Greek Legend: the ILLIAD
Background: The Historical Basis of the Trojan War:
The blind poet Homer is thought to be the author of the Iliad. For centuries many scholars believed that the Trojan War and its participants were entirely the creation of his imagination;but in the late 19th century, an archaeologist declared that he had discovered the remnants of Troy. The ruins that he uncovered sit a few dozen miles off of the Aegean coast in northwestern Turkey, a site that fits the geographical descriptions of Homer’s Troy. One layer of the site, roughly matching the point in history when the fall of Troy would have taken place, shows evidence of fire and destruction consistent with a sack. Many scholars now believe that there was a Trojan War, although there is no way to determine just how much of the Iliad is factual and how much Homer added to create a great story.
Background: The Mythical Cause of the Trojan War:
According to myth, the Trojan War was caused by a beauty competition among the three top goddesses, Athena, Aphrodite and Hera. The goddesses wished to have an impartial person judge who was most beautiful. They chose Paris, the son of the king of Troy who was thought to be very wise. Despite their claim to want a impartial judge, the goddesses decided not to play fair and bribed Paris with various offerings. Athena offered great wisdom and skill in battle. Hera offered him a high kingship above men. Aphrodite offered the love of the most beautiful woman on earth. Paris could not resist Aphrodite’s offer and declared her the most beautiful goddess.
Unfortunately, there was a problem. The most beautiful woman on earth, Helen, was already married to Menelaus, the Greek king of Sparta. This did not stop Paris who went to Sparta and kidnapped her. The Trojan War was essentially started by this kidnapping because the Greeks sailed to Troy to retrieve Helen and to avenge this attack on the honor of Greece.
Background: The Mythical Story of Achille’s Heel:
Achilles, the Iliad’s main character, was the son of the sea-nymph Thetis and the mortal King Peleus. Thetis tried to make her young son immortal by dipping him in the river Styx, but where she held his heel remained dry and became his defenseless spot. When Achilles was preparing to leave for the Trojan War, his mother told him he was prophesied to die in battle. She advised him to stay home, but he ignored her advice.
Summary of the Iliad:
Nine years after the start of the Trojan War, the Greek army sacks Chryse, a town allied with Troy. The Greeks take everything of value from the town, with Agamemnon claiming the greatest share as the leader of the army. During the battle, the Greeks capture a pair of beautiful maidens, Chryseis and Brieis. Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek forces, takes Chryseis as his prize, and Achilles, the Greeks’ greatest warrior, claims Briseis. Chryseis’s father, a priest of the god Apollo, offers an enormous ransom in return for his daughter, but Agamemnon refuses to give Chryseis back. The father then prays to Apollo, who sends a plague upon the Greek camp.
After many Greeks die, Agamemnon consults a prophet to determine the cause of the plague. When he learns that Chryseis is the cause, he reluctantly gives her up but then demands Briseis from Achilles. Furious at this insult, Achilles returns to his tent and refuses to fight in the war any longer. He vengefully yearns to see the Greeks destroyed and asks his mother to get Zeus to make this happen. The Trojan and Greek sides have declared a ceasefire with each other, but the Trojans breaks the treaty and ask Zeus to come to their aid.
To help the Trojans, as promised, Zeus sends a false dream to Agamemnon in which a figure in the form of Hector (the mightiest Trojan warrior) persuades Agamemnon that the Greeks can take Troy if he launches a full-scale assault on the city’s walls. The next day, Agamemnon gathers his troops for attack, but, to test their courage, he lies and tells them that ships. When Hera sees the Greeks fleeing, she alerts Athena, who inspires Odysseus, the most persuasive of the Greeks, to call the men back. He shouts words of encouragement and insult to raise their pride and restore their confidence. They promise that they will not abandon their struggle until Troy falls. The Trojan army marches from the city gates and advances to meet the Greeks. Paris, the Trojan prince who caused the war by stealing the Helen from her husband Menelaus, challenges the Greeks to single combat with any of their warriors. When Menelaus steps forward, however, Paris loses heart and hrinks back into the Trojan ranks. Hector, Paris’s brother and the leader of the Trojan forces, criticizes Paris or his cowardice. Stung by Hector’s insult, Paris finally agrees to a duel with Menelaus, declaring that the contest will establish peace between Trojans and Greeks by deciding once and for all which man shall have Helen as his wife. Hector presents the terms to Menelaus, who accepts. Both armies look forward to
ending the war at last.
