Trojan War
The story of the Trojan War, like the story of the Argonauts, underwent, in the course of
time, many changes and amplifications. The main portion of the story is contained in the two
epic poems ascribed to Homer, the
Iliad and the
Odyssey. The
incidents, either narrated or briefly touched upon in these, were elaborated or developed by
the post-Homeric poets, partly by connecting them with other popular traditions, and partly by
the addition of further details of their own invention. While in Homer it is simply the rape
of Helen which is the occasion of the war, a later legend traced its origin to the marriage of
Peleus and Thetis, when Eris threw down among the assembled gods the golden apple inscribed
“For the fairest” (
τῇ καλῇ). The
quarrel that ensued between Heré, Athené, and Aphrodité for
the prize of beauty was decided by Paris in favour of Aphrodité, who in return
secured him the possession of Helen, while Heré and Athené became, from
that time onward, the implacable enemies of the whole Trojan race.
According to Homer, after Helen had been carried off by Paris, Menelaüs and
Agamemnon visited all the Greek chieftains in turn, and prevailed on them to take part in the
expedition which they were preparing to avenge the wrong. According to the later account, the
majority of the chieftains were already bound to follow the expedition by an oath, which they
had sworn to Tyndareos. Agamemnon was the chosen commander-in-chief; next to him the most
prominent Greek heroes are his brother Menelaüs, Achilles, and Patroclus, the two
Aiaxes, Teucer, Nestor and his son Antilochus, Odysseus, Diomedes, Idomeneus, and Philoctetes,
who, however, at the very outset of the expedition, had to be left behind, and does not appear
on the scene of action until just before the fall of Troy. Later epics add the name of
Palamedes.
The entire host of 100,000 men and 1186 ships assembled in the harbour of Aulis. Here, while
they were sacrificing under a plane-tree, a snake darted out from under the altar and ascended
the tree, and there, after devouring a brood of eight young sparrows and the mother-bird
herself, was turned into stone. This omen Calchas, the seer of the host, interpreted to mean
that the war would last nine years, and terminate in the tenth with the destruction of
Troy (
Iliad, ii. 299-332). Agamemnon had
already received an oraele from the Delphian god that Troy would fall when the best of the
Greeks quarrelled. In Homer the crossing to Troy follows immediately; but in the later story
the Greeks at first land by mistake in Mysia, in the country of
Telephus (q.v.), and, being dispersed by a storm and driven back to
Greece, assemble afresh at Aulis, whence they are only permitted to set out after the
sacrifice of Iphigenia (an incident entirely unknown to Homer). On the Greek side the first to
fall is Protesilaüs, who is the first to land. The disembarkation cannot take place
until Achilles has slain the mighty Cycnus. After pitching their camp, Odysseus and
Menelaüs proceed as ambassadors to Troy, to demand the surrender of Helen. But this
proposal, in spite of the inclination of Helen herself and the admonition of the Trojan
Antenor, falls to the ground, owing to the opposition of Paris, and war is declared. The
number of the Trojans, whose chief hero is Hector, scarcely amounts to the tenth part of that
of the besiegers; and although they possess the aid of countless brave allies, such as Aeneas,
Sarpedon, and Glaucus, in their fear of Achilles they dare not risk a general engagement. On
the other hand, the Achaeans can do nothing against the well fortified and defended town, and
see themselves confined to laying ambuscades and devastating the surrounding country, and
compelled by lack of provisions to have recourse to foraging expeditions in the neighbourhood,
undertaken by sea and by land under the generalship of Achilles. At length the decisive tenth
year arrives. The Homeric
Iliad narrates the events of this year, confining
itself to the space of fifty-one days.
Chryses, priest of Apollo, comes in priestly garb into the camp of the Greeks to ransom his
daughter Chryseïs from Agamemnon. He is rudely repulsed, and Apollo consequently
visits the Greeks with a plague. In an assembly of the Greeks summoned by Achilles, Calchas
declares the only means of appeasing the god to be the surrender of the girl without ransom.
Agamemnon assents to the general wish; but, by way of compensation, takes from Achilles, whom
he considers to be the instigator of the whole plot, his favourite slave Briseïs.
