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The Iliad, or story of the Trojan War, in brief
This story is written by Homer and Aeschylus.
A thousand years ago before Christ, there was a great
city that was rich and powerful and was second to none.
Its fame comes from a great war due to a dispute
between three jealous goddesses.
Everything started when the goddess of discord, Eris,
was not invited to the wedding of King Peleus and
Thetis, soon to be parents of Achilles. Eris threw a
golden apple marked “For the Fairest” into the wedding.
All the goddesses wanted the apple, but the choices were
narrowed down to three: Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena.
They asked Zeus to judge, but he refused. Instead, he
told them to go to the mortal Paris, a prince of Troy
whom Zeus claimed was an excellent judge of beauty.
As the goddesses descended upon Paris, they all offered
bribes. Hera offered to make him king of Europe and
Asia, Athena offered wisdom and skill in war, and
Aphrodite offered the love of the world’s most beautiful
woman. Paris gave the apple to Aphrodite. This was the
“Judgment of Paris” – why the Trojan War was fought.
For choosing Aphrodite, Paris was given Helen, and he
went to Sparta to pick her up. But Helen was married to
King Menelaus. Somehow, Paris took Helen back to
Troy and when Menelaus found out about this, he
decided to attack Troy.
The Greeks gathered a huge army at Aulis under the
direction of Menelaus and his brother Agamemnon, who
became the commander in chief. Both Achilles and
Odysseus originally didn’t want to go, but both were
persuaded to. But the winds prevented the fleet from
leaving. After speaking to the prophet Calchas, they had
to sacrifice Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon, to
appease Artemis, who was causing these winds to blow.
Achilles wanted to appease Apollo. The prophet Calchas
said that the only solution was to return Chryseis.
Agamemnon complied, but not before taking Achilles’s
maiden, Briseis. When this happened, Achilles refused
to fight anymore.
Patroclus, a great friend of Achilles, had a plan to relieve
the pressure. He wanted to use Achilles’s god-made
armor to scare the Trojans off. The plan worked until
Patroclus ran into Hector, the Trojan hero and Paris’s
brother. Despite having Achilles’s armor, Patroclus was
killed.
When Achilles found out about the death of his friend,
he wanted to avenge his death. He went to Hephaestus to
get new armor, then he rejoined the battle to kill Hector.
After killing him, Achilles knew his own death was near.
Achilles was vulnerable only in one place, his heel. Paris
killed Achilles with an arrow guided by Apollo. After
the death of Achilles, both Odysseus and Ajax wanted
the armor of Achilles. The Greeks decided that Odysseus
would receive the armor, causing Ajax to go mad and
kill a flock of sheep. As he regained his sanity, he
realized what he had done and he killed himself.
Philoctetes, having been healed of his wounds, came
back to fight with the Greeks. It was he who killed Paris
– with Heracles’s arrows.
But in order to defeat Troy, the Greeks had to get into
the city. Odysseus thought of a plan to make a hollow
horse with soldiers hidden inside. The rest of the Greeks
would sail behind the nearest island, making it appear
like they had given up. Only one Greek, Sinon, remained
behind to tell the Trojans that the horse was an offering
to Athena and it needed to be inside the walls of Troy.
When the Greeks finally left Aulis, they left Philoctetes
on Lemnos because he was wounded. But he would
become an important factor, as the Greeks needed the
bow and arrows of Heracles in Philoctetes’s possession.
Laocoon, high priest of Poseidon, tried to remind the
Trojans of the treachery and deceit of the Greeks. As he
finished, two serpents crushed the life out of him. The
Trojans took this as a sign from the gods and quickly
dragged the horse into the city.
The war continued for nine years without much change.
Then in the tenth year, a dispute between Achilles and
Agamemnon nearly threw the balance in favor of the
Trojans. Agamemnon took Chryseis, a daughter of
Apollo’s priest. Her father heard of this and begged for
her return, but Agamemnon refused to release her. Upon
hearing about this, Apollo shot fiery arrows at the Greek
army, killing many Greeks.
Thinking they had won, they partied through the night.
But then Sinon released the Greeks within the horse and
they let in the soldiers who had just sailed back. The
Greeks ransacked Troy. By the time the Trojans were
awake, Troy was already burning. Slowly, the defenses
of Troy broke down. By morning, Troy, once the
proudest city in Asia, was in ruins. The Greeks had
finally won.
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