Paris and Menelaus begin their duel. Neither is able to fell the other with his spear. Menelaus breaks his sword over Paris’s helmet. He then grabs Paris by the helmet and begins dragging him through the dirt, but Aphrodite snaps the strap of the helmet so that it breaks off in Menelaus’ hands. Frustrated, Menelaus retrieves his spear and is about to drive it home into Paris when Aphrodite whisks Paris away to his room in the palace. Back on the battlefield, both the Trojans and the Greeks search for Paris, who seems to have magically disappeared. Agamemnon insists that Menelaus has won the duel, and he demands Helen back.
Meanwhile, the gods engage in their own duels. Zeus argues that Menelaus has lost the duel and that the war should end as the mortals had agreed. Hera, who has invested much in the Greek cause, wants nothing less than the destruction of Troy. Zeus gives in, and Athena goes to the battlefield to rekindle the fighting. Disguised as a Trojan soldier, Athena convinces another soldier to take aim at Menelaus. He fires, but Athena, (who just wants to give the Greeks an excuse to fight) deflects the arrow so that it only wounds Menelaus. In the days ahead, with Zeus supporting the Trojans and Achilles refusing to fight, the Greeks suffer great losses. The Trojans push the Greeks back, forcing them to hide behind the walls that protect their ships. Several Greek commanders become wounded, and the Trojans break through the Greek walls. They advance all the way up to the boundary of the Greek camp, and Hector sets fire to one of the ships. Defeat seems certain because without the ships, the army will be stranded at Troy and almost certainly destroyed.
That night, the Greek troops sit brokenhearted in their camp. Standing before them, Agamemnon weeps and declares the war a failure. He proposes returning to Greece in disgrace. Diomedes rises and insists that he fight even if everyone else leaves. He cheers up the soldiers by reminding them that Troy is fated to fall. Nestor urges determination as well and suggests reunion with Achilles. Seeing the wisdom of this idea, gamemnon decides to offer Achilles a great stockpile of gifts on the condition that he return to the fight.
Concerned for his comrades but still too proud to help them himself, Achilles agrees to a plan that will allow his close friend Patroclus to take his place in battle, wearing his armor. Patroclus is a fine warrior, and his resence on the battlefield helps the Greeks push the Trojans away from the ships and back to the city walls. However, the counterattack soon falters when Apollo knocks Patroclus’ armor to the ground, and Hector the mightiest Trojan warrior) slays him. Fighting then breaks out as both sides try to lay claim to the body and armor. Hector ends up with the armor, but the Greeks manage to bring the body back to their camp. When Achilles discovers that Hector has killed Patroclus, he feels such grief and rage that he agrees to reconcile with Agamemnon and rejoin the battle. Achilles’ mother goes to Mount Olympus and persuades the ephaestus to forge Achilles a new suit of armor, which she presents to him the next morning. Achilles then rides out to battle at the head of the Greek army.
Meanwhile, Hector, not expecting Achilles to rejoin the battle, has ordered his men to camp outside the walls of Troy. When the Trojan army sees Achilles, it flees in terror back behind the city walls. Achilles cuts down every Trojan he sees. Strengthened by his rage, he even fights the god of the river Xanthus, who is angered that Achilles has caused so many corpses to fall into his streams. Finally, Achilles confronts Hector outside the walls of Troy. Ashamed at the poor advice that he gave his comrades, Hector refuses to flee inside the city with them. Achilles chases him around the city’s wall three times, but the goddess Athena finally tricks Hector into turning around and fighting Achilles. In a dramatic duel, Achilles kills Hector. He then lashes the body to the back of his chariot and drags it across the battlefield to the Greek camp. Upon Achilles’ arrival, the triumphant Greeks celebrate Patroclus’ funeral with a long series of athletic games in his honor. Each day for the next nine days, Achilles drags Hector’s body in circles around Patroclus’ body.
At last, the gods agree that Hector deserves a proper burial. Zeus sends the god Hermes to escort King Priam, Hector’s father and the ruler of Troy, into the Greek camp. Priam tearfully pleads with Achilles to take pity on a father grieving over his son’s death and to return Hector’s body. Deeply moved, Achilles finally agrees and returns Hector’s corpse to the Trojans. Both sides agree to a temporary truce, and Hector receives a hero’s funeral.
The End of the War:
The Trojan War has not yet ended at the close of the Iliad. Homer’s audience would have been familiar with the struggle’s conclusion. Here are a few of the events they would have known that happen after the Iliad ends.
