Trojan War

• 1. Introduction

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  The Trojan War began, according to Greek mythology, not with an army or a fleet, but with a wedding invitation that was never sent. When Eris, the goddess of discord, was excluded from the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, she arrived anyway, carrying a golden apple inscribed with the single word "Kallistê" - "to the fairest." Three goddesses, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, each claimed it. The quarrel they could not settle among themselves they handed to a young shepherd on Mount Ida - who was, unknown to himself, a prince of Troy named Paris. His choice of Aphrodite's gift, the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, set in motion a war that would last ten years, consume heroes on both sides, and reshape the ancient Mediterranean world.

  The questions the Trojan War raises have never been fully answered. Did it actually happen? Where was Troy? Why does a story from around the twelfth or thirteenth century BC still command armies of scholars, poets, and filmmakers thousands of years later? The conflict is narrated across an extraordinary web of texts, from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey to the Epic Cycle to the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, to the Roman epics of Virgil and Ovid. No single text contains the whole story. The full account must be assembled, and some pieces still contradict each other.

  What follows is that assembled story: the judgment that started it, the heroes who fought and died in it, the ruse that ended it, and the long, troubled journeys home.

• 2. Gods, Plans, and Prophecies

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  Zeus had become king of the gods by overthrowing his father Cronus, who had himself overthrown his father Uranus. This pattern of sons displacing fathers haunted Zeus when he learned, from either Themis or Prometheus, that he too was fated to be overthrown by a son. A second prophecy complicated matters further: the sea-nymph Thetis, with whom Zeus had fallen in love, was destined to bear a son who would become greater than his father. To neutralise both threats, Zeus arranged for Thetis to marry a mortal king named Peleus, son of Aeacus. Her son would be great, but mortal.

  The child born from that union was Achilles. Two fates were foretold for him: a long, uneventful life ending in old age, or a short life on the battlefield that would earn him immortality through poetry. The prophet Calchas added a third piece: when Achilles was nine years old, he declared that Troy could not fall without Achilles's help. Thetis did everything she could to protect her son. Some accounts say she held him over fire each night to burn away his mortal parts and rubbed him with ambrosia during the day, until Peleus stopped her. Others say she bathed him in the Styx, the river that runs to the underworld, making him invulnerable everywhere the water touched - everywhere, that is, except the heel by which she held him.

  To keep him from the war, Thetis hid Achilles at the court of King Lycomedes in Skyros, disguised as a girl. There he had an affair with the king's daughter Deidamia and fathered a son named Neoptolemus. Odysseus eventually found him, either by blowing a horn and watching who seized a spear rather than flee, or by disguising himself as a merchant and watching which of the young women reached for weaponry instead of jewellery. Achilles was fifteen years old when he finally arrived at Aulis with the assembled Achaean forces.

• 3. Helen, the Oath, and the Fleet

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  Helen's father, Tyndareus, king of Sparta, faced a dangerous problem. His stepdaughter was said to be the most beautiful woman in the world, and her suitors were so numerous and so powerful that choosing any one of them risked violent retaliation from the rest. The solution came from Odysseus of Ithaca, who offered it in exchange for Tyndareus's support of his own suit towards Penelope: require every suitor to swear an oath to defend Helen's marriage, whoever her husband turned out to be. The suitors swore on the severed pieces of a horse.

  Tyndareus chose Menelaus. His reasons were partly practical: Menelaus had wealth and power, and had humbly sent his brother Agamemnon to petition on his behalf rather than coming himself. He had also promised Aphrodite a hecatomb, a sacrifice of one hundred oxen, if he won Helen - a promise he promptly forgot, earning the goddess's lasting enmity. Menelaus inherited the throne of Sparta with Helen as his queen.

  Paris arrived in Sparta under the guise of a diplomatic mission while Menelaus had left for Crete to bury his uncle Crateus. Helen fell in love with Paris and chose to leave with him. Their path to Troy was troubled: Hera, still furious over the judgment, sent storms that drove them to Phoenicia and Cyprus before they reached Troy. One tradition, attributed to the Sicilian poet Stesichorus, held that the real Helen never went to Troy at all - that the gods substituted a cloud likeness named Nephele in her place, while the true Helen was sent to Egypt.

