The Legend of the Trojan War
No story in western culture, with the exceptions of the Old Testament and the
story
of Jesus Christ, has inspired artists more than the Trojan War. It was the
fundamental narrative in Greek education and a prime reference point for literature
throughout antiquity. From this origin it shaped and influenced humanistic literature up
to the present day, providing the inspiration for heroic tragedy, fanciful romances, satire,
erotic tales, and more.
Unlike the Old Testament narratives, which over time became codified in a single
authoritative version, the story of the Trojan War exists as a large collection of different
versions of (more or less) the same events. As a result there is no single version that
defines the "correct" or canonical sequence of events. Below is a summary of most of the
elements that comprise the Tale of Troy; keep in mind that no single work recognizes
every aspect of the myth and many works contradict events narrated in other works.
1. It was Laomedon, the descendent of Zeus through Dardanus, who first walled off the
citadel of Troy. He persuaded Poseidon and Apollo, who Zeus had banished from Mount
Olympus because of their disobedience, to build the wall. They invited the mortal man
Aeacus (the son of Zeus and the grandfather of
Achilles) to assist them, since destiny had decreed that Troy would one day be captured
in a place built by human hands. After many months of hard work the walls were finished,
but when Apollo and Poseidon asked for their payment, Laomedon refused and drove
them away, hurling threats and insults towards the immortals. In revenge, Apollo sent a
plague over the land and Poseidon loosed a sea-monster against Troy. When Laomedon
consulted an oracle on how to rid his land of these afflictions, the oracle replied that
Laomedon had to sacrifice his own daughter, Hesione, to the sea-monster. Without
hesitation, Laomedon had Hesione chained to a rock. She lay trembling with fear,
awaiting her grizzly end.
2. By chance, Heracles, the son of Zeus and the most powerful mortal, was in the vicinity
and pledged to save Hesione after Laomedon had promised him a team of matchless
horses, which Zeus had given to Laomedon’s grandfather Tros. Heracles fought and
killed the sea-monster and freed Hesione, but once again Laomedon broke his promise
and refused to give Heracles the horses. Heracles, Peleus (son of Aeacus and father of
Achilles), and Telamon (brother of Peleus, the uncle of Achilles, and father of
Telamonian Ajax and Teucer), sacked Troy and killed Laomedon and his sons, but spared
the youngest Podarces (swift-foot) in exchange for a beautiful veil which Hesione herself
had embroidered with gold. Heracles then gave Hesione to Telamon who carried her
away to Salamis in Greece. From that day on, Podarces became known as 'Priam', which
means "bought or "ransomed".
3. Priam had a son from his wife Hekabe (or Hecuba), who dreamed that she had given
birth to a flaming torch. Cassandra, the prophetic daughter of Priam, foretold that the
newborn son, Paris (also called Alexandros), should be killed at birth or else he would
destroy the city. Paris was taken out to be killed, but he was rescued by shepherds and
grew up in the fields by Mount Ida. One day Hector, the son of Priam, traveled to the
fields to secure animals for a festival. When he took one of Paris’ favorite heifers, Paris
returned to Troy with the intention of demanding the return of his favored animal. While
in Troy, Paris competed in the athletic games, was recognized, and returned to the royal
family.4. Meanwhile... Peleus (father of Achilles) fell in love with the sea nymph Thetis,
who had also roused the interest of Zeus. But Zeus learned of an ancient prophecy that
Thetis would give birth to a son greater than his father, so he gave his divine blessing to
the marriage of Peleus and Thetis.
All the gods were invited to the celebration except, by a deliberate oversight, Eris, the
goddess of strife. She came anyway, bringing a golden apple, upon which was written
"For the fairest" (‘kal ̇’). When Eris tossed the apple in among the partygoers, Hera (Zeus’
wife), Aphrodite (Zeus’ daughter), and Athena (Zeus’ daughter) all made a claim for the
apple and they appealed to Zeus for to decide their dispute. Zeus refused to adjudicate a
beauty contest between his wife and two of his daughters and the task of choosing a
winner fell to Paris (while he was still a
herdsman on Mount Ida, outside Troy). The goddesses each promised Paris a wonderful
prize if he would select her: Hera offered dominion over Asia, Athena offered military
glory and wisdom, and Aphrodite offered him the most beautiful woman in the world as
his wife. In the famous “Judgment of Paris”, Paris gave the apple to Aphrodite.