Achilles withdraws in a rage to his tent, and implores his mother Thetis to obtain from Zeus a
promise that the Greeks should meet with disaster in fighting the Trojans until Agamemnon
should give her son complete satisfaction. The Trojans immediately take the open field, and
Agamemnon is induced by a promise of victory, conveyed in a dream from Zeus, to appoint the
following day for a battle. The hosts are already standing opposed to one another, prepared
for fight, when they agree to a treaty that the conflict for Helen and the plundered treasures
be decided by a duel between Paris and Menelaüs. Paris is overcome in the duel, and
is only rescued from death by the intervention of Aphrodité. When Agamemnon presses
for the fulfilment of the treaty, the Trojan Pandarus breaks the peace by shooting an arrow at
Menelaüs, and the first open engagement in the war begins, in which, under the
protection of Athené, Diomedes performs miracles of bravery and wounds even
Aphrodité and Ares. Diomedes and the Lycian Glaucus are on the point of fighting, when they recognize one another as hereditary guest-friends. Hector goes
from the battle to Troy, and the day ends with an indecisive duel between Hector and Aiax, son
of Telamon. In the armistice ensuing, both sides bury their dead, and the Greeks, acting on
the advice of Nestor , surround the camp with a wall and trench. When the fighting begins
afresh, Zeus forbids the gods to take part in it, and ordains that the battle shall terminate
with the discomfiture of the Greeks. On the following night Agamemnon already begins to
meditate flight, but Nestor advises reconciliation with Achilles. The efforts of the
ambassadors are, however, fruitless. Hereupon Odysseus and Diomedes go out to reconnoitre,
capture Dolon, a Trojan spy, and surprise Rhesus, king of the Thracians, the newly arrived
ally of the enemy. On the succeeding day Agamemnon's bravery drives the Trojans back to the
walls of the town; but he himself, Diomedes, Odysseus, and other heroes leave the battle
wounded; the Greeks retire behind the camp walls, to attack which the Trojans set out in five
detachments. The opposition of the Greeks is brave; but Hector breaks the great gate with a
rock, and the stream of enemies pours itself unimpeded into the camp. Once more the Greek
heroes who are still capable of taking part in the fight, especially the two Aiaxes and
Idomeneus , succeed, with the help of Poseidon, in repelling the Trojans, while Telamonian
Aiax dashes Hector to the ground with a stone; but the latter soon reappears on the
battle-field with fresh strength granted him by Apollo at the command of Zeus. Poseidon is
obliged to leave the Greeks to their fate; they retire again to the ships, which Aiax in vain
defends. The foremost ship is already burning, when Achilles gives way to the entreaties of
his friend Patroclus, and sends him, clad in his own armour, with the Myrmidons to the help of
the distressed Greeks. Supposing it to be Achilles himself, the Trojans in terror flee from
the camp before Patroclus, who pursues them to the town, and lays low vast numbers of the
enemy, including the brave Sarpedon, whose corpse is only rescued from the Greeks after a
severe fight. At last Patroclus himself is slain by Hector with the help of Apollo; Achilles'
arms are lost, and even the corpse is with difficulty saved. And now Achilles repents of his
anger, reconciles himself to Agamemnon, and on the following day, furnished with new and
splendid armour by Hephaestus at the request of Thetis, avenges the death of his friend on
countless Trojans and finally on Hector himself. With the burial of Patroclus and the funeral
games established in his honour, the restoration of Hector's corpse to Priam, and the burial
of Hector, for which Achilles allows an armistice of eleven days, the
Iliad
concludes.
Immediately after the death of Hector the later legends bring the Amazons to the help of the
Trojans, and their queen Penthesilea is slain by Achilles. Then appears Memnon, who is also
mentioned by Homer; at the head of his Aethiopians he slays Antilochus son of Nestor , and is
himself slain by Achilles. And now comes the fulfilment of the oracle given to Agamemnon at
Delphi; for at a sacrificial banquet a violent quarrel arises between Achilles and Odysseus,
the latter declaring craft and not valour to be the only means of capturing Troy. Soon after,
in an attempt to force a way into the hostile town through the Scaean Gate, or,
according to later legend, at the marriage of Priam's daughter Polyxena in the temple of the
Thymbraean Apollo, Achilles falls slain by the arrow of Paris, directed by the god. After his
burial, Thetis offers the arms of her son as a prize for the bravest of the Greek heroes, and
they are adjudged to Odysseus. Thereupon his competitor, the Telamonian Aiax, slays himself.