  When Menelaus returned to find Helen gone, he went first to his brother Agamemnon and then to all the princes who had sworn the oath. Agamemnon led the muster. The Achaean fleet that gathered at Aulis numbered, according to the second book of the Iliad, 1186 pentekonters - ships with fifty rowers each. Thucydides, writing later, thought the number of ships was closer to 1200, estimating a total force somewhere between 70,000 and 130,000 men. Even before sailing, the expedition nearly collapsed: the winds died, and the prophet Calchas said the goddess Artemis was holding them back, punishing Agamemnon for killing a deer in a sacred grove and boasting he was a better hunter. The only remedy, Calchas said, was to sacrifice Agamemnon's daughter Iphigenia.

• 4. Nine Years of Siege

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  The first casualty on Trojan soil was Protesilaus, leader of the Phylaceans. Calchas had prophesied that the first Achaean to set foot on land would be the first to die. Odysseus found a way around the prophecy by throwing his own shield down and stepping onto it, so that while he leaped from his ship first, he technically landed on his shield rather than on Trojan ground. Protesilaus landed properly, killed several Trojans, and was cut down by Hector. In the second wave, Achilles killed Cycnus, son of Poseidon, and the Trojans retreated behind their walls.

  The walls were formidable enough that legend credited Poseidon and Apollo with having built them, during a year of forced service to King Laomedon of Troy. Troy was never completely encircled; the city maintained contact with the interior of Asia Minor throughout the war. Reinforcements arrived until the very end. The Achaeans controlled only the entrance to the Dardanelles, while the Trojans held the shortest crossing point at Abydos and Sestos.

  Thucydides believed that the lack of supplies drove the Achaeans to raid Troy's allies and farm the Thracian peninsula rather than maintain a continuous siege. Achilles and Ajax led separate raiding armies. According to Homer, Achilles conquered eleven cities and twelve islands. Apollodorus lists the cities he took: Lesbos, Phocaea, Colophon, Smyrna, Clazomenae, Cyme, and many others, including Hypoplacian Thebes and Lyrnessus. Among the captives from those cities were two women whose fate would reshape the final year of the war: Briseis, from Lyrnessus, who was awarded to Achilles, and Chryseis, from Hypoplacian Thebes, who was awarded to Agamemnon.

  Odysseus also contributed to the destruction behind the lines. He had never forgiven a man named Palamedes for threatening the life of his son - Palamedes had forced Odysseus to reveal he was feigning madness to avoid the war by placing Odysseus's infant son Telemachus in the path of his plough. Odysseus forged a letter from Priam to Palamedes and planted gold in Palamedes's quarters. When the letter and gold were discovered, Agamemnon had Palamedes stoned to death for treason. Palamedes's father Nauplius, denied justice, traveled the Achaean kingdoms and told the wives of the kings that their husbands were bringing Trojan concubines home to replace them. The most significant result was that Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra began an affair with Aegisthus, son of Thyestes - a betrayal whose consequences would outlast the war itself.

• 5. The Wrath of Achilles

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  The tenth year of the war began with a plague. A priest of Apollo named Chryses came to Agamemnon to ransom his daughter Chryseis. Agamemnon refused and insulted him. Chryses prayed to Apollo, who struck the Achaean camp with disease. After nine days the army forced Agamemnon to return Chryseis, but Agamemnon took Briseis from Achilles as compensation, declaring his own honour required it.

  Achilles withdrew from the fighting entirely. He asked his mother Thetis to intercede with Zeus, who agreed to let the Trojans prevail while Achilles sat out. The Trojans, under Hector, drove the Achaeans back to their camp and were stopped at the wall only by Poseidon. When Zeus's help allowed the Trojans to break into the camp and threaten to burn the ships, Achilles still refused to return, though he allowed his companion Patroclus to enter battle wearing his armour and lead his men.

  Patroclus drove the Trojans back to the walls of Troy itself before Apollo intervened to stop him. Then Hector killed Patroclus and stripped Achilles's armour from his body. When news of Patroclus's death reached Achilles, his grief turned into something closer to madness. He reconciled with Agamemnon, received Briseis back untouched, and Thetis brought him new armour forged by the god Hephaestus.