5. It so happened that the most beautiful woman in the world was Helen, the daughter of
Leda and Zeus. Leda’s mortal husband, Tyndareus, fearing that Helen’s beauty would be
the cause of calamity for his family, would not agree to give her in marriage until each of
her suitors promised that they would
collectively avenge any insult to her. After the suitors swore this oath, Helen chose to
marry Menelaus, King of Sparta. Her twin sister Klytaimnestra (Clytemnestra), born at
the same time as Helen but not a daughter of Zeus, married Agamemnon, King of Argos
and brother of Menelaus. Agamemnon was the most powerful leader in Hellas (Greece).
6. As time passed, Paris returned to the royal family at Troy (see 3 above) and his
judgment of the goddesses was forgotten. Eventually he journeyed to Sparta as a Trojan
ambassador. Menelaus entertained Paris and then left his house under Paris’ protection
when he was compelled to travel abroad on business. Paris and Helen fell in love and left
Sparta together, taking with them a vast amount of the city's treasure. Some stories
claimed that the real Helen never went to Troy, but was carried off to Egypt by the god
Hermes, and Paris took her double to Troy. The Spartans pursued them but could not
catch the lovers. When the Spartans learned that Helen and Paris had returned to Troy,
they sent a delegation, consisting of Odysseus, King of Ithaca, and Menelaus, the
wronged husband, to Troy to demand the return of Helen and the treasure. The Trojans
refused to return Helen and contemplated killing the ambassadors but Anchises, the
father of Aeneas, intervened to save the Greeks. Having returned to Greece, Menelaus
appealed to the oath that Tyndareus had forced Helen’s suitors to take (see 5 above), and
the Greeks assembled at Aulis and began to prepare to depart for Troy.
7. Calchas, the prophet with the Greek army, told Agamemnon and the other leaders that
they could not conquer Troy without Achilles, the son of Peleus and Thetis. To protect
Achilles from death in battle Thetis had bathed the infant in the waters of the river Styx,
which conferred invulnerability to any weapon. Achilles was then educated as a young
man by Chiron, a centaur (half man and half horse). When the Greeks began to assemble
an army, Achilles’ parents hid him at Scyros disguised as a girl. While there he met
Deidameia, and they had a son Neoptolemos (also called Pyrrhus). Odysseus traveled to
Scyros and found Achilles by placing a weapon, among other trinkets, in front of the girls
of Scyros. Achilles reached for the weapon, thus revealing his identity. Menoitios, a royal
counselor, sent his son Patroclus to
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accompany Achilles on the expedition as his friend and advisor. Initially Odysseus
himself had attempted to avoid serving in the expedition. When the Greeks arrived to
compel him to honor his oath, Odysseus, feigning madness, yoked a mule to an ox and
began sowing his fields with salt. Palamedes, who recognized the ruse, put Odysseus'
small son Telemachus in front of the plow. When Odysseus swerved to avoid his son, he
revealed his sanity and was forced to join the expedition. Odysseus, however, nursed a
deep grudge against Palamedes.
When the Greeks first set out to find and besiege Troy, they mistakenly landed in Mysia.
In the ensuing battle, Achilles wounded Telephus, the king of the Mysians. When the
wound would not heal, Telephus consulted an oracle, which responded: "he that wounded
shall heal." Telephus went to Aulis, where the Greeks had regrouped for a second
expedition against Troy. Disguised as a beggar, he asked Achilles to heal his wound.
Achilles refused to heal the wound saying that he had no medical expertise. In another
version of the story, Telephus is said to have seized Orestes, the son of Agamemnon and
leader of the Greeks, whom he threatened to kill unless Achilles agreed to help. But
Odysseus pointed out that, as it was the spear that had inflicted the wound, the oracle
meant that the spear must be the instrument of his healing. Scrapings from the spear were
applied to Telephus' wound, and it was healed. In recompense Telephus was to lead the
Greeks to Troy, but by this time Agamemnon had offended Artemis (see 8), and the
Greeks were confined to Aulis. In some versions of the story, the Mysian adventure
lasted ten years [this variant explains the age of Achilles’ full- grown son, Neoptolemus,
and perhaps the Trojans’ reluctance to part with Helen; but it confounds the chronology
of many other aspects of the myth].
8. The Greek fleet of one thousand ships assembled at Aulis. Agamemnon, who led the
largest contingent, was the commander-in-chief. In attempting to raise the moral of his
army, he set out to hunt a magnificent white deer. The deer, however, was sacred to
Artemis, the goddess of the hunt and twin sister of Apollo. As a result, Artemis had sent
adverse winds that kept the army pinned at Aulis. After famine began to waster away the
army, the Greek leaders consulted the prophet Calchas, who revealed that Agamemnon
could only
appease Artemis by sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia. Although hesitant to kill his
daughter, he eventually relented. Agamemnon lured Iphigenia to Aulis on the pretext that
she was to be married to Achilles. When Iphigenia and Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra
had arrived Agamemnon sacrificed her on the high altar as Clytemnestra watched in
horror. One version of the story claims that Artemis saved her at the last minute and
carried her off to Tauris where she became a priestess in charge of human sacrifices.
