The Trojan War
OF GODS AND HEROES
Homer and the Epic Cycle
 The myth of the Trojan War was a great and continuing inspiration to
Greek artists and poets. The main lines of the story were sketched out
by early epic poets such as Homer (eighth century BC), but the
tradition was never firmly fixed. Later poets treated the myth freely;
small incidents were enlarged, new episodes were introduced, local
variants incorporated and different (even contradictory) interpretations
offered.
The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis
The Judgment of Paris
 Eris, the goddess of Discord, was angry that she had not been invited to
the wedding of Peleus and Thetis and so she threw among the guests a
golden apple inscribed with the words 'For the Fairest'. Three
goddesses - Hera, the wife of Zeus, Athena, his daughter, and
Aphrodite, the goddess of love - immediately claimed the prize. Zeus,
wary of making the decision himself, sent the three contenders to Paris,
a prince of Troy, temporarily acting as a shepherd.
Paris awards the Apple
 According to tradition each goddess offered Paris a
bribe: Hera offered wide empire, Athena military
glory and Aphrodite the most beautiful woman in the
world. Aphrodite's offer proved irresistible to Paris,
who awarded the apple to her.
Helen and Paris
 The goddess Aphrodite, having promised Paris the
most beautiful woman in the world, brought him to
Greece to seduce Helen, the wife of the Greek king
Menelaos.
The launching of 1000 ships
 The sacrifice of Iphigenia
Briseis taken from Achilles
 In his great epic, the Iliad, Homer recounts part of the story of the
Trojan War. He begins in the tenth year of the war and tells of the anger
of Achilles and its dire consequences. Achilles, the son of Peleus and
Thetis, was the greatest of the warriors on the Greek side. His anger
was aroused when Agamemnon, brother of the aggrieved Menelaos and
leader of the Greek forces against Troy, unjustly appropriated Achilles'
prize of honour, the slave girl Briseis.
Armour for Achilles
 The Greek army, deprived of Achilles, seemed to be facing imminent
disaster, and so Patroklos, Achilles' beloved friend, persuaded Achilles
to allow him enter the fight with Achilles' fresh troops. Achilles agreed
and lent Patroklos his splendid armour. Though he fought brilliantly,
Patroklos was killed by Hector, the Trojan champion, who stripped him
of his arms. Achilles, who deeply loved his friend, was overwhelmed
with sorrow and rage. He wanted to avenge Patroklos and kill Hector,
but he had no armour. He therefore summoned his mother, the seanymph Thetis, and begged her to procure new armour for him from the
smith god, Hephaistos.
Thetis returns
Achilles fights Hector
 The powerful climax of the Iliad comes when Achilles finally confronts
Hector. Zeus' golden scales have tipped against Hector and so he is
doomed; his divine supporter, the god Apollo, is forced reluctantly to
leave him. Athena, meanwhile, has given more than moral support to
Achilles and has actually retrieved his spear for him. Re-armed,
Achilles spies a chink in Hector's armour and fatally wounds him.
Achilles slays Penthesilea
 The Iliad closes with the return of Hector's corpse to his father Priam,
king of Troy, and the Trojans' lamentation over the body of their
champion. However, the Trojans were cheered soon afterwards when
Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, brought her brave warrior women
to fight on the side of the city. After wreaking much havoc among the
Greeks, Penthesilea came face to face with Achilles. Here she met her
match.
Death of Achilles
 Paris was desperate to avenge his brother's murder.
He managed to fire an arrow into the one area of
weakness that Achilles had - in the heel of his foot.
Achilles was killed just as his mother had foreseen.
However, Paris himself died in battle soon after.
The Trojan Horse
 The war had now gone on for ten years. To win, the Greeks knew they
had to somehow get their troops inside the city of Troy. They came up
with a clever plan. They made a huge hollow wooden horse, filled it
with their best warriors and left it outside the city, then they pretended
to sail away. Thinking it would bring them luck, the Trojans brought
the horse inside. After nightfall, the Greeks hidden in the horse sneaked
out and opened the gates to the rest of the army.
The Sack of Troy
 When the Greeks got inside the city, they began
killing people wildly. To make sure that none of
Hector's family lived to avenge his death, they even
killed his old father Priam, the king of Troy, and his
baby son Astyanax.
The death of Priam and Astyanax
 Despite the bravery of the Trojans and their allies, Troy finally fell to
the Greeks after ten years of siege. The cruel sack of the city brought
suffering to many people, but most of all to the family of gallant Hector.
The Greeks were reluctant to let his baby son Astyanax live for fear that
he would avenge his father. Thus Astyanax was thrown to his death
from the walls of Troy. Hector's father, Priam, the long-suffering king
of Troy, also met his death in the sack of the city, dragged away from
the altar at which he had sought sanctuary or actually killed upon it, as
goes the story told by the poets.
The death blow
Menelaos and Helen
 Helen's elopement with the Trojan prince Paris was the prime cause of
the War and consequent loss of many lives. Menelaos resolved to make
Helen pay for this crime with her life. However, when he came face-toface with her, he was so smitten by her beauty that his resolve melted
away.
The sacrifice of Polyxena
 The horrors of war continued even after the fall of Troy and the
recapture of Helen. Achilles had died before the city was taken, but his
spirit appeared to the Greeks as they were about to depart for home and
demanded compensation for all the hard fighting he had done, in the
form of the blood of Priam's virgin daughter Polyxena.
One returned and another founded Rome
 Murder of Agamemnon and the flight of Aeneas.