  Achilles returned to the battlefield and slaughtered Trojans in numbers the sources struggle to describe. He fought the river god Scamander. He chased the Trojan army back to the city walls. Outside the gates, Hector waited, held in place because Athena had tricked him. Achilles killed him, then dragged the body behind his chariot and refused to release it for burial. It was Hector's aged father Priam who eventually retrieved the body, guided through the Achaean camp at night by the god Hermes, appealing to Achilles as a father and a fellow mortal. The Iliad ends with Hector's funeral.

• 6. The Fall of Troy

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  After Hector's burial, the war continued with fresh arrivals on both sides. Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons and daughter of Ares, came to fight for the Trojans. She had accidentally killed her sister Hippolyte and was purified by Priam in exchange for her service. In one version Achilles killed Penthesilea; in another she killed him and he was briefly resurrected at Thetis's request. Either way, Achilles slew a common soldier named Thersites for mocking his grief over her death, sailed to Lesbos for ritual purification, and sacrificed to Apollo, Artemis, and Leto.

  Memnon of Ethiopia, son of Tithonus and Eos, arrived with an army from either Susa in Persia or the Caucasus, wearing armour also made by Hephaestus. He killed Antilochus, who threw himself between Memnon's blow and his own father Nestor. Zeus weighed the fates of Achilles and Memnon on his scales; the weight of Memnon's fate sank, and Achilles killed him. Achilles then entered the city of Troy itself - and the gods, deciding he had killed too many of their children, agreed it was time for him to die. Paris shot a poisoned arrow guided by Apollo that killed him. Both versions of this death - the arrow in the heel, or a knife to the back in the temple of Thymbraean Apollo - conspicuously deny the killer any honour; the sources agree that Achilles was never defeated on the open battlefield.

  A great battle raged over Achilles's body. Ajax held off the Trojans while Odysseus carried the corpse to safety. When Achilles's armour was offered to the smartest warrior, both Ajax and Odysseus claimed it. Agamemnon referred the question to Trojan prisoners, who judged that Odysseus had done more harm to Troy. Driven mad with grief, Ajax attacked a herd of cattle and their herdsmen under the delusion they were the Achaean leaders. When he came to his senses the next morning, he killed himself by falling onto the sword Hector had once given him in a gesture of mutual respect between enemies.

  The prophecies still unfulfilled were now collected and acted on. Troy could not fall without the bow of Heracles, which was with Philoctetes on Lemnos. Troy could not fall without Achilles's son Neoptolemus. Troy could not fall without the Palladium, the sacred statue of Athena that stood within the city. One by one these conditions were met. Philoctetes, his wound healed after ten years, shot Paris with the bow. Neoptolemus was retrieved from King Lycomedes's court in Skyros. Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, entered Troy and identified the Palladium's location with Helen's help; later he and Diomedes stole it.

  The final plan was Odysseus's. A giant hollow wooden horse, sacred to the Trojans, was built by a craftsman named Epeius under Athena's guidance, from the wood of a grove sacred to Apollo. It bore an inscription: "The Greeks dedicate this thank-offering to Athena for their return home." The hollow space was filled with soldiers led by Odysseus. The rest of the fleet burned its camp and sailed for the island of Tenedos. When the Trojans found the abandoned camp and the horse, they debated what to do. Cassandra warned against it. Laocoön warned against it. Serpents came from the sea and killed Laocoön, his sons, or both - the sources differ - and this omen was taken as confirmation that keeping the horse was divinely approved. At midnight, when the fleet returned from Tenedos, the soldiers inside the horse emerged, killed the guards, and opened the gates.

• 7. Aftermath and Long Journeys Home

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  The gods were furious at the desecration of their temples during the sack. Ajax the Lesser had raped the prophetess Cassandra on the altar of Athena itself while she clung to the goddess's statue. The Achaeans, urged by Odysseus, wanted to stone him for the sacrilege, but he fled to Athena's altar and was spared. The gods were not so forgiving: Athena borrowed one of Zeus's thunderbolts to destroy Ajax's ship on the return voyage. He managed to land on a rock before Poseidon split it and drowned him.

  Nauplius, whose son Palamedes had been wrongly executed, set up false signal lights at Cape Caphereus in Euboea and wrecked many of the returning ships in the darkness. Agamemnon made it back to Argos only to be killed by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, whose seduction she had agreed to after Nauplius's tour of the Achaean kingdoms. His son Orestes later avenged the murder but was pursued afterward by the Furies.

