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The events that transpired in the last year of the Trojan War are told in The Iliad , the epic poem written by Homer in the eighth century BC; the other is one of the first written records of the Greek language, corresponding to the archaic period of Ancient Greece. The Greek name for Troy is Ilion and from it derives the name of the Homeric poem.
The ancient city of Troy was located in Asia Minor, on what is now the Hisarlik Hill in Turkey. On the hill of Hisarlik the remains of nine ancient cities were found, built one on top of the previous one, with neighborhoods built on an inner citadel protected by a high wall. The discovery came from the hand of Heinrich Schliemann in 1870; he believed that the second city could be the Troy of the Homeric poem, but the characteristics of the found elements did not coincide with the descriptions of the time. The sixth Troy does fit the descriptions, but it seems that its destruction was due to an earthquake and not to a war, so it could be that the sixth or seventh Troy in the sequence, whose vestiges show evidence of combat, was the one who lived through the mythical war more than 3000 years ago.
Being at the gates of the Dardanelles Strait, which connects the Aegean Sea and the entire Mediterranean with the Sea of Marmara and then with the Black Sea, Troy had a strategic location on the trade routes of the Late Bronze Age. Troy collected taxes from the ships that circulated there and developed an industry of services to commerce. For this reason, beyond the myths that intertwine gods, kings and beautiful maidens, a war may have happened that culminated in the destruction of Troy in the 13th century BC.
This article will narrate, more than the historical war, the mythological one narrated by Homer. The myth of the Trojan War begins before the 13th century BC, with a conflict between the gods: the judgment of Paris.
The judgment of Paris
Eris, the goddess of discord, had not received an invitation to the marriage of Peleus, king of the Myrmidons, with Thetis, a sea nymph. She likewise attends and leaves a golden apple there, which bears an inscription: for the most beautiful. Three Olympic goddesses, Hera, Athena and Aphrodite, believe they are worthy of the apple; To settle the situation, Zeus, the king of the gods, chooses the Trojan prince Paris to choose which is the most beautiful goddess. Zeus chooses him for being a shepherd who lived away from worldly passions, so he could provide a fair judgment on the beauty of the goddesses.
Hera, wife of Zeus, offered Paris power to choose her; Athena offered him wisdom. Paris chooses Aphrodite, who promises her the love of her, the most beautiful woman in the world.
Helena, the most beautiful woman in the world
Helena, which means torch in Greek, was the daughter of Zeus, who, transformed into a swan, slept with Leda, the wife of Tyndareus, the king of Sparta. Theseus, founder of Athens, got together with his friend Pirítoo to marry daughters of Zeus, for which Helena was shaved when she was very young; but while they also tried to abduct Persephone in Hades, Helen’s brothers freed her and also captured Theseus’s mother and Pirithous’s sister.
Helena had many suitors from all over Greece, both because of her extraordinary beauty and because the favored one would be king of Sparta. Helen’s father, Tyndareus, on the advice of Odysseus (Ulysses to the Romans) made it a condition for the suitors that, regardless of who was chosen, they would all come to the aid of Helen’s husband in case the queen was seduced or kidnapped. . The chosen one was Menelaus, brother of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and husband of Clytemnestra, sister of Helena.
The reward that Aphrodite offered Paris for her trial was Helen, wife of King Menelaus of Sparta. Paris traveled to Sparta, and taking advantage of Menelaus’s absence, he seduced Helen with the help of Aphrodite, and they both escaped to Troy. Other versions mention the kidnapping of Helena. Whichever way they left Sparta, this was the origin of the Trojan War.
The Achaeans and their army
Between the 17th and 12th centuries BC, at the end of the Bronze Age, the Mycenaean civilization developed in Greece. This was the first Greek civilization, spreading to cities like Pylos and Tiryns in the Peloponnese, Thebes and Athens in central Greece, and Troy in Anatolia; however, its main center was Mycenae.
