differ over which of Leda's four children were fathered by Zeus and which by Tyndareus. Helen had scores of suitors, and her father was unwilling to choose one for fear the others would retaliate violently. Finally one of the suitors, Odysseus of Ithaca, proposed a plan. He made all the men promise to defend the marriage of Helen and whomever she chose. She chose Menelaus, who humbly did not petition her himself but sent his brother Agamemnon on his behalf. The two brothers had been living at Tyndareus' court since being exiled from their homeland of Argos after their father, Atreus, was killed and had his throne usurped by his brother Thyestes and Thyestes' son Aigisthus. Menelaus inherited Tyndareus' throne of Sparta, with Helen as his queen, and Agamemnon maried Helen's sister Clytemnestra and took back the throne of Argos.
On a diplomatic mission to Sparta Paris fell in love with Helen and, with Aphrodite's help, kidnapped or seduced her and took her back to Troy as his wife. All the kings and princes of Greece were called upon to make good their oaths and retreive her.
The marshalling of the forces
Odysseus had by this time married Penelope and fathered a son, Telemachus. In order to avoid the war, he feigned madness, and sowed his fields with salt. Palamedes outwitted him by putting his infant son in front of the plough, and Odysseus turned aside, unwilling to kill his son, and so revealed his sanity and joined the war.
Calchas the oracle had stated that the Greeks would not win without Achilles. His motherThetis, knowing that Achilles would die if he went to Troy, disguised him as a woman in the court of king Lycomedes in Scyros, disguised as a woman. There he had an affair with the king's daughter Deidamea, resulting in a child, Neoptolemus. Odysseus, Ajax the Greater, and Achilles's tutor Phoenix went to retrieve Achilles. According to one story they blew a horn, and Achilles revealed himself by seizing a spear to fight intruders rather than fleeing. According to another, they diguised themselves as merchants bearing trinkets and weaponry, and Achilles was marked out from the other women by admiring the wrong goods.
Eventually, a fleet of more than a thousand ships was gathered, commended by Agamemnon. But when they reached Aulis, the winds ceased. The prophet Calchis stated that the goddess Artemis was punishing Agamemnon for killing a sacred deer (or a deer in a sacred grove) and boasting the he was a better hunter than she. The only way to appease Artemis, he said, was to sacrifice Agamemnon's daughter Iphigenia. According to some versions, he did so, but others claim that he sacrificed a deer in her place, or nothing, and that Iphigenia was taken by Artemis to the Crimea to prepare others for sacrifice to her. Hesiod said she became the goddess Hecate.
The Greeks also brought the bones of Pelops, father of Atreus and grandfather of Agamemnon and Menelaus to help them win the war. An oracle said they would be necessary to win.
The War
When the Greeks left for the Trojan War, they accidentally stopped in Mysia, ruled by King Telephus. In the battle, Achilles wounded Telephus, who killed Thersander. The wound would not heal and Telephus asked an oracle who claimed "he that wounded shall heal".
Telephus went to Aulis, and either pretended to be a beggar, asking Achilles to help heal his wound, or kidnapped Orestes and held him for ransom, demanding the wound be healed. Achilles refused, claiming to have no medical knowledge. Odysseus reasoned that the spear had inflicted the wound and the spear must be able to heal it. Pieces of the spear were scraped off onto the wound, and Telephus was healed.
Philoctetes was Heracles' friend and, because he lit Heracles' funeral pyre when no one else would, he received Heracles' bow and arrows. He sailed with seven ships full of men to the Trojan War, where he was planning on fighting for the Greeks. They stopped on Chryse for supplies and Philoctetes was bitten by a snake. The wound festered and smelled horrible; Odysseus advised and the Atreidae ordered Philoctetes to stay on Lemnos. Medon took control Philoctetes' men. Philoctetes stayed alone on Lemnos for ten years.
Arrival
An oracle had prophesied that the first Greek to walk on the land after stepping off a ship in the Trojan War would be the first to die. Protesilaus, leader of the Phylaceans, fulfilled this prophesy. His wife, Laodamia, followed him to his death. Alternatively, Hector killed Protesilaus and Laodamia killed herself in grief. After Protesilaus' death, his brother, Podarces, joined the war in his place.
The Greeks beseiged Troy for nine years. There were occasional skirmishes, both with Troy and her allies. At one point Greek forces sacked a nearby town and Agamemnon took as his slave-girl Chryseis, daughter of Chryses, a priest of Apollo. When Chryses tried to buy her back he was rebuked, so he prayed to Apollo to punish the Greeks, and the army was struck by a plague.
The events of the Iliad begin at this point.