After the war, she later saved her brother Orestes and his friend Pylades (see 21). After
the sacrifice Artemis changed the winds and the fleet sailed for Troy.
9. On the way to Troy, Philoctetes, the son of Poeas and leader of the seven ships from
Methone, was bitten by a snake when the Greeks landed on Lemnos. His pain was so
great and his noxious wound so unpleasant that the Greek army abandoned him on the
island and continued to Troy.
10. At long last, the Greek army landed on the beaches before Troy. The first man ashore,
Protesilaus, was killed by Hector, son of Priam and leader of the Trojan army. Achilles
killed the giant Cycnus, who was invulnerable to any forged weapon, with a boulder.
Having established a beachhead, the Greeks sent another embassy to Troy, seeking to
recover Helen and the treasure. When the Trojans rejected them, the Greek army settled
down into a siege, which lasted many years. As the Greek
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army besieged Troy, numerous expeditions lay waste to the surrounding towns, which
were allied to Troy. In the seventh year of the siege Troilus, the beautiful son of Priam,
was killed by Achilles.
As a result of the stalemate, Palamedes advised the Greeks to return to home, Odysseus,
who never forgave Palamedes for outwitting him (see 7), accused him of collaboration
with the Trojans and prepared a false report that implicated him as a traitor. When a stash
of gold, which Odysseus had planted, was discovered in Palamedes’ tent, Palamedes was
condemned and stoned to death.
11. In the tenth year of the war (where the narrative of the Iliad begins), Agamemnon
insulted Apollo by capturing the girl Chryseis, the daughter of Chryses, a prophet of
Apollo, and refusing to return her when her father offered compensation. In revenge,
Apollo sent nine days of plague down upon the Greek army. Achilles called an assembly
to determine what the Greeks should do. In that assembly, he and Agamemnon quarreled
bitterly, Agamemnon confiscated Achilles’ slave girl Briseis, and Achilles, in a rage,
withdrew himself and his forces (the Myrmidons) from any further participation in the
battle. He asked his mother Thetis, the divine sea nymph, to intercede on his behalf with
Zeus to give the Trojans help in battle, so that the Greek forces
would recognize how foolish Agamemnon had been to offend the best soldier under his
command. Thetis made the request of Zeus, reminding him of a favor she had once done
for him, and he agreed.
12. A common soldier, Thersites, challenged the authority of Agamemnon and demanded
that the soldiers abandon the expedition. Odysseus beat Thersites into obedience. Paris
and Menelaus fought a duel, and Aphrodite saved Paris just as Menelaus was about to kill
him. Telamonian Ajax and Hector fought a duel with no decisive result. Odysseus and
Diomedes slaughtered thirteen Thracians (Trojan allies) and stole the horses of King
Rhesus in a night raid. In the absence of Achilles and following Zeus’ promise to Thetis
(see 11), Hector enjoyed great success against the Greeks, breaking through their
defensive ramparts on the beach and setting the ships on fire.
13. While Hector was enjoying his successes against the Greeks, the latter sent an
embassy to Achilles, requesting that he return to battle. Agamemnon offered many
rewards in compensation for his initial insult (see 11). Achilles refused the offer and
added that he would reconsider only if Hector ever reached the Greek ships. When
Hector did so, Achilles’ friend Patroclus (see 7) begged to be allowed to return to the
fight. Achilles gave him permission, advising Patroclus not to attack the city of Troy
itself. He also gave Patroclus his own suit of armor, so that the Trojans might think that
Achilles had returned to the war. Patroclus resumed the fight, enjoyed some
dazzling success (killing one of the leaders of the Trojan allies, Sarpedon from Lykia),
but he was finally killed by Euphorbus and Hector, with the help of Apollo.
14. In his grief over the death of his friend Patroclus, Achilles decided to return to the
battle. Since he had no armor (Hector had stripped the body of Patroclus and had put on
the armor of Achilles), Thetis asked the divine artisan Hephaestus, the crippled god of the
forge, to prepare divine armor for her son. Thetis gave the armor to Achilles, and he
returned to the war. After slaughtering many Trojans and confronting the river god
Scamander, Achilles finally isolated Hector outside the walls of Troy. Hector chose to
stand and fight rather than to retreat into the city, and he was killed by Achilles, who then
mutilated the corpse, tied it to his chariot, and dragged it away.