This civilization extended its influence in Cyprus, in Asia Minor, in the Middle East of the Mediterranean and in the Italian peninsula. They built cities and palaces and had powerful armies as they traded across the Mediterranean. The origin of the inhabitants of Greece of the Mycenaean civilization were the Indo-European tribes that moved to the south of the Balkans from the year 2000 BC: the Achaeans. It was from Mycenae ruled by King Agamemnon, the center of the Mycenaean civilization, from where the Achaean army that would have to recover Helena was organized and departed.
the achaean warriors
It was not easy for Agamemnon to get the kings and princes who had been Helena’s suitors to fulfill their promise and integrate the army with warriors and ships. Odysseus pretended to be crazy to avoid commitment; he was king of Ithaca, he had married Penelope and had a son, Telemachus, and he had no reason to go to war. Odysseus plowed using a yoke of a horse with an ox; Palamedes, to discover the deception, put Telemachus in front of the plow, before which Odysseus had to give up so as not to run over his son.
Achilles must also be part of the army, since the soothsayer Calcas had predicted that it would not be possible to conquer Troy without him. Achilles was the son of Peleus, king of the Myrmidons, and the sea nymph Thetis; the infamous trial of Paris had occurred during the marriage of his parents. A prophecy predicted that Thetis’s son would be more important than her father, so the gods who disputed the beautiful nymph, Zeus and Poseidon, forced Thetis to marry a mortal. Thetis knew that if Achilles went to fight in Troy she would die, so she hid her son in the court of Lycomedes, king of Scyrus, disguised as a maiden. There Achilles had his only son, Neoptolemus, with Deidamia, one of the daughters of Lycomedes. Odysseus set out to find Achilles and traveled to Scyrus with gifts for the maidens; clothes and jewels among which he mixed a shield and a spear. Then he sounded the alarm that warned of an attack, to which Achilles took up arms, discovering the deception.
King Cinyras of Cyprus also received an invitation to form the army. Cinyras promised to send fifty ships: only one ship of them was real, since the others were clay models.
Despite all the difficulties, an army of more than a thousand ships was formed that concentrated in the port of Áulide, in Boeotia. Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae, was the commander of the Achaean army.
King Agamemnon and the house of Atreus
The king of Mycenae came from a long and troubled lineage. Agamemnon was the son of Atreus, the grandson of Pelops, and the great-grandson of Tantalus. Tantalus was the son of Zeus and the ocean nymph Pluto. Tantalus committed several crimes that condemned him to live in Tartarus, a place in the underworld reserved for the worst criminals, where they were tortured for all eternity.
Tantalus was invited to the banquets of the gods; then he flaunted that privilege among mortals, commenting on the stories told by the gods. He stole nectar and ambrosia which he brought to mortals. He invited the gods to a banquet in his kingdom, on Mount Sipylus, at which he butchered and cooked his son Pelops, and served him to his guests. The gods realized the atrocity, with the exception of Demeter, who was worried about the disappearance of his daughter Persephone, and ate Pelops’s left shoulder. Zeus ordered Pelops to be retrieved from Hades and brought back to life, replacing the shoulder that Demeter had eaten with a piece of ivory; this piece was the mark of the family’s subsequent curse.
Tantalus was sentenced to Tartarus when he stole the golden mastiff, after Zeus killed him with lightning. His punishment is one of the most famous in Greek mythology: he spends eternity in a lake, chin-deep in water, hungry and thirsty; fruits and water surround him, but every time he is about to reach them, they withdraw from his reach.
Tantalus’s legacy continued until Agamemnon. While in Aulis, Agamemnon killed a deer sacred to the goddess Artemis and insulted the goddess by claiming that he was a better hunter than her. Artemis’s anger caused a plague in the Greek army, and when the ships of Agamemnon’s army wanted to set sail there was no wind to drive them.
