The Trojan War was a legendary conflict in Greek mythology that took place around the thirteenth or early twelfth century BC. The war was waged by the Achaeans (Greeks) against the city of Troy after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology, and it has been narrated through many works of Greek literature, most notably Homer's Iliad. The core of the Iliad (Books II – XXIII) describes a period of four days and two nights in the tenth year of the decade-long siege of Troy; the Odyssey describes the journey home of Odysseus, one of the war's heroes. Other parts of the war are described in a cycle of epic poems, which have survived through fragments. Episodes from the war provided material for Greek tragedy and other works of Greek literature, and for Roman poets including Virgil and Ovid.
The ancient Greeks believed that Troy was located near the Dardanelles and that the Trojan War was a historical event of the twelfth or thirteenth centuries BC. By the mid-nineteenth century AD, both the war and the city were widely seen as non-historical. In 1868, the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann met Frank Calvert, who convinced Schliemann that Troy was at what is now Hisarlık in modern-day Turkey. On the basis of excavations conducted by Schliemann and others, this claim is now accepted by most scholars.In the second edition of his In Search of the Trojan War, Michael Wood notes developments that were made in the intervening ten years since his first edition was published. Scholarly skepticism about Schliemann's identification has been dispelled by the more recent archaeological discoveries, linguistic research, and translations of clay-tablet records of contemporaneous diplomacy.
The historicity of the Trojan War remains an open question. Many scholars believe that there is a historical core to the tale, though this may simply mean that the Homeric stories are a fusion of various tales of sieges and expeditions by Mycenaean Greeks during the Bronze Age. Those who believe that the stories of the Trojan War are derived from a specific historical conflict usually date it to the or , often preferring the dates given by Eratosthenes, 1194–1184 BC, which roughly correspond to archaeological evidence of a catastrophic burning of Troy VII,Wood (1985: 116–118) and the Late Bronze Age collapse.
Sources
The events of the Trojan War are found in many works of Greek literature and depicted in numerous works of Greek art. There is no single, authoritative text which tells the entire events of the war. Instead, the story is assembled from a variety of sources, some of which report contradictory versions of the events. The most important literary sources are the two epic poems traditionally credited to Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, composed sometime between the ninth and sixth centuries BC.Wood (1985: 19) Each poem narrates only a part of the war. The Iliad covers a short period in the last year of the siege of Troy, while the Odyssey concerns Odysseus's return to his home island of Ithaca following the sack of Troy and contains several flashbacks to particular episodes in the war.
Other parts of the Trojan War were told in the poems of the Epic Cycle, also known as the Cyclic Epics: the Cypria, Aethiopis, Little Iliad, Iliou Persis, Nostoi, and Telegony. Though these poems survive only in fragments, their content is known from a summary included in Proclus's Chrestomathy.It is unknown whether this Proclus is the Neoplatonic philosopher, in which case the summary dates to the fifth century AD, or whether he is the lesser-known grammarian of the second century AD. See Burgess, p. 12. The authorship of the Cyclic Epics is uncertain. It is generally thought that the poems were written down in the seventh and , after the composition of the Homeric poems, though it is widely believed that they were based on earlier traditions.Burgess, pp. 10–12; cf. W. Kullmann (1960), Die Quellen der Ilias.
Both the Homeric epics and the Epic Cycle originated from oral tradition. Even after the composition of the Iliad, Odyssey, and the Cyclic Epics, the myths of the Trojan War were passed on orally in many genres of poetry and through non-poetic storytelling. Events and details of the story that are only found in later authors may have been passed on through oral tradition and could be as old as the Homeric poems. Visual art, such as vase painting, was another medium in which myths of the Trojan War circulated.Burgess, pp. 3–4.
In later ages, playwrights, historians, and other intellectuals would create works inspired by the Trojan War. The three great tragedians of Athens: Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, wrote a number of dramas that portray episodes from the Trojan War. Among Roman writers, the most important is the poet Virgil; in Book 2 of his Aeneid, Aeneas narrates the sack of Troy.
Legend
Traditionally, the Trojan War arose from a sequence of events beginning with a quarrel between the goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite caused by Eris. Eris, the goddess of discord, was not invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, and so arrived and spitefully threw a golden apple inscribed "to the fairest". Each of the goddesses claimed to be the "fairest" and the rightful owner of the apple. They submitted the judgment to a shepherd they encountered tending his flock. Each of the goddesses promised the young man a boon in return for his favour: power, wisdom, or love. The youth—in fact Paris, a Trojan prince who had been raised in the countryside—chose love, and awarded the apple to Aphrodite. His judgement earned him the ire of both Hera and Athena, but gave him the blessing of Aphrodite who caused Helen, the Queen of Sparta, and most beautiful of all women, to fall in love with him. When Helen left her family to be with Paris, her former husband Menelaus, the Spartan king, called upon all the kings and princes of Greece to wage war upon Troy.