  Nestor, who had behaved well at Troy and taken no part in the looting, was the only hero who returned quickly and safely. Some of his men who survived the war later left Greece and colonised Metapontium in southern Italy. Menelaus was blown to Crete and Egypt before he could return; only five of his ships survived the storms. He reached Sparta with Helen eight years after leaving Troy. Philoctetes, driven from his home by political strife, founded the cities of Petilia, Old Crimissa, and Chone in Italy, and built a sanctuary there to Apollo the Wanderer.

  Odysseus's journey took ten years and is the subject of Homer's Odyssey. He encountered the Cyclops Polyphemus, descended into Hades, and lost all his men when they ate the cattle of the sun-god Helios on the island of Thrinacia. He spent seven years with the nymph Calypso before the gods sent him home on a raft. Back in Ithaca, disguised as a beggar and recognised only by his dog Argos, who died on seeing him, he found his wife Penelope besieged by suitors. With his son Telemachus and a swineherd named Eumaeus, he killed all the suitors except two: Medon, who had treated Penelope well, and a singer named Phemius who had been forced to assist them against his will.

  The Trojan prince Aeneas, son of Aphrodite, led a group of survivors to Italy - carrying with him the Lares and Penates of Troy, the household gods the historical Romans claimed to preserve as guarantees of their own city's security. His wanderings, his affair with Queen Dido of Carthage, and the founding of the settlement of Alba Longa are told in Virgil's Aeneid. The family of Julius Caesar traced its descent from Aeneas through his son Iulus, and Augustus promoted the Trojan origins of Rome as propaganda during his reign. Three hundred years after Aeneas, in the more famous tradition, Romulus founded Rome after killing his brother Remus - and the two origin stories, one Trojan and one Roman, coexisted without resolution in Roman memory.

• 8. History Behind the Legend

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  Most classical Greeks treated the Trojan War as historical fact, though many doubted Homer's details. Thucydides considered the war real but was skeptical that 1186 ships had actually sailed. Around the year 100 AD, Dio Chrysostom argued that the war had happened but that the Greeks had lost it and concealed their defeat in the mythological tradition. By around 1870 in Western Europe, scholarly opinion had shifted: the war was generally regarded as fiction and Troy as a city that had never existed.

  Then Heinrich Schliemann changed the terms of the debate. In 1868, Schliemann met the American diplomat Frank Calvert, who was already conducting excavations at a site called Hisarlık in what is now northwestern Turkey, near the Dardanelles. Calvert convinced Schliemann that Hisarlık was Troy. Schliemann conducted excavations there that drew international attention, and today most scholars accept Hisarlık as the location of ancient Troy. The city now designated Troy VIIa, destroyed around 1180 BC, is currently regarded as the most likely candidate for the Troy that Homer describes; this followed a shift in scholarly opinion after the excavation campaign of 1988.

  Hittite and Egyptian texts from the relevant period have added another layer of evidence. The Tawagalawa letter, dated to around 1250 BC and addressed to the king of a realm the Hittites called Ahhiyawa (identified by many scholars with Achaea, or Greece), contains a striking line: "Now as we have reached agreement on the matter of Wilusa over which we went to war." Wilusa is widely identified with Ilios, another name for Troy. The Alaksandu treaty, dated to around 1280 BC, names the king of a city in the Assuwa confederation as Alaksandu - a name strikingly similar to Alexander, Paris's other name in the Iliad.

  In November 2001, geologist John C. Kraft and classicist John V. Luce presented findings from investigations begun in 1977, comparing the present geology of the Hisarlık region with landscape descriptions in the Iliad and in Strabo's Geographica. They found the topography consistent with the ancient sources, though they acknowledged the consistency could be coincidental. What most scholars now accept is a middle position: the Trojan War is almost certainly grounded in historical events, probably a series of Bronze Age Greek expeditions against cities in the Assuwa region, but Homer's account is not a reliable report of any single conflict. The dates various ancient scholars assigned to the fall of Troy ranged from 1334 BC to 1135 BC, with the dates given by Eratosthenes, 1194-1184 BC, preferred by those who correlate the legend with the archaeological evidence of Troy VIIa's destruction.