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Achilles built a huge funeral pyre for Patroclus, killed Trojan soldiers as sacrifices, and
organized the funeral games in honor of his dead comrade. Priam traveled to the Greek
camp to plead for the return of Hector's body, and Achilles relented and returned it to
Priam in exchange for a ransom.
15. After the funeral of Hector, the Amazons, led by Queen Penthesilea, joined the Trojan
forces. After a near-erotic battlefield encounter, Achilles killed her in battle. When
Thersites insulted Penthesilea’s memory, Achilles beat him to death. Achilles also killed
King Memnon of Ethiopia, who had also recently reinforced the Trojans, after Memnon
had killed Achilles’ friend Antilochus, the son of Nestor. Under
the guise of a proposed marriage with Priam’s daughter Polyxena, Achilles was lured to
the temple of Apollo. There, Paris, with the help of Apollo, killed him with an arrow,
which pierced him in the heel, his one vulnerable spot (see 7). Telamonian Ajax, the
greatest Greek warrior after Achilles, fought valiantly in defense of Achilles' corpse.
After the death of Achilles, Odysseus and
Telamonian Ajax fought over who should get the divine armor of the dead hero. The
Greeks decided to ask captive Trojans which Greek they feared most and to give Achilles’
armor to him. When the Trojans selected Odysseus because of his cunning and
deceitfulness, Ajax plotted to slaughter the Greek leaders. As Ajax was about to kill the
leaders while they slept, Athena made him mad and Ajax slaughtered the flocks of the
Greek. In humiliation, Ajax committed suicide.
16. The Greeks captured Helenus, a son of Priam and a prophet. Helenus revealed to the
Greeks that they could not capture Troy without the help of Philoctetes, who owned the
bow and arrows of Heracles and whom the Greeks had abandoned on Lemnos (see 9
above). Odysseus and Neoptolemus (the son of Achilles) set out to persuade Philoctetes,
who was angry at the Greeks for abandoning him on the island, to return to the war and
by trickery they succeeded. Philoctetes killed Paris with an arrow shot from the bow of
Heracles.
17. Helenus also revealed that Troy could not be taken until the Greeks had removed the
Palladium, a sacred statue of Athena, from Troy. Odysseus and Diomedes ventured into
Troy at night, in disguise, and stole the Palladium. Troy, however, did not fall. Finally the
Greeks devised the strategy of the wooden horse filled with armed soldiers. It was built
by Epeius and left in front of Troy. The Greek army then pretended to retreat,
withdrawing to Tenedos, a small island of the Trojan coast. The Greek soldier Sinon
stayed behind when the army withdrew and pretended that he had deserted from the
Greek army. He told the Trojans that the horse was an offering to Athena and that the
Greeks had built it to be so large that the Trojans could not bring it into their city because
it was prophesied that if the Trojans brought the Horse within there walls, their city
would never be conquered. The Trojan Laocoon warned the Trojans not to believe Sinon
("I fear the Greeks even when they bear gifts"); in the midst of his warnings a sea
monster came from the surf and killed Laocoon and his sons.
18. The ill-omened death of Laocoon persuaded the Trojans to bring the Trojan Horse
into their city. They tore down the part of the wall built by Aeacus (see 1), dragged the
horse inside, and celebrated their apparent victory.
At night, when the Trojans had fallen asleep, the Greek soldiers hidden in the horse
emerged, opened the gates, and gave the signal to the main army,
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which had been hiding behind Tenedos. Despite fierce resistance from the Trojans led by
Aeneas, the city was totally destroyed. King Priam was slaughtered at his household altar
by Achilles’ son Neoptolemus. Hector's infant son, Astyanax, was thrown off the walls of
Troy by Odysseus. The women were taken prisoner, including Hecuba (wife of Priam),
Andromache (wife of Hector), and Cassandra (daughter of Priam), who was raped in the
temple of Athena by the Lesser Ajax. After some dispute about her fate, Helen was
returned to Menelaus. The Greeks sacrificed Polyxena at Achilles’ tomb.
