The Trojan War
Across the water from Greece lay the kingdom of Troy, with its capital city of Ilium. Its walls had been built by Poseidon and Apollo, but the king who was then reigning had refused to pay them, and had thus made them his foes.
The present king was Priam, and his wife was Hecuba. They had together the grand sum of nineteen children, with Hector and Paris being first among them. The two men were very different: Hector was a noble warrior, whereas Paris loved pleasure and relaxation. Paris was once asked to choose which of Hera, Athena and Aphrodite was most beautiful, but he thought them all equally beautiful and so they each tried to bribe him. Hera offered him a kingdom, Athena offered him skill in battle, and Aphrodite offered him the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Troy.
Paris chose Aphrodite, and thus chose Helen. But Helen was already married to the rich and powerful King Menelaus of Sparta, which meant that Paris would have to steal Helen away from her husband. This he did: he visited Sparta under a banner of friendship and, while being treated as a guest by Menelaus, he abducted Helen.
As soon as Menelaus found out how his hospitality had been misused, he called upon all the Greek heroes to join together and fight Troy, to help him recover his wife, and to take vengeance on Paris. Everyone replied to the call; but the wise Odysseus, grandson of Sisyphus, and king of the little isle of Ithaca, could not bear to leave his home, or his young wife Penelope. So instead he pretended to be mad, and began furiously ploughing the sea shore with a yoke of oxen.
However, the next cleverest hero, Palamedes, decided to to test Odysseus by placing his infant son Telemachus in the way of the plough. When Odysseus turned his plough aside, Palamedes declared that his madness was only pretended, and he was forced to go with them.
It took the Greeks years to gather their forces, and when they did all meet at last, with their ships and men, Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and Menelaus's brother, took command of them all. They set sail together, but at Aulis they were stopped by foul winds for many days, and an augur called Calchas told them it was because Agamemnon had boasted that he was as good a hunter as Artemis after killing a stag while hunting.
Calchas prophesied that the storm would only clear if Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to the gods, so a message was sent to her mother, Clytemnestra, to send her, on the pretense that she was to be married to Achilles. When she arrived at her father's camp, she was sacrificed by the men there, and the winds soon cleared - by Clytemnestra never forgave Agamemon for what he did.
Once the Greeks reached Troy, they fought with swords, spears, and bows and arrows; their chiefs generally went to battle in a chariot. There was no notion of mercy to the fallen; prisoners were rarely made, and if a man was injured in battle, unless his friends could save him, he was sure to die.
During the first eight years of the war, the Greeks spent their time laying waste to Trojan cities all around the country. But in the ninth year of the war the Greeks drew up their forces round the walls of Troy itself.
The Trojans went out to attack them, and when they were drawn up in battle array, old Priam made Helen come and sit by him on the battlements over the gateway, to tell him who all the chiefs were. Instead of causing the death of many soldiers who had nothing to do with the quarrel, it was proposed that Menelaus and Paris should fight hand-to-hand for Helen. They began to fight, but as soon as Aphrodite saw that her favorite Paris was in danger, she came in a cloud, snatched him away, and set him down in Helen's chamber, where his brother Hector found him reclining at his ease.
When battle resumed, the Trojans and Greeks were equally matched, particularly because both sides had gods aiding them. Some days the Trojans would pull ahead; other days the Greeks. But one important breakthrough happened when Patroclus, saddened at finding some of his friends wounded, asked Achilles if he could send out their elite troops, called the Myrmidons.
Achilles consented, and dressed Patroclus in his own armor. The Trojan lines gave way before the Myrmidons led by Patroclus, and they were chased back to their walls. But as Hector made a last stand before the gates, Apollo, who loved Troy because he had built the walls, caused a sunbeam to strike on Patroclus and make him faint, so that Hector easily struck him down and killed him.
The Trojans cheered loudly and stripped Patroclus of Achilles's armor, but when Achilles heard the cheering he came out and gave a terrible thundering shout, causing the Trojans to flee in confusion. The corpse of Patroclus was carried back into the tent, where Achilles mourned over it with many tears and vows of vengeance against Hector.
His mother, a sea nymph called Thetis, came from the ocean and wept with Achilles, and from there she went to Hephaestus. She asked him to make another beautiful suit of armor, with a wondrous shield, representing Greek life in every phase of war or peace; and in this new armor Achilles went forth again to the battle. He drove the Trojans before his irresistible might, came up against Hector, chased him round and round the walls of Troy, and soon killed him.
Then, when Patroclus had been laid on a costly funeral pyre, Achilles dragged Hector's body at the back of his chariot three times around the pyre. But when poor old Priam, grieving that his son's corpse should lie unburied, came forth at night to beg it from Achilles, the hero received the old man most kindly. Achilles wept at the thought of his own old father Peleus, fed and warmed him, and sent home the body of Hector most honorably.
Achilles continued to fight bravely until Paris, aided by Apollo, managed to shoot an arrow into the heel which alone could be wounded, and thus the hero died. There was another great fight over his body, but Ajax and Odysseus rescued it at last; Ajax bore it to the ships, and Odysseus kept back the Trojans. Achilles's mother promised his armor to the Greek who had done most to rescue his corpse.
The question lay between Ajax and Odysseus, and Trojan captives being appointed as judges, gave sentence in favor of Odysseus. Ajax was so angry that he had a fit of frenzy, and started to believe the cattle were the Greeks who had offended him. Thus he killed whole flocks in his rage, and, when he saw what he had done, fell on his own sword and died.
With their greatest warrior dead, the Greeks seemed to change their mind about the battle. They took to their ships and went away, and all the surviving Trojans, relieved from their lengthy siege, rushed down to the shore, where all they found was a gigantic wooden horse.
While they were looking at it in wonder, a Greek came out of the rocks, and told them that his name was Sinon, and that he had been cruelly left behind by the Greeks. He told them that the Greeks had grown weary of the siege and gone home, but that if the wonderful horse were taken into Troy it would protect the city.
The Trojans, happy to be victorious at last, tied ropes to the horse and dragged it into Troy, then held a great feast to dedicate it to Athena. But at night, the unthinkable happened: Sinon lit a beacon as a signal to the rest of the Greeks, who were waiting behind only a few miles away. Then he went to the horse and opened it to reveal a small Greek army hidden away.
They immediately set about destroying Troy, settings fires as they went. Priam tried to put on his armor and defend Hecuba and his daughters, but a young Greek killed him at the altar in his palace. All the rest of the Trojans were killed or made slaves, thus ending the city of Troy.
