THE TROJAN WAR

Troy was a rich and powerful Bronze Age city in Asia Minor (modern Turkey)

Its ruins were discovered and excavated in the 19th century but the myths and legends surrounding it had been central to Western literature and art for at least 2,500 years before that

This is a reconstruction of how the city might really have looked at the height of its power in the 12th century B.C.

According to Greek and Roman legend, a Trojan prince, Paris, was asked to judge a beauty contest between three goddesses – Juno (queen of the gods), Minerva (goddess of wisdom) and Venus (goddess of love). He gave the prize to Venus because she promised to make the most beautiful woman in the world fall for him.

The woman considered most beautiful at that time was Helen, wife of the King Menelaus of Sparta in southern Greece

Paris visited Sparta and, while a guest at the royal court, persuaded Helen to desert her husband and return with him to Troy

Enraged, Menelaus sought the help of his brother Agamemnon, who was king of Mycenae, the most powerful city in Greece at this time.

The previous slide showed the `Lion Gate’, the most famous part of the ruins of Mycenae. Here you see a reconstruction of how the city might have looked at the supposed time of the Trojan War.

Led by the two brothers, Agamemnon and Menelaus, the Greeks states sent a great army to compel the Trojans to return Helen.

In the tenth year of the war, a priest of Apollo came to the Greek camp to beg Agamemnon to release his daughter, who the king had captured and was keeping as a concubine.

The king refused and the priest prayed to Apollo for revenge. The god sent a terrible plague which killed many in the Greek army.

The Greeks debated what to do and Achilles, greatest of the Greek warriors, demanded that Agamemnon return the priest’s daughter. Agamemnon reluctantly agreed, but insisted that in compensation Achilles should hand over to him his own concubine, Briseis.

Achilles had to obey but, in his anger, refused to take any more part in the fighting. When the Trojans began to get the upper hand, Achilles finally agreed to let his best friend, Patroclus, help the Greeks. Patroclus was killed by Hector, Paris’s brother and Achilles (seen here with his friend’s body) was grief- stricken

Achilles himself now went into battle and killed Hector. In this Greek vase painting of the duel, the names of both men are written besides them.

Achilles at first refused to return Hector’s body to the Trojans, but he relented after King Priam, father of Hector and Paris, visited the Greek camp to plead with him.

The war finally ended when the Greeks tricked the Trojans by pretending to sail away but leaving a great wooden horse on the shore. The priest Laocoon realised this was a trap but, after he struck the horse with his spear, great serpents appeared from the sea and killed both him and his sons.

Believing the horse was a holy object which could protect them, the Trojans pulled it into their city with great rejoicing

In fact, the horse was full of Greek soldiers, who emerged at night to open the gates and let in the rest of the Greek army. The city was destroyed and is people killed or enslaved.

There were also many legends about the later adventures of the heroes who had fought in the war. The most famous Greek poet, Homer, who perhaps wrote in the 8th century B.C, told the story of the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles in the Iliad, and, in the Odyssey, described the return of a Greek leader Odysseus (Ulysses) to his home on the island of Ithaca off the west coast of Greece.

The family of Julius Caesar claimed that they were descended from Aeneas, a Trojan leader who escaped from the city carrying his father on his shoulder and (in the version of the story shown in this coin issued by Caesar himself) the Palladium (sacred statue of Minerva/Athena) in his hand.

In his epic poem the Aeneid, the Roman poet Virgil, who wrote under the patronage of Caesar’s nephew, Augustus, described both the destruction of Troy and Aeneas’s quest to found a new city in Italy.

THE BEGINNING OF VIRGIL’S AENEID ( Arma virumque can ō, Troiae qu ī pr ī mus ab ō r ī s arms man also sing-I Troy’s who first from shores Italiam fato profugus Laviniaque venit Italy-to fate-by refugee Lavinian-also came Litora. multum ille et terris iactatus et alto coasts-to much he both land-on harassed and sea-at vi superum saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram. force-by gods’ cruel memorable Juno’s from anger