19. The gods regarded the sacking of Troy and especially the treatment of the temples as
a sacrilege, and they punished many of the Greek leaders. Many were killed by a storm
on the journey home and others were scattered, forced to wander for years before they
made it home. Menelaus’ ship was blown to Egypt (where, in some versions, he
recovered his real wife in the court of King Proteus--see 6 above). Diomedes returned to
find his wife unfaithful and his kingdom taken away and wandered in exile before settling
in Italy. Ajax the Lesser was impaled either by the trident of Poseidon or the thunderbolt
of Zeus (hurled by Athena) for his impiety in dragging Cassandra from the altar and
raping her in Athena’s temple. Philoctetes, expelled by nobles who had ruled in his
absence, eventually settled in Southern Italy and founded a new city.
20. Agamemnon returned to Argos, where he was murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and
her lover, Aegisthus. Cassandra, who had been driven mad, was also killed by
Clytemnestra. Clytemnestra claimed that she was seeking revenge for the sacrifice of her
daughter Iphigenia (see 8 above). Aegisthus sought to avenge his father Thyestes who
was forced by his brother, Atreus, the father of Agamemnon, to feast upon the cooked
flesh of his own children.
21. After the murder of Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra, his son Orestes returned
with his friend Pylades to avenge his father. With the help of his sister Electra (who had
been very badly treated by their mother, left either unmarried or married to a poor farmer
so
that she would have no royal children), Orestes killed his mother and Aegisthus.
Suffering fits of madness and pursued by the Furies, Orestes fled to Delphi, then to Tauri,
where, in some versions, he met his long-lost sister, Iphigenia. She had been rescued
from Agamemnon's sacrifice by the gods
and made a priestess of Diana in Tauri. Orestes escaped with Iphigenia to Athens. There
he was put on trial for the matricide. The Furies prosecuted the case; Apollo testified in
his defense; and Athena presided over the trial. When the jury vote was even; Athena cast
the deciding vote in Orestes’ favor. The outraged Furies were placated by being given a
permanent place in Athens and authority in the judicial process. Orestes was later tried
for the same matricide in Argos, at the insistence of Tyndareus, Clytemnestra's father.
Orestes and Electra were both sentenced to death by stoning. Orestes escaped by
capturing Helen and using her as a hostage.
22. Neoptolemus, the only son of Achilles, married Hermione, the only daughter of Helen
and Menelaus. Neoptolemus also took as a wife the widow of Hector, Andromache.
There was considerable jealously between the two women. Orestes also wished to marry
Hermione; he deceitfully arranged for the people of Delphi killed Neoptolemus.
Menelaus tried to kill both the son of Neoptolemus, Molossus, and Andromache, but
Peleus, Achilles’ father, rescued them. Andromache later married Helenus and founded
New Troy. Oresetes then married Hermione. Orestes’ friend Pylades married Electra,
Orestes sister.
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23. Odysseus wandered over the sea for many years before reaching home. Because of
the enmity of Poseidon, the god of the sea, he lost all his men before returning to Ithaca
alone. His adventures took him from Troy to Ismareos (land of the Cicones); to the land
of the Lotos Eaters, the island of the Cyclopes; to the cave of Aeolos (god of the winds),
to the land of the Laestrygonians, to the islands of Circe and Calypso, to the underworld,
where he talked to the ghosts of Achilles and Agamemnon and received a prophecy from
Teiresias; to the land of the Sirens, past the monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis,
to
the pastures of the cattle of Helios, the sun god, to Phaiacia. Having returned to Ithaca in
disguise, with the help of his son Telemachus and some loyal servants, Odysseus killed
the young princes who had been courting his wife, Penelope, wasting the treasure of his
palace, and plotting to kill Telemachus. After proving his identity to Penelope and
reconciling himself to the people of Ithaca Odysseus followed the oracle he received in
the underworld from Teiresias and made his peace with Poseidon. Upon his return to
Ithaca, in a case of mistaken identity Telegonus, his son born to Circe, who had come in
search of his father, killed Odysseus. Eventually Telegonus married Penelope and
Telemachus married Circe.
24. Aeneas, the son of Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite and one of the important
Trojan leaders in the Trojan War, fled from Troy while the Greeks were destroying it,
carrying his father, Anchises, his son Ascanius, and his ancestral gods. His wife Creusa,
however, was lost during the sack. Aeneas wandered over the Mediterranean searching
for a location to found his new city. In the newly founded city of Carthage, he had an
affair with its queen Dido. Aeneas was forced by the gods to abandon Dido who, in her
grief, committed suicide after cursing Aeneas and his descendents. Aeneas reached Italy
and there fought a war against Turnus, the leader of the local Rutulian people, after
Latinus, the king of the Latins, broke his daughter Lavinia’s engagement with Turnus.
Aeneas married Lavinia and founded the city of Lavinium, the main centre of the Latin
league, from which the people of Rome sprang.