Trojan War
(Encyclopaedia Britannica)
Legendary conflict between the early Greeks and the people of
Troy in western Anatolia, dated by later Greek authors to the
12th or 13th century bc. (See Troy.) The war stirred the
imagination of the ancient Greeks more than any other event in
their history, and was celebrated in the Iliad and the Odyssey
of Homer, as well as a number of other early works now lost, and
frequently provided material for the great dramatists of the
Classical Age. It also figures in the literature of the Romans
(e.g., Virgil’s Aeneid) and of later European peoples down to
the 20th century.
In the traditional accounts,
Paris, son of the Trojan king, ran off with Helen, wife of
Menelaus of Sparta, whose brother Agamemnon then led a Greek
expedition against Troy. The ensuing war lasted 10 years,
finally ending when the Greeks pretended to withdraw, leaving
behind them a large wooden horse with a raiding party concealed
inside. When the Trojans brought the horse into their city, the
hidden Greeks opened the gates to their comrades, who then
sacked Troy, massacred its men, and carried off its women. This
version was recorded centuries later; the extent to which it
reflects actual historical events is not known.
The Trojan War
The Classical legends of the Trojan
War developed continuously throughout Greek and Latin
literature. In Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the earliest literary
evidence available, the chief stories have already taken shape,
and individual themes were elaborated later, especially in Greek
drama. The story of the Trojan origin, through Aeneas, of Rome
helped to inspire Roman interest; Book II of Virgil’s Aeneid
contains the best-known account of the sack of Troy. Finally
there are the pseudo-chronicles that go under the names of
Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius.
The Trojan War fought between
the Greeks and Troy originated in the following manner. King
Priam of Troy was wealthy and powerful; by his wife Hecuba and
by concubines he had 50 sons and 12 daughters. But his son Paris
was invited to judge which of the goddesses Aphrodite, Hera, and
Athena was entitled to receive the golden apple marked by the
goddess Eris (Discord) “for the most beautiful.” Aphrodite
promised Paris the most beautiful woman in the world: he
therefore awarded her the apple and went to Greece, where he won
the love of, and eloped with, Helen, wife of Menelaus, the king
of Sparta.
To recover Helen, the Greeks
launched a great expedition under the overall command of
Menelaus’s brother, Agamemnon, king of Argos or Mycenae. The
Trojans refused to return Helen. Small towns in or near the
Troad were sacked by the Greeks, but Troy, assisted by allies
from Asia Minor and Thrace, withstood a Greek siege for 10
years. The gods also took sides, notably Hera, Athena, and
Poseidon for the Greeks, and Aphrodite (who had a son, Aeneas,
by the Trojan Anchises, grandson of Assaracus), Apollo, and Ares
for the Trojans. The Iliad, which is set in the 10th year of the
war, tells of the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles, who
was the finest Greek warrior, and the consequent deaths in
battle of (among others) Achilles’ friend Patroclus and Priam’s
eldest son, Hector.
After Hector’s death the
Trojans were joined by two exotic allies, Penthesilea, queen of
the Amazons, and Memnon, king of the Ethiopians and son of the
dawn-goddess Eos. Achilles killed both of these, but Paris then
managed to kill Achilles with an arrow. Before they could take
Troy, the Greeks had to steal from the citadel the wooden image
of Pallas Athena (the Palladium) and fetch the arrows of
Heracles and the sick archer Philoctetes from Lemnos and
Achilles’ son Neoptolemus (Pyrrhus) from Skyros; Odysseus and
Diomedes achieved all these. Finally, with Athena’s help, Epeius
built a huge wooden horse. Several Greek warriors hid inside it;
the rest of the Greek army sailed away to Tenedos, a nearby
island, pretending to abandon the siege. Despite the warnings of
Priam’s daughter Cassandra, the Trojans were persuaded by Sinon,
a Greek who feigned desertion, to take the horse inside the
walls of Troy as an offering to Athena; the priest Laocoon, who
tried to have the horse destroyed, was killed by sea-serpents.
At night the Greek fleet returned, and the Greeks from the horse
opened the gates of Troy. In the total sack that followed, Priam
and his remaining sons were slaughtered; the Trojan women passed
into slavery in various cities of Greece. The adventurous
homeward voyages of the Greek leaders were told in two epics,
the Returns (Nostoi; lost) and Homer’s Odyssey.
The few Trojan survivors
included Aeneas, whose descendants continued to rule the
Trojans; later tradition took Aeneas’s Trojans to Italy as the
ancestors of the Romans.