The soothsayer Calchas prophesied that only the sacrifice of Iphigenia, the most beautiful of Agamemnon’s daughters, could calm Artemis. Diomedes and Odysseus searched for Iphigenia and took her to Aulis under deceit, telling her that she would marry Achilles. When Iphigenia was going to be sacrificed, Artemis intervened; she replaced Iphigenia with a deer and took her to Taurica, ascribing her as a priestess to her cult. Although in Hesiod’s version Iphigenia was transformed into the goddess Hecate. However, Clytemnestra, mother of Iphigenia and wife of Agamemnon, never forgave the king for sacrificing her daughter.
After the sacrifice the winds finally blew and the fleet set out for Troy.
The events of the Iliad
As already stated, The Iliad begins its story in the last year of the siege of Troy. During the previous nine years both armies balanced their forces, and it was during the last year that the contest was defined.
It was during this period that the Greeks sacked Chrise, in Tróas, currently the city of Gülpinar in the Turkish province of Çanakkale. In that city there was a temple for the god Apollo whose priest was Chryses. The Greeks kidnapped Chryseis, the daughter of Chryses, and Agamemnon adopted her as a concubine and spoils of war.
Although Chryses offered a generous ransom to get his daughter back, Agamemnon refused to allow Chryseis to return, so the priest asked Apollo for help. The god sent a plague that ravaged the Greek army. Due to the insistence of Achilles and other Greek warriors, Agamemnon agreed to release Chryseis and offered the sacrifice of one hundred oxen in honor of Apollo to end the plague. But he seized Briseis, Chryseis’s cousin, who was Achilles’ possession after the sack of Lyrnese, also in Tróas.
This provoked the wrath of Achilles, who withdrew from the fight along with his Myrmidon warriors. He also asked his mother, Thetis, to convince Zeus to favor the Trojans. Thus, the Greeks suffered defeats in several confrontations against the Trojan army of Hector, son of the King of Troy, Priam, and brother of Paris. Hector, the horse tamer, commanded the defense of Troy.
Achilles, Patroclus and Hector
The advance of the Trojans was already reaching the Achaean ships defended by the great warrior Ajax. Patroclus, a friend of Achilles, asked him to let him command the myrmidon warriors using his armor. Patroclo’s help allowed the Trojan attack to be repulsed; however, Hector killed Patroclus in combat, thinking it was Achilles himself.
The news of Patroclus’s death enraged Achilles, who rejoined the fighting after Agamemnon returned Briseis to him. Achilles killed Hector in combat. Due to his anger, Achilles dragged Hector’s body in front of the walls of Troy for days until Priam, accompanied by the god Hermes, came to Achilles’ camp to beg him to return the body of his son. A twelve-day truce was established to celebrate Hector’s funeral rites.
Achilles death
Before dying, Hector predicted that Paris would kill Achilles: it was with an arrow or by stabbing him in the back, depending on the version. It is said that Apollo guided the arrow of Paris, or even that it was Apollo himself disguised as Paris who killed him.
The reference to Achilles’ heel, its only weak point, appears in a poem by Statius written in the first century. However, there is no earlier reference to Achilles’ heel. In book XXI of The Iliad Achilles is wounded in the shoulder; in vase paintings depicting his death, Achilles is shown wounded in the body by one or more arrows. In Statius’s poem it is said that Thetis tried to make his son immortal by immersing him in the river Styx when he was a child, but the heel from where it hung did not get wet, so it was the only mortal point of the body. of the.
The armor of the warriors had great symbolic value. In the eighteenth book of the Iliad it is said that Thetis went to comfort Achilles after Hector killed Patroclus and, since he took his armor, he told the blacksmith god Hephaestus to make him a new one.
In The Metamorphosis Ovid tells that after the death of Achilles a dispute arose between Ajax and Odysseus over the right to armor. Each one argued about their merits to possess it, and it was Odysseus who awarded it to them. Ajax went crazy and ended up committing suicide.