For these losses, however, the Greeks find some compensation. Acting on the admonition of
Helenus, son of Priam, who had been captured by Odysseus, that Troy could not be conquered
without the arrows of Heracles and the presence of a descendant of Aeacus, they fetch to the
camp Philoctetes, the heir of Heracles, who had been abandoned on Lemnos, and Neoptolemus, the
young son of Achilles, who had been brought up on Scyros. The latter, a worthy son of his
father, slays the last ally of the Trojans, Eurypylus, the brave son of Telephus; and
Philoctetes, with one of the arrows of Heracles, kills Paris. Even when the last condition of
the capture of Troy (the removal of the Palladium from the temple of Athené on the
citadel) has been successfully fulfilled by Diomedes and Odysseus, the town can only be taken
by treachery. (See
Palladium.) On the advice of
Athené, Epeius, son of Panopeus, builds a gigantic wooden horse, in the belly of
which the bravest Greek warriors conceal themselves under the direction of Odysseus, while the
rest of the Greeks burn the camp and embark on board ship, only, however, to anchor behind
Tenedos. The Trojans, streaming out of the town, find the horse, and are in doubt what to do
with it. According to the later legend they are deceived by the treacherous Sinon, a kinsman
of Odysseus, who has of his own free will remained behind. He pretends that he has escaped
from the death by sacrifice to which he had been doomed by the malice of Odysseus, and that
the horse has been erected to expiate the robbery of the Palladium; to destroy it would be
fatal to Troy, but should it be set on the citadel, Asia would conquer Europe. The fate of
Laocoön removes the last doubt from the minds of the Trojans (see
Laocoön); the city gate being too small, they
break down a portion of the wall and draw the horse up to the citadel as a dedicatory offering
for Athené. While they are giving themselves up to transports of joy, Sinon in the
night opens the door of the horse. The heroes descend and light the flames that give to the
Greek fleet the preconcerted signal for its return. Thus Troy is captured; all the inhabitants
are either slain or carried into slavery, and the city is destroyed. The only survivors of the
royal house are Helenus, Cassandra, and Hector's wife Andromaché, besides Aeneas.
For the fate of the rest see
Deïphobus;
Hecuba;
Polydorus;
Polyxena;
Priamus;
Troïlus.
After Troy has been destroyed and plundered, Agamemnon and Menelaüs, contrary to
custom, call the drunken Greeks to an assembly in the evening. A division ensues, half siding
with Menelaüs in a desire to return home at once; while Agamemnon and the other half
wish first to appease by sacrifice the deity of Athené, who has been offended by
the outrage of the Locrian Aiax (see
Aiax, 1). The army
consequently sets out on its journey in two parts. Only Nestor , Diomedes, Neoptolemus,
Philoctetes, and Idomeneus reach home in safety; while Menelaüs and Odysseus have
first to undergo wanderings for many a long year.
Death overtakes the Locrian Aiax on the sea, and Agamemnon immediately after his arrival
home. See
Cyclic Poets;
Epos;
Homerus;
Ilium;
Troia;
Tryphiodorus;
Tzetzes;
Vergilius.
The Trojan legend appears in later literature, both mediæval and modern, and has
inspired much that is interesting and beautiful in art as well. The spurious histories of
Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis (see
Dares;
Dictys) supplied the material for the writers of the
Middle Ages, who worked it up into many forms. The Arthurian legends and the Fabliaux both
draw from it, and in A.D. 1160 it was elaborated in literary form by Benoît de
Sainte-More, whose poem,
Le Roman de Troie, in some 30,000 lines, is dedicated
to Queen Eleanor of Poitiers and England. In this, the poet has apparently invented new
episodes, such as the loves of Briseïda, daughter of Calchas, with Diomedes and
Troïlus; whence Boccaccio's poem
Filostrato, Chaucer's
Troïlus and Cryseyde, and Shakspeare's
Troïlus and
Cressida, while Gower in his
Confessio Amantis also alludes to it.
Benoît's poem was translated into German in the twelfth century, into Latin by Guido
della Colonna in the thirteenth century, and later into Italian. From it, again, Lydgate
derived his
Troye Book (first printed in 1513), Caxton his
Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (1474), the first book ever
printed in English, and Thomas Heywood his
Life and Death of Hector
(1614). Geoffrey of Monmouth, Gaimar, Wace, and Layamon tell of a Trojan hero, Brut,
who found his way to Britain. See Moland and D'Héricault,
Nouvelles
Françaises en Prose du XIVe Siècle (1858);
Joly,
Benoît de Ste.More et le Roman de Troie (1870);
Greif,
Die Mittelalterlichen Bearbeitungen der Trojanersage (1886);
Collilieux, Dictys et Dares (1886); and Gorra,
Testi
Inediti di Storia Trojana (Turin, 1887).