The Odyssey and the
Trojan War
Feraco
English 9
15 December 2009
For the Fairest
The saga begins with jealousy and pointless
anger: Eris, the Goddess of Discord, throws the
apple into the banquet, and Aphrodite, Athena,
and Hera grow obsessed with it
 This proves, once again, that the gods are just as
prone to failure as humans – the jealousy
Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite feel over being
named “the fairest” seems unworthy of
divinities
 Not only are such feelings shallow, but the
consequences of their dispute are ruinous to
men
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Bad Choices
Paris ignores the fact that he’s already with
someone (Oenone) and chooses Aphrodite’s
temptation (the most beautiful woman) over
Athena’s (crushing the Greeks) and Hera’s
(dominion over Europe and Asia)
 This is short-sighted and selfish – he isn’t
thinking through his actions
 This sets the tone for the rest of the story – and
even carries through to The Odyssey, to an
extent
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Selfishness
Helen was so beautiful that Tyndareus (her “mother’s
husband” – she’s another one of Zeus’s offspring) had
to force her suitors to make a pledge – that each would
swear to support and defend whoever he had chosen
for her hand
 It’s a selfish choice – each man accepts because he
hopes he’ll win Helen and doesn’t want to have to
fight off the rest any more than Tyndareus wants to
 Tyndarus eventually chooses Menelaus (Agamemnon’s
brother) to be King of Sparta
 When Paris makes his selfish choice, Helen ends up
with him, and the clash of selfish desire leads to war
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Nowhere to Hide
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Two men – Odysseus and Achilles – try to avoid the
war
Both attempt deception when they fear honesty
won’t do the trick
Odysseus poisons his own land – salting the earth –
as part of the deception
Achilles hides himself in women’s clothing
Both men are unmasked by fundamental desires –
Odysseus to protect Telemachus, and Achilles’s
interest in weapons over the jewelry (Odysseus
actually lays the trap for him)
Interestingly, however, it’s Odysseus’s ability to
hide that helps turn the war in favor of the Greeks
Sacrifice
At Artemis’s bidding, Aulis/Aeolus leaves the Greek
fleet unable to fight – the North Wind blows
 The North Wind was Odysseus’s downfall as well –
now, just as later, it’s punishing humans for an
unnecessarily violent action (although Artemis is
responsible here instead of Zeus)
 In order to get around it, the Greeks have to appease
Artemis, who’s been angered by the killing of a hare
and her young – so they capture and kill Agamemnon’s
own beloved daughter, Iphigenia
 They trick her by convincing her that she’s about to be
married to Achilles, then kill her as she cries out for the
very father who decided to allow her to die
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Another Bad Choice
This satisfies Artemis, but it’s a heartless,
inhuman choice – Agamemnon’s been ordered
to fight by Menelaus, and his “ambition to
conquer Troy” proves greater than his love for
his family
 Compare Agamemnon’s choice to Odysseus’s
actions regarding his own family, and it looks
even worse

Always About a Girl
The battle is evenly matched for nine years
 Then Agamemnon makes a thoughtless choice –
forgetting the wife at home (who will be
responsible for his death later), he decides to
keep Chryseis for his own after the Greeks carry
her off
 Chryseis is the daughter of Apollo’s priest, and
this crime against the priest’s family angers
Apollo so greatly that he rains sickness and
death upon the Greeks
 Achilles stands up, allows the soothsayer to tell
everyone that Chryseis must be returned, and
unites the men in support against Agamemnon
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Consequences
An interesting parallel to Helen’s capture
 Also odd that Agamemnon would steal
someone else’s daughter so soon after allowing
his own to be murdered
 Even worse, Agamemnon decides to steal
Achilles’s “prize of honor” – Briseis
 Achilles lets the men know that he’ll make
Agamemnon pay
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Zeus’s Wandering Heart
This spurs his mother, Thetis, to go to Olympus
to plead for the Trojans’ success
 The gods are split, with Hera supporting the
Greeks and Zeus preferring the Trojans
(although he tried to stay neutral, he finds it
hard to resist the sea nymph, which only angers
Hera more)
 Zeus convinces Agamemnon in a dream to
attack, and he does so without Achilles’s help
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It Was Almost Over…
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The attack leads to a confrontation between
Menelaus and Paris – Menelaus wins, and is about
to kill Paris before Aphrodite interferes (thus
prolonging the conflict)
The Trojans hated Paris, and are actually willing to
let Menelaus kill him – but no one knew where
Aphrodite had taken him
Then the Trojans prove willing to give Helen back,
in the interest of fairness – but Hera is bent on
ruining Troy out of jealousy (hating that Zeus is
listening to Thetis), and sends Athena down to
interfere
Athena convinces Pandarus to shoot Menelaus,
who survives – and the conflict rages anew
It Wasn’t Meant to Be
The gods’ continued interference in the Trojan war
raises the same kind of questions about fate and
control that we pursued a long time ago
 It looks for all the world like the men are pawns in the
gods’ bizarre games, and the divinities act without any
thought to the consequences of their actions; they’re
like children chasing candy
 Aeneas is saved, Ares is wounded, Athena denies a
righteous prayer – it’s all so arbitrary
 Ultimately, that’s the most frustrating aspect of both
the Trojan War and The Odyssey – both are tales of
preventable mistakes
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The Loss of a Friend
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Achilles refuses to rejoin the battle – he’s still mad about
Briseis
He eventually rejoins when Patrolochus is killed and Hector
takes his armor.