The fate of Paris
The shepherd prince Paros participated in the defense of Troy proving to be a good archer, receiving the help of the goddess Aphrodite. Paris challenged Menelaus and whoever won would get Helen. In the duel Paris was seriously injured and Aphrodite helped him return to the walls.
After the death of Achilles, the soothsayer Hélenus prophesied that in order to end the siege of Troy the Achaeans had to obtain the bow and arrows of Heracles (Hercules for the Romans), which were in the possession of Philoctetes. Philoctetes had joined the Achaean army but had been wounded, so the Achaeans had abandoned him on the island of Lemnos. Odysseus and Diomedes went to look for Philoctetes at Lemnos and Podalirio, the doctor of the Achaeans, healed him from his wounds. Using Heracles’ bow and poisoned arrows, Philoctetes killed Paris.
The end of the siege of Troy
In all the determining instances of the Trojan siege, Odysseus played an important role. And it is Odysseus’ ingenuity that manages to break the resistance of the Trojans. Before, it was Odysseus who obtained the prophecy of Helenus who said that only using Heracles’ bow and arrows could Troy be conquered, and it is he who searches for Philoctetes, abandoned on the island of Lemnos. It is also Odysseus who, disguised as a beggar and together with Diomedes, manages to steal Palladium from Troy, an archaic wooden statue with the figure of the goddess Athena, who has protected the city since its foundation.
The soothsayer Calchas had a vision: a dove that, pursued by a falcon, hid in a hole to which the falcon could not access. The hawk pretended to retreat and hid; The dove came out of its hiding place when it did not notice the hawk, and the hunter who was stalking it finished his task. Calchas’s vision suggested that after nine years of siege they should stop trying to breach the walls and look for another strategy. It was then that Odysseus devised the ploy of the wooden horse. Other traditions say that the idea came from the goddess Athena or from Prillis, son of the god Hermes and fortune teller on the island of Lesbos.
The Trojan horse
The Greeks pretended to withdraw from the site and left behind a huge wooden horse that had been built by Epeus. The horse was hollow and its interior was accessed through a hatch; and had a phrase engraved; In the grateful hope of a safe return to their homes after an absence of nine years, the Greeks dedicate this offering to Athena .
Inside the horse, Odysseus was waiting with a group of warriors. The Trojans believed that the Greeks had really abandoned the siege and that they had left the horse as a defeated offering; the prophets Cassandra and Laocoon warned that it was a trap and nobody believed them.
As the Trojans celebrated the end of their nine-year siege, Odysseus and his warriors dismounted and opened the city gates, allowing the Achaean army to enter. The city was sacked and destroyed, its men killed and its women taken captive. Odysseus was favored with Hecuba, the queen of Troy, the wife of Priam, in sharing the looted. Agamemnon appropriated Cassandra, the daughter of King Priam and Hecuba, a priestess of Apollo and a fortune teller.
The return
Ten more years passed before Odysseus could return to Ithaca and reunite with his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus, a journey in which he faced the fantastic challenges narrated in The Odyssey, Homer’s second narrative poem and which also recounts various events of the site. of Troy.
During Agamemnon’s absence, his cousin Aegisthus seduced Clytemnestra, his wife, who was still hurt by Iphigenia’s sacrifice. After his return to Mycenae, Agamemnon went to a banquet where Aegisthus betrayed him and killed him along with his companions, while Clytemnestra murdered Cassandra.
Sources
- The Trojan War. What was it? Background, causes and consequences. History Encyclopedia. Accessed October 2021.
- Javier Negrete. The great adventure of the Greeks. Editorial El Ateneo, Madrid, 2016.
- Myth and reality about the Trojan War. National Geographic , 2012.
- Pierre Grimal. Dictionary of Greek and Roman mythology . Paidós Editions, Barcelona, 2010.
- Fifth of Smyrna. Posthomeric XII,9; Archaic Greek Epic Fragments . Madrid, Gredos, 1979.