The Death of Achilles and Ajax:
In the final books of the Iliad, Achilles refers frequently to his forthcoming death, about which his mother has warned him. After the end of the poem, at Hector’s funeral feast, Achilles sights the beautiful Polyxena, the daughter of Priam and hence a princess of Troy. Taken with her beauty, Achilles falls in love with her. Hoping to marry her, he agrees to use his influence with the Greek army to bring about an end to the war. However, when he travels to the temple of Apollo to arrange for the peace, Paris shoots him in the heel—the only defenseless part of his body—with a poisoned arrow, and he dies. After Achilles’ death, two of the greatest Greek heroes, Ajax and Odysseus, recover his body. Achilles’ mother instructs the Greeks to give
Achilles’ magnificent armor, forged by the god Hephaestus, to the most worthy hero. Both Ajax and odysseus want the armor; when it is awarded to Odysseus, Ajax commits suicide out of humiliation.
The Fall of Troy:
The Greek commanders are nearly ready to give up; nothing can penetrate the massive walls of Troy. However, before they lose heart, Odysseus comes up with a plan that will allow them to bypass the walls of the city completely. The Greeks build a massive, hollow, wooden horse, large enough to hold a group of warriors inside. Odysseus and a group of soldiers hide in the horse, while the rest of the Greeks burn their camps and sail away from Troy, waiting in their ships behind a nearby island.
The next morning, the Trojans discover the gigantic, mysterious horse and a lone Greek soldier named Sinon, whom they take prisoner. As instructed by Odysseus, Sinon tells them that the Greeks have angered Athena and left Sinon as a sacrifice to the goddess and constructed the horse as a gift to soothe her temper. Sinon explains that the Greeks left the horse at the gates in hopes that the Trojans would destroy it and thereby earn the wrath of Athena.
Believing Sinon’s story, the Trojans wheel the massive horse into the city as a tribute to Athena. That night, Odysseus and his men slip out of the horse, kill the Trojan guards, and fling open the gates of Troy to the Greek army, which has meanwhile approached the city again.
Having at last penetrated the wall, the Greeks kill the citizens of Troy, steal the city’s riches, and burn the buildings to the ground. All of the Trojan men are killed except for a small group led by Aeneas, who escapes. Helen, whose loyalties have shifted back to the Greeks since Paris’s death, returns to Menelaus, and the Greeks at last set sail for home.
Background: The Historical Basis of the Trojan War:
The blind poet Homer is thought to be the author of the Iliad. For centuries many scholars believed that the Trojan War and its participants were entirely the creation of his imagination;but in the late 19th century, an archaeologist declared that he had discovered the remnants of Troy. The ruins that he uncovered sit a few dozen miles off of the Aegean coast in northwestern Turkey, a site that fits the geographical descriptions of Homer’s Troy. One layer of the site, roughly matching the point in history when the fall of Troy would have taken place, shows evidence of fire and destruction consistent with a sack. Many scholars now believe that there was a Trojan War, although there is no way to determine just how much of the Iliad is factual and how much Homer added to create a great story.
Background: The Mythical Cause of the Trojan War:
According to myth, the Trojan War was caused by a beauty competition among the three top goddesses, Athena, Aphrodite and Hera. The goddesses wished to have an impartial person judge who was most beautiful. They chose Paris, the son of the king of Troy who was thought to be very wise. Despite their claim to want a impartial judge, the goddesses decided not to play fair and bribed Paris with various offerings. Athena offered great wisdom and skill in battle. Hera offered him a high kingship above men. Aphrodite offered the love of the most beautiful woman on earth. Paris could not resist Aphrodite’s offer and declared her the most beautiful goddess.
Unfortunately, there was a problem. The most beautiful woman on earth, Helen, was already married to Menelaus, the Greek king of Sparta. This did not stop Paris who went to Sparta and kidnapped her. The Trojan War was essentially started by this kidnapping because the Greeks sailed to Troy to retrieve Helen and to avenge this attack on the honor of Greece.
Background: The Mythical Story of Achille’s Heel:
Achilles, the Iliad’s main character, was the son of the sea-nymph Thetis and the mortal King Peleus. Thetis tried to make her young son immortal by dipping him in the river Styx, but where she held his heel remained dry and became his defenseless spot. When Achilles was preparing to leave for the Trojan War, his mother told him he was prophesied to die in battle. She advised him to stay home, but he ignored her advice.
