Introduction to Trojan War
Trojan War, a war, in about the 12th century B.C., in which the Greeks besieged and destroyed the city of Troy, or Ilium, in Asia Minor. The war was long believed to be pure legend, but on the basis of archeological findings it is now accepted by scholars as historical fact. The Trojan War and its aftermath gave rise to many folk tales and ancient writings, including Homer's epic poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey.
Few legends stand as tall as the Greeks and the Trojan Horse.The War In Legend
The Greek legends of the war against Troy were intertwined with mythology. Gods and goddesses played important roles in the events, and many of the human characters had kinship with divinities. The war itself was caused by a celestial beauty contest. Paris, son of King Priam of Troy, chose Aphrodite as the winner ( ); she helped him abduct the most beautiful woman in Greece, Helen, wife of King Menelaus of Sparta.
Menelaus called on his countrymen to help him recover his wife and punish Troy. Among the warriors who joined him were his brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, who was made commander in chief; Odysseus (Ulysses in Latin), king of Ithaca; the giant Ajax, Prince of Salamis; and Achilles, prince of Phthia (Phthiotis). The elderly Nestor, king of Pylos, went along as adviser. The Greek expedition started out with 1,000 ships, but Aphrodite sent a storm and some were lost. To placate the goddess, Agamemnon agreed to the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia, and the fleet was then able to reach Troy. ( )
The siege lasted for 10 years. Among the deities helping the Greeks were the wife of almighty Zeus, Hera; Athene; Poseidon; and Achilles' mother, the sea nymph Thetis. The Trojans had the support of Aphrodite, Apollo, and Ares, and, much of the time, of Zeus himself. The Greeks held their beachhead, but failed in their attacks on Troy.
In the 10th year, Achilles and Agamemnon quarreled over a female captive, and Achilles retired sulking to his tent. With the great Greek warrior out of the conflict, the Trojan prince Hector drove the Greeks back almost to their ships. Achilles' friend Patroclus attempted to rally the Greeks and was struck down by Hector. In reprisal Achilles slew Hector. Paris killed Achilles by shooting an arrow into his heel, the only vulnerable part of his body. Soon afterward Paris was killed.
All the fighting had taken place outside the walls of Troy, but at last the Greeks found a way to enter the city. They built a huge wooden horse and filled its hollow body with armed men. Leaving it before the city gate, the Greek forces sailed away. Believing the horse to be an offering to Athene, the Trojans took it into the city so as to gain the goddess's favor for themselves. During the night the armed men came out of the horse and opened the gate for the rest of the Greeks, who had sailed back after dark. Troy was destroyed, and Helen was restored to Menelaus.
Writings Based On the Trojan War
Homer's Iliad covers only the 10th year of the war up through Hector's death and his funeral. The Odyssey is concerned with the adventures of Odysseus on his homeward voyage. No other accounts as old as these two have survived, but other very early works were available to writers of the classical age in Greece and Rome. A group of these works known as the Epic Cycle consisted of poems written presumably between the eighth and fourth centuries B.C. They supplemented Homer's account of the war and its aftermath.
The noted Greek dramatists of the fifth century B.C.Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripidesall made liberal use of the Trojan legends. The Roman author Virgil, of the first century B.C., recounted in the Aeneid the legend of Aeneas, a refugee Trojan prince whose descendants supposedly founded Rome. A prose work of the early Christian Era attributed by its author to an ancient writer, Apollodorus of Athens, adds detail to the Trojan story.
Two highly questionable sources were the supposed eyewitness accounts of Dictys of Crete and Dares of Troy. They were discovered in the classical era, and were published in Latin about the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. They were accepted enthusiastically by medieval scholars and were the source for many written works, including the 12th-century Romance of Troy by Benot de Sainte-Maure. From Benot came the story of Troilus and Cressida used by Boccaccio (in Il Filostrato), from whom it was adopted by Chaucer, through whom in turn it passed on to Shakespeare. Meanwhile, historians relying on Virgil as their source were claiming Trojan origin for most of the countries of western Europe.
The masterpiece of the French dramatist Racine, Andromaque (1667), was about the wife of Hector, and another of his plays was Iphignie (1674). Goethe used the Trojan legends for Iphigenia in Tauris (1787), the unfinished Achileis (179799), and Helena (1827). Helen of Troy also appeared in his Faust, Part II (1832), as she had in Marlowe's Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (1588).
A drama by Jean Giraudoux, The Trojan War Shall Not Take Place (1935), translated by Christopher Fry with the title Tiger at the Gates (1955), dealt with the causes of war using Troy as an example.
The Historical Interpretation
Historians believe that the abduction of Helen of Troy is legend and that the real Trojan War was caused by economic conflict. Troy was located at the mouth of the Hellespont (Dardanelles), where it could exact toll from any ship passing to the Black Sea. The Greeks who attacked Troy were seafaring traders who probably resented the Trojan tolls. (These Greeks were called Achaeans by the Trojans; they are also known by historians as the Mycenaeans, after the city of Mycenae.) The date of the Trojan War has not been definitely established, but many historians believe the conflict took place early in the 12th century B.C., and the dates 11941184 are widely used.
It was not until the 1870's, when Heinrich Schliemann used Homer's text to locate the ruins of Troy and excavated the site of Mycenae, that scholars realized that the Trojan War had actually taken place. In the 1930's C. W. Blegen, also using Homer as guide, located Nestor's palace at Pylos, further confirming the historical basis for Homer's works.