The Trojan War

The seeds of the Trojan War were sown at a wedding feast. When the sea-nymph Thetis married the mortal Peleus, all the gods were invited except Eris, the goddess of discord. Furious at the slight, Eris appeared anyway and rolled a golden apple into the midst of the celebration. Upon it was written: "For the Fairest."

Three goddesses claimed the prize: Hera, queen of the gods; Athena, goddess of wisdom and war; and Aphrodite, goddess of love. Zeus refused to judge between them, knowing any choice would earn him enemies. Instead, he sent the goddesses to the slopes of Mount Ida, where a Trojan prince named Paris tended his flocks.

Each goddess offered Paris a bribe. Hera promised power and kingship over all Asia. Athena offered wisdom and victory in battle. But Aphrodite promised him the most beautiful woman in the world: Helen of Sparta, wife of King Menelaus. Paris chose Aphrodite, and the doom of Troy was sealed.

Paris sailed to Sparta as a guest of Menelaus. While the king was away, Paris seduced Helen, whether through Aphrodite's magic or through genuine passion, and carried her off to Troy with a great treasure of gold and jewels. When Menelaus returned to find his wife gone, he called upon all the kings of Greece to honor their oath.

Years before, when Helen's father Tyndareus had offered her hand in marriage, so many suitors had come that he feared whichever he chose would face war with all the others. Odysseus, king of Ithaca, had suggested a solution: all suitors would swear an oath to defend the chosen husband against any wrong. Now that oath was called due.

For one woman, a thousand ships sailed. For one woman, the mightiest heroes of Greece left their homes and families. For one woman, cities would burn and nations would fall. Such was the face that launched a thousand ships.

Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and brother of Menelaus, assembled the greatest army the world had ever seen. Every king who had sworn the oath came: Ajax the Great, Diomedes, Nestor, Patroclus, and eventually the reluctant Odysseus and the young Achilles, the greatest warrior who had ever lived.

The Greeks besieged Troy for nine years without success. The city's walls, built by Poseidon and Apollo, were impenetrable, and the Trojan prince Hector proved a match for any Greek champion. The war became a grinding stalemate.

In the tenth year, a crisis erupted. Agamemnon had taken a war-prize, the maiden Chryseis, but her father was a priest of Apollo. When Agamemnon refused to ransom her, Apollo sent a plague upon the Greek camp. At last, under pressure from his own men, Agamemnon returned the girl, but to save face, he seized Briseis, the prize of Achilles.

Achilles's rage was terrible. He withdrew from the war entirely, he and his Myrmidons sitting in their ships while the Greeks suffered defeat after defeat. Hector drove the Greeks back to their ships and nearly burned the fleet. Only when Patroclus, Achilles's beloved companion, begged permission to fight wearing Achilles's armor did the tide briefly turn, but Hector slew Patroclus and stripped the armor from his corpse.

Achilles's grief transformed his anger into something cold and implacable. His mother Thetis brought him new armor forged by Hephaestus himself, including a magnificent shield depicting all the works of mortals and gods. Clad in divine bronze, Achilles returned to battle.

He slaughtered Trojans by the score, filling the river Scamander with so many bodies that the river-god rose in fury. He drove the Trojans back to their walls, and there, alone, he faced Hector.

The duel was swift and brutal. Athena aided Achilles with deception, and his spear found the gap in Hector's borrowed armor at the throat. As Hector lay dying, he begged Achilles to return his body to his father for proper burial. Achilles refused. He tied Hector's corpse to his chariot and dragged it around the walls of Troy, around the tomb of Patroclus, giving vent to his endless rage.

Only when King Priam himself came to the Greek camp, an old man alone among his enemies, and kissed the hands that had killed his son, did Achilles's heart soften. He remembered his own father, Peleus, who would never see him again. He returned Hector's body and granted a truce for the funeral.

Achilles did not live to see Troy fall. Paris, guided by Apollo, shot him in his one vulnerable spot: his heel, which his mother had held when she dipped him in the River Styx to make him invulnerable. Ajax and Odysseus fought over his armor, and when Odysseus won, Ajax went mad and killed himself.

But it was Odysseus who conceived the stratagem that ended the war. He had the craftsman Epeius build an enormous wooden horse, hollow inside. The best Greek warriors hid within, while the rest of the army sailed away as if abandoning the siege.

The Trojans debated what to do with the horse. Cassandra, the prophetess cursed to never be believed, warned of destruction. Laocoön, a priest, cast a spear at the horse and cried, "I fear Greeks, even bearing gifts." But Poseidon sent sea-serpents to kill Laocoön and his sons, and the Trojans, believing this was punishment for attacking a sacred offering, dragged the horse within their walls.

That night, as Troy celebrated, the Greeks crept from the horse and opened the gates. The army, which had only sailed to a nearby island, returned. Troy burned. Priam was killed at his own altar. Hector's infant son was thrown from the walls. The women were enslaved. The great city was reduced to ashes and legend, and the age of heroes came to its end.