Summary of the Iliad:
Nine years after the start of the Trojan War, the Greek army sacks Chryse, a town allied with Troy. The Greeks take everything of value from the town, with Agamemnon claiming the greatest share as the leader of the army. During the battle, the Greeks capture a pair of beautiful maidens, Chryseis and Brieis. Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek forces, takes Chryseis as his prize, and Achilles, the Greeks’ greatest warrior, claims Briseis. Chryseis’s father, a priest of the god Apollo, offers an enormous ransom in return for his daughter, but Agamemnon refuses to give Chryseis back. The father then prays to Apollo, who sends a plague upon the Greek camp.
After many Greeks die, Agamemnon consults a prophet to determine the cause of the plague. When he learns that Chryseis is the cause, he reluctantly gives her up but then demands Briseis from Achilles. Furious at this insult, Achilles returns to his tent and refuses to fight in the war any longer. He vengefully yearns to see the Greeks destroyed and asks his mother to get Zeus to make this happen. The Trojan and Greek sides have declared a ceasefire with each other, but the Trojans breaks the treaty and ask Zeus to come to their aid.
To help the Trojans, as promised, Zeus sends a false dream to Agamemnon in which a figure in the form of Hector (the mightiest Trojan warrior) persuades Agamemnon that the Greeks can take Troy if he launches a full-scale assault on the city’s walls. The next day, Agamemnon gathers his troops for attack, but, to test their courage, he lies and tells them that ships. When Hera sees the Greeks fleeing, she alerts Athena, who inspires Odysseus, the most persuasive of the Greeks, to call the men back. He shouts words of encouragement and insult to raise their pride and restore their confidence. They promise that they will not abandon their struggle until Troy falls. The Trojan army marches from the city gates and advances to meet the Greeks. Paris, the Trojan prince who caused the war by stealing the Helen from her husband Menelaus, challenges the Greeks to single combat with any of their warriors. When Menelaus steps forward, however, Paris loses heart and hrinks back into the Trojan ranks. Hector, Paris’s brother and the leader of the Trojan forces, criticizes Paris or his cowardice. Stung by Hector’s insult, Paris finally agrees to a duel with Menelaus, declaring that the contest will establish peace between Trojans and Greeks by deciding once and for all which man shall have Helen as his wife. Hector presents the terms to Menelaus, who accepts. Both armies look forward to
ending the war at last.
Paris and Menelaus begin their duel. Neither is able to fell the other with his spear. Menelaus breaks his sword over Paris’s helmet. He then grabs Paris by the helmet and begins dragging him through the dirt, but Aphrodite snaps the strap of the helmet so that it breaks off in Menelaus’ hands. Frustrated, Menelaus retrieves his spear and is about to drive it home into Paris when Aphrodite whisks Paris away to his room in the palace. Back on the battlefield, both the Trojans and the Greeks search for Paris, who seems to have magically disappeared. Agamemnon insists that Menelaus has won the duel, and he demands Helen back.
Meanwhile, the gods engage in their own duels. Zeus argues that Menelaus has lost the duel and that the war should end as the mortals had agreed. Hera, who has invested much in the Greek cause, wants nothing less than the destruction of Troy. Zeus gives in, and Athena goes to the battlefield to rekindle the fighting. Disguised as a Trojan soldier, Athena convinces another soldier to take aim at Menelaus. He fires, but Athena, (who just wants to give the Greeks an excuse to fight) deflects the arrow so that it only wounds Menelaus. In the days ahead, with Zeus supporting the Trojans and Achilles refusing to fight, the Greeks suffer great losses. The Trojans push the Greeks back, forcing them to hide behind the walls that protect their ships. Several Greek commanders become wounded, and the Trojans break through the Greek walls. They advance all the way up to the boundary of the Greek camp, and Hector sets fire to one of the ships. Defeat seems certain because without the ships, the army will be stranded at Troy and almost certainly destroyed.
That night, the Greek troops sit brokenhearted in their camp. Standing before them, Agamemnon weeps and declares the war a failure. He proposes returning to Greece in disgrace. Diomedes rises and insists that he fight even if everyone else leaves. He cheers up the soldiers by reminding them that Troy is fated to fall. Nestor urges determination as well and suggests reunion with Achilles. Seeing the wisdom of this idea, gamemnon decides to offer Achilles a great stockpile of gifts on the condition that he return to the fight.