An oracle told Agamemnon he must give up Chryseis. Furious at this, and at Achilles who had guarnteed the oracle his own protection, Agamemnon took Achilles' concubine Briseis as his own. Achilles and Agamemnon argued and Achilles refused to fight any longer. Although the GReeks were destined to win the war, Achilles begged his mother Thetis to intervene with Zeus and ensure that the Greeks did badly until Agamemnon apologized to Achilles. The next day the Greeks were badly beaten in open battle, and all of the major warriors but Ajax were eventually injured to seriously to continue. The Trojans, led by Hector, advanced steadily on the GReek position.
Seeing the danger, Achilles let his comrade Patroclus borrow his armor, and lead his troops into battle. Patroclus was killed by Hector who then took Achilles' armor. Maddened with grief, Achilles swore revenge. He donned new armor from Hephaestus brought to him by Thetis, his mother, and killed Hector, then dragged his body from his chariot around Troy three times. he refused to return it to the Trojans for funeral rites until Priam peronally came and begged to have it back, at which point he relented, and a truce was called for twelve days while Hector was buried.
The narrative of the Iliad ends here.
During the Trojan War, Xanthus, a magical horse, was rebuked by Achilles for allowing Patroclus to be killed. Xanthus responded by saying that a god had killed Patroclus and a god would soon kill Achilles too. The Erinyes struck the horse dumb.
The Death Of Achilles
Shortly after the death of Hector, Achilles defeated Memnon of Ethiopia, Cycnus of Colonae and the Amazonian warrior Penthesilia (with whom Achilles also had an affair in some versions). He was very soon killed by Paris- either by an arrow to the heel, or in an older version by a knife to the back (or heel), while visiting a Trojan princess, Polyxena, during a truce. Both versions conspicuously deny the killer any sort of valor, saying Achilles remains undefeated on the battlefield. His bones were mingled with those of Patroclus, and funeral games were held. Like Ajax; he is represented as living after his death in the island of Leuke at the mouth of the Danube.
Achilles' armor was the object of a feud between Odysseus and Ajax. They competed for it and Odysseus won. Ajax went mad with grief and vowed to kill his comrades; he started killing cattle (thinking they were Greek soldiers), and then himself.
The Greeks captured Helenus, son of King Priam of Troy, a prophet, and tortured him until he told them under what circumstances they could take Troy. Helenus said they would win if they retrieved Heracles' arrows (which were in Philoctetes's possession); steal the Trojan Palladium (they accomplished this with the Trojan Horse; or Odysseus and Diomedes did so one night) and persuade Achilles' son (Neoptolemus) to join the war. Neoptolemus was hiding from the war at Scyros but the Greeks retrieved him. Alternatively, he told them that they could win if Troilius, Helenus' half-brother, son of Apollo and Hecuba, was killed before he turned twenty. Achilles ambushed Troilius.
Odysseus and Neoptolemus retrieved Philoctetes from Lemnos. Philoctetes' wound was healed by Machaon or Asclepius. Philoctetes then killed Paris.
Diomedes almost killed Aeneas in battle but Aphrodite, Aeneas' mother, saved him. Diomedes wounded Aphrodite and she dropped her son, fleeing to Mt. Olympus. Aeneas was then eneveloped in a cloud by Apollo, who took him to Pergamos, a sacred spot in Troy. Artemis healed Aeneas there.
Later in the war, Diomedes fought with Hector and saw Ares, the war-god, fighting on the Trojans' side. Diomedes called for his soldiers to fall back slowly. Hera, Ares' mother, saw Ares' interference and asked Zeus, Ares' father, for permission to drive Ares away from the battlefield. Hera encouraged Diomedes to attack Ares and he threw his spear at the god. Athena drove the spear into Ares' body and he bellowed in pain and fled to Mt. Olympus, forcing the Trojans to fall back.
The Trojan Horse
The Greek siege of Troy had lasted for ten years. The Greeks devised a new ruse - a giant hollow wooden horse. It was built by Epeius and filled with Greek warriors led by Odysseus. The rest of the Greek army appeared to leave and the Trojans accepted the horse as a peace offering. A Greek spy, Sinon, convinced the Trojans the horse was a gift despite the warnings of Laocoon and Cassandra. The Trojans celebrated hugely and when the Greeks emerged from the horse the city was in a drunken stupor. The Greek warriors opened the city gates to allow the rest of the army access and the city was ruthlessly pillaged.
The Death of Palamedes
Odysseus never forgave Palamedes for sending him to the Trojan War (Palamedes exposed Odysseus as a fake when he pretended to be insane). When Palamedes advised the Trojans to return home, Odysseus accused him of being a traitor and forged false evidence and found a fake witness to testify against him. Palamedes was stoned to death.
The Aftermath
The ghost of Achilles appeared to the survivors of the war, demanding Polyxena, the Trojan princess, be sacrificed before anybody could leave. Neoptolemus did so.
According to the Odyssey, Menelaus' fleet was blown by storms to Crete and Egypt where they were unable to sail away because the wind was calm. Menelaus had to catch Proteus, a shape-shifting sea god to find out what sacrifices to which gods he would have to make to guarantee safe passage. Proteus also told Menelaus that he was destined for Elysium (Heaven) after his death. Menelaus returned to Sparta with Helen.