He won’t fight on behalf of love of country, but he will
fight for personal vengeance (another key aspect of the
war)
Hector’s death is entirely dishonorable – Athena cheats,
and an honorable fighter loses
Achilles defiles Hector’s body (remember, the body is
important to the Greeks – Odysseus will have to go back to
Aeaea to bury Elpinor), but Priam – the father – appeals to
Achilles to win his son’s body back
Achilles agrees, and the war ceases for nine days (remember
nine years?) while the Trojans mourn the loss of their hero
The Death of Heroes
Paris, always the coward, shoots at Achilles – and
Apollo guides the arrow into Achilles’ heel (the only
spot Thetis had missed while dipping him in the River
Styx to make him immortal), killing him
 Soon thereafter, Ajax kills himself in shame over his
own rage (having felt dishonored when Odysseus won
Achilles’s armor)
 The loss of two great heroes wounds the Greeks, but
Odysseus captures a prophet who tells them that
victory will meet them when they use Hercules’s bow
and arrows
 Philoctetes has them; he’s been abandoned on an
island due to his wounds, but Odysseus and others
bring him back to be healed
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Betrayal?
Philoctetes shoots Paris, and he begs to be returned to
Oenone
 She had once told him she knew of a drug that could
cure anything
 When he returns to beg for her help, she refuses to
forgive him, watches him die, and commits suicide
 How different is this from what we’ll see from
Penelope and Odysseus?
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Ooooh…a Horse!
The Greeks construct the horse, and Odysseus and
others hide inside it
 The Greeks hide behind the nearest island
 Sinon leaves himself for capture, and his story
(designed by Odysseus) convinces the Trojans that the
Greeks are gone
 Moreover, the horse is supposedly a gift to Athena,
designed to turn the tides of war in the Greeks’ favor,
and its immense size is supposed to dissuade the
Trojans from taking it into the city
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Not Quite That Wonderful
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The Trojans, of course, find this irresistible, and
claim it as a gift left in surrender
Laocoon tries to warn them, but the gods interfere
again and kill him
This is the final “convincer” – the Trojans, desiring
Athena’s patronage, take the horse inside their
walls
After that, it’s all over but the shouting – the
sacrifices of Astaynax and Hecuba’s daughter end
the war that essentially began with the sacrifice of
Agamemnon’s daughter
Parallels
 Parallels
Odyssey
between the Trojan War and The
 Relationships between fathers and
 Honor, faithfulness, and deceit
 The arbitrary will of the gods
 The justification of awful deeds
 Ignorance of consequences
 Sacrifice and suffering
 The
terrifying power of love
sons
Interpretive!
1) What do the myths show us about the human race of long
ago?
 2) Could the myths be set in a different time and place and still
have the same effect?
 3) What were the original writers of the myths (not Hamilton)
trying to show by having Zeus fall in love with so many mortal
women?
 4) How did the persona of Zeus change over the course of the
myths?
 5) What does the behavior of Hera tell you about her?
 6) What did the new belief in Dionysus show about the Greeks
of the time?
 7) Why were Aphrodite, Hera, and Pallas Athena willing to
accept the judgment of a mortal man, Paris?
 8) What does Achilles’ treatment of Hector’s body tell you
about Achilles?
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