Concerned for his comrades but still too proud to help them himself, Achilles agrees to a plan that will allow his close friend Patroclus to take his place in battle, wearing his armor. Patroclus is a fine warrior, and his resence on the battlefield helps the Greeks push the Trojans away from the ships and back to the city walls. However, the counterattack soon falters when Apollo knocks Patroclus’ armor to the ground, and Hector the mightiest Trojan warrior) slays him. Fighting then breaks out as both sides try to lay claim to the body and armor. Hector ends up with the armor, but the Greeks manage to bring the body back to their camp. When Achilles discovers that Hector has killed Patroclus, he feels such grief and rage that he agrees to reconcile with Agamemnon and rejoin the battle. Achilles’ mother goes to Mount Olympus and persuades the ephaestus to forge Achilles a new suit of armor, which she presents to him the next morning. Achilles then rides out to battle at the head of the Greek army.
Meanwhile, Hector, not expecting Achilles to rejoin the battle, has ordered his men to camp outside the walls of Troy. When the Trojan army sees Achilles, it flees in terror back behind the city walls. Achilles cuts down every Trojan he sees. Strengthened by his rage, he even fights the god of the river Xanthus, who is angered that Achilles has caused so many corpses to fall into his streams. Finally, Achilles confronts Hector outside the walls of Troy. Ashamed at the poor advice that he gave his comrades, Hector refuses to flee inside the city with them. Achilles chases him around the city’s wall three times, but the goddess Athena finally tricks Hector into turning around and fighting Achilles. In a dramatic duel, Achilles kills Hector. He then lashes the body to the back of his chariot and drags it across the battlefield to the Greek camp. Upon Achilles’ arrival, the triumphant Greeks celebrate Patroclus’ funeral with a long series of athletic games in his honor. Each day for the next nine days, Achilles drags Hector’s body in circles around Patroclus’ body.
At last, the gods agree that Hector deserves a proper burial. Zeus sends the god Hermes to escort King Priam, Hector’s father and the ruler of Troy, into the Greek camp. Priam tearfully pleads with Achilles to take pity on a father grieving over his son’s death and to return Hector’s body. Deeply moved, Achilles finally agrees and returns Hector’s corpse to the Trojans. Both sides agree to a temporary truce, and Hector receives a hero’s funeral.
The End of the War:
The Trojan War has not yet ended at the close of the Iliad. Homer’s audience would have been familiar with the struggle’s conclusion. Here are a few of the events they would have known that happen after the Iliad ends.
The Death of Achilles and Ajax:
In the final books of the Iliad, Achilles refers frequently to his forthcoming death, about which his mother has warned him. After the end of the poem, at Hector’s funeral feast, Achilles sights the beautiful Polyxena, the daughter of Priam and hence a princess of Troy. Taken with her beauty, Achilles falls in love with her. Hoping to marry her, he agrees to use his influence with the Greek army to bring about an end to the war. However, when he travels to the temple of Apollo to arrange for the peace, Paris shoots him in the heel—the only defenseless part of his body—with a poisoned arrow, and he dies. After Achilles’ death, two of the greatest Greek heroes, Ajax and Odysseus, recover his body. Achilles’ mother instructs the Greeks to give
Achilles’ magnificent armor, forged by the god Hephaestus, to the most worthy hero. Both Ajax and odysseus want the armor; when it is awarded to Odysseus, Ajax commits suicide out of humiliation.
The Fall of Troy:
The Greek commanders are nearly ready to give up; nothing can penetrate the massive walls of Troy. However, before they lose heart, Odysseus comes up with a plan that will allow them to bypass the walls of the city completely. The Greeks build a massive, hollow, wooden horse, large enough to hold a group of warriors inside. Odysseus and a group of soldiers hide in the horse, while the rest of the Greeks burn their camps and sail away from Troy, waiting in their ships behind a nearby island.
The next morning, the Trojans discover the gigantic, mysterious horse and a lone Greek soldier named Sinon, whom they take prisoner. As instructed by Odysseus, Sinon tells them that the Greeks have angered Athena and left Sinon as a sacrifice to the goddess and constructed the horse as a gift to soothe her temper. Sinon explains that the Greeks left the horse at the gates in hopes that the Trojans would destroy it and thereby earn the wrath of Athena.
Believing Sinon’s story, the Trojans wheel the massive horse into the city as a tribute to Athena. That night, Odysseus and his men slip out of the horse, kill the Trojan guards, and fling open the gates of Troy to the Greek army, which has meanwhile approached the city again.
Having at last penetrated the wall, the Greeks kill the citizens of Troy, steal the city’s riches, and burn the buildings to the ground. All of the Trojan men are killed except for a small group led by Aeneas, who escapes. Helen, whose loyalties have shifted back to the Greeks since Paris’s death, returns to Menelaus, and the Greeks at last set sail for home.
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