Queen Hecuba of Troy was enslaved by the Achaeans.
Lycaon was enslaved by Achilles. He was later killed trying to escape.
After the war, Idomeneus' ship hit a horrible storm. Idomeneus promised Poseidon that he would sacrifice the first living thing he saw when he returned home if Poseidon would save his ship and crew. The first living thing was his son, whom Idomeneus duly sacrificed. The gods were angry at his murder of his own son and they sent him in exile to Calabria in Italy. (Virgil III, 400)
In an alternate version, his own subjects on Crete sent him in exile because he brought a plague with him from Troy. He fled to Calabria, and then Colophon, Asia Minor, where he died.
Since Antenor, Priam's brother-in-law, had supported giving Helen back to the Greeks, he was spared.
Cassandra was raped by Ajax the lesser, then taken as a concubine by Agamemnon.
Neoptolemus took Andromache and Helenus as slaves and married Andromache.
Creusa was killed escaping Troy. Her husband, Aeneas, son Ascanius, with his trumpeter Misenus, father Anchises, healer Iapyx, all the Lares and Penates and Mimas as a guide, escaped to Italy, taking many Trojan survivors with them. Aeneas went on to establish a settlement at Alba Longa near the mouth of the Tiber in Italy, and his descendants went on to found [[Rome, Italy|Rome.
The Trojan War In Art
The story of the siege of Troy provided inspiration for many pieces of art, most famously Homer's Iliad, set in the last year of the siege. Some of the others include Troades by Euripides, Troilus & Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer and Les Troyens by Hector Berlioz (1855-1858).
Participants
Participants on the Greek Side
- Acamas
- Achilles
- Agamemnon
- Ajax the great
- Ajax the lesser
- Alcmaeon
- Antilochus
- Asclepius
- Athena
- Automedon
- Canopus
- Diomedes
- Glaucus
- Epeius
- Eteoneus
- Eumelus
- Euryalus
- Eurybatus
- Eurypylus
- Halaesus
- Hera
- Idomeneus
- Machaon
- Medon
- Menelaus
- Meriones
- Neoptolemus
- Nestor
- Nireus
- Odysseus
- Patroclus
- Philoctetes
- Podarces
- Polidarius
- Polypoetes
- Scamander
- Sinon
- Stentor
- Sthenelus
- Teucer
- Thersander
- Thersites
- Xanthus
Participants on the Trojan Side
- Aeneas
- Ainia
- Anchises
- Andromache
- Antibrote
- Antiphus
- Aphrodite
- Ares
- Ascanius
- Astyanax
- Cassandra
- Cebriones
- Cleite
- Coroebus
- Cycnus
- Deiphobus
- Dolon
- Euphorbus
- Eurypylus
- Eurytion
- Hector
- Hecuba
- Helenus
- Hicetaon
- Iapyx
- Lycaon
- Memnon
- Mygdon
- Pandarus
- Paris
- Penthesilea
- Phorcys
- Polites
- Poludamas
- Polyxena
- Poseidon
- Priam
- Rhesus
- Sarpedon
- Telamon
- Tenes
- Teucer
- Troilius
- Two sons of Merops (Adrastus and Amphius)
Armies on the Greek Side
Armies on the Trojan Side
Participant/Killer
| Participant | Killer |
|---|---|
| Achilles | Paris or Penthesilea |
| Ajax | Suicide |
| Antilochus | Memnon |
| Antiphus | Agamemnon |
| Ascalaphus | ??? |
| Astyanax | Neoptolemus |
| Cebriones | Patroclus |
| Cycnus | Achilles |
| Deiphobus | Menelaus |
| Dolon | Odysseus and Diomedes |
| Eurypylus | Neoptolemus |
| Hector | Achilles |
| Medon | Aeneas |
| Patroclus | Hector |
| Penthesilea | Achilles |
| Phorcys | Ajax the great |
| Polites | Neoptolemus |
| Polyxena | Neoptolemus |
| Priam | Neoptolemus |
| Protesilaus | Hector |
| Sarpedon | Patroclus |
| Thersander | Telephus |
| Thersites | ??? |
| Troilius | Achilles |
| Two sons of Merops (Adrastus and Amphius) |
Diomedes |
Unknown Side
- Ascalaphus
- Meges, commander of the Epeans or Dulichians.
- Mentes, King of the Cicones
- Mentes, King of the Taphians
External link
- The Trojan War: an illustrated companion has many excellent reproductions of classical art representing the Trojan War
- Was There a Trojan War? Maybe so. From Archeology, a publication of the Archeological Institute of America. May/June 2004
- The Myth of Achilles and Patroclus The lives of Achilles and Patroclus, a hagiography reconstructed from ancient fragments.