Menelaus's brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, led an expedition of Achaean troops to Troy and besieged the city for ten years because of Paris's insult. After the deaths of many heroes, including the Achaeans Achilles and Ajax, and the Trojans Hector and Paris, the city fell to the ruse of the Trojan Horse. The Achaeans slaughtered the Trojans, except for some of the women and children whom they kept or sold as slaves. They also desecrated the temples, thus earning the gods' wrath. Few of the Achaeans returned safely to their homes and many founded colonies in distant shores. The Romans later traced their origin to Aeneas, Aphrodite's son and one of the Trojans, who was said to have led the surviving Trojans to Italy.
The following summary of the Trojan War follows the order of events as given in Proclus's summary, along with the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid, supplemented with details drawn from other authors.
Origins of the war
Plan of Zeus
According to Greek mythology, Zeus had become king of the gods by overthrowing his father Cronus; Cronus in turn had overthrown his father Uranus. Zeus was not faithful to his wife and sister Hera, and had many affairs from which many children were born. Since Zeus believed that there were too many people populating the earth, he envisioned MomusScholium on Homer A.5. or Themis,Plato, Republic 2,379e. who was to use the Trojan War as a means to depopulate the Earth, especially of his demigod descendants.Apollodorus, Epitome 3.1, Hesiod Fragment 204,95ff.
These can be supported by Hesiod's account:
Judgement of Paris
Zeus came to learn from either ThemisApollonius Rhodius 4.757. or Prometheus, after Heracles had released him from the Caucasus,Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 767. that, like his father Cronus, he would be overthrown by one of his sons. Another prophecy stated that a son of the sea-nymph Thetis, with whom Zeus fell in love after gazing upon her in the oceans off the Greek coast, would become greater than his father.Scholiast on Homer's Iliad; Hyginus, Fabulae 54; Ovid, Metamorphoses 11.217. For one or both of these reasons,Apollodorus, Library 3.168. either upon Zeus's ordersPindar, Nemean 5 ep2; Pindar, Isthmian 8 str3–str5. or because she wished to please Hera, who had raised her, Thetis was betrothed to an elderly human king, Peleus, son of Aeacus.Hesiod, Catalogue of Women fr. 57; Cypria fr. 4.
All of the gods were invited to Peleus and Thetis's wedding and brought many gifts,Photius, Myrobiblion 190. except Eris (the goddess of discord), who was stopped at the door by Hermes, on Zeus's order.P.Oxy. 56, 3829 (L. Koppel, 1989) Insulted, she threw from the door a gift of her own:Hyginus, Fabulae 92. a golden apple () on which was inscribed the word ("To the fairest").Apollodorus Epitome E.3.2 The apple was claimed by Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. They quarrelled bitterly over it, and none of the other gods would venture an opinion favouring one, for fear of earning the enmity of the other two. Eventually, Zeus ordered Hermes to lead the three goddesses to Paris, a prince of Troy, who, unaware of his ancestry, was being raised as a shepherd on Mount Ida,Pausanias, 15.9.5. because of a prophecy that he would be the downfall of Troy.Euripides Andromache 298; Div. i. 21; Apollodorus, Library 3.12.5. After bathing in the spring of Ida, the goddesses appeared to him naked, either for the sake of winning or at Paris's request. Paris was unable to decide among them, so the goddesses resorted to bribes. Athena offered Paris wisdom, skill in battle, and the abilities of the greatest warriors; Hera offered him political power and control of all of Asia; and Aphrodite offered him the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Sparta. Paris awarded the apple to Aphrodite, and, after several adventures, returned to Troy, where he was recognised by his royal family.
Peleus and Thetis bore a son, whom they named Achilles. It was foretold that he would either die of old age after an uneventful life, or die young in a battlefield and gain immortality through poetry.Homer Iliad I.410 Furthermore, when Achilles was nine years old, Calchas had prophesied that Troy could not again fall without his help.Apollodorus, Library 3.13.8. A number of sources credit Thetis with attempting to make Achilles immortal when he was an infant. Some of these state that she held him over fire every night to burn away his mortal parts and rubbed him with ambrosia during the day, but Peleus discovered her actions and stopped her.Apollonius Rhodius 4.869–879 ; Apollodorus, Library 3.13.6 .
According to some versions of this story, Thetis had already killed several sons in this manner, and Peleus's action therefore saved his son's life.Frazer on Apollodorus, Library 3.13.6 . Other sources state that Thetis bathed Achilles in the Styx, the river that runs to the underworld, making him invulnerable wherever he was touched by the water.Alluded to in Statius, Achilleid 1.269–270 . Because she had held him by the heel, it was not entirely immersed during the bathing and thus the heel remained mortal and vulnerable to injury (hence the expression "Achilles' heel" for an isolated weakness). He grew up to be the greatest of all mortal warriors. After Calchas's prophecy, Thetis hid Achilles in Skyros at the court of King Lycomedes, where he was disguised as a girl.Hyginus, Fabulae 96. At a crucial point in the war, she assists her son by providing weapons divinely forged by Hephaestus (see below).
Elopement of Paris and Helen