Medieval legends
Medieval European writers, unacquainted with Homer
firsthand, found in the Troy legend a rich source of heroic and
romantic storytelling and a convenient framework into which to
fit their own courtly and chivalric ideals. The chief sources
for medieval versions of the story were fictitious eyewitness
accounts of the Trojan War by Dictys Cretensis and Dares
Phrygius. The key work in the medieval exploitation of the
Trojan theme was a French romance, the Roman de Troie (1154–60),
by Benoît de Sainte-Maure.
Later medieval writers used the
Roman de Troie until it was superseded by a Latin prose account,
the Historia destructionis Troiae (c. 1287; “History of the
Destruction of Troy”), by Guido delle Colonne. The French author
Raoul Le Fèvre’s Recueil des histoires de Troye (1464), an
account based on Guido, was translated into English by William
Caxton and became the first book to be printed in English as The
Recuyell of the Histories of Troye (c. 1474). See also Trojan
War.
Trojan horse
huge, hollow wooden horse constructed by the Greeks to gain
entrance into Troy during the Trojan War. The horse was built by
Epeius, master carpenter and pugilist. The Greeks, pretending to
desert the war, sailed to the nearby island of Tenedos, leaving
behind Sinon, who persuaded the Trojans that the horse was an
offering to Athena that would make Troy impregnable. Despite the
warnings of Laocoon and Cassandra, the horse was taken inside.
That night warriors emerged from it and opened the city’s gates
to the returned Greek army. The story is told at length in Book
II of the Aeneid and is touched upon in the Odyssey. The term
Trojan horse has come to refer to subversion introduced from the
outside.
Achilles
in Greek mythology, son of the mortal Peleus, king of the
Myrmidons, and the Nereid, or sea nymph, Thetis. He was the
bravest, handsomest, and greatest warrior of the army of
Agamemnon in the Trojan War. According to Homer, Achilles was
brought up by his mother at Phthia with his cousin and
inseparable companion Patroclus. One of the non-Homeric tales of
his childhood relates that Thetis dipped Achilles in the waters
of the River Styx, by which he became invulnerable, except for
the part of his heel by which she held him—the proverbial
“Achilles’ heel.”
The later mythographers related
that Peleus, having received an oracle that his son would die
fighting at Troy, sent Achilles to the court of Lycomedes on
Scyros, where he was dressed as a girl and kept among the king’s
daughters (one of whom, Deïdamia, bore him Neoptolemus). Hearing
from the soothsayer Calchas that Troy could not be taken without
Achilles, the Greeks searched for and found him.
During the first nine years of
the war, Achilles ravaged the country around Troy and took 12
cities. In the 10th year a quarrel with Agamemnon occurred when
Achilles insisted that Agamemnon restore Chryseis, his prize of
war, to her father, a priest of Apollo, so as to appease the
wrath of Apollo, who had decimated the camp with a pestilence.
An irate Agamemnon recouped his loss by depriving Achilles of
his favourite slave, Briseis.
Achilles refused further
service, and consequently the Greeks floundered so badly that at
last Achilles allowed Patroclus to impersonate him, lending him
his chariot and armour. Hector (the eldest son of King Priam of
Troy) slew Patroclus, and Achilles, having finally reconciled
with Agamemnon, obtained new armour from the god Hephaestus and
slew Hector. After dragging Hector’s body behind his chariot,
Achilles gave it to Priam at his earnest entreaty. The Iliad
concludes with the funeral rites of Hector. It makes no mention
of the death of Achilles, though the Odyssey mentions his
funeral. The poet Arctinus in his Aethiopis took up the story of
the Iliad and related that Achilles, having slain the Ethiopian
king Memnon and the Amazon Penthesilea, was himself slain in
battle by Priam’s son Paris, whose arrow was guided by Apollo.
Aeneas
mythical hero of Troy and Rome, son of the goddess Aphrodite
and Anchises. Aeneas was a member of the royal line at Troy and
cousin of Hector. He played a prominent part in the war to
defend his city against the Greeks, being second only to Hector
in ability. Homer implies that Aeneas did not like his
subordinate position, and from that suggestion arose a later
tradition that Aeneas helped to betray Troy to the Greeks. The
more common version, however, made Aeneas the leader of the
Trojan survivors after Troy was taken by the Greeks. In any
case, Aeneas survived the war, and his figure was thus available
to compilers of Roman myth.
The association of Homeric
heroes with Italy and Sicily goes back to the 8th century bc,
and the Greek colonies founded there in that and the next
century frequently claimed descent from leaders in the Trojan
War. Legend connected Aeneas, too, with certain places and
families, especially in Latium. As Rome expanded over Italy and
the Mediterranean, its patriotic writers began to construct a
mythical tradition that would at once dignify their land with
antiquity and satisfy a latent dislike of Greek cultural
superiority. The fact that Aeneas, as a Trojan, represented an
enemy of the Greeks and that tradition left him free after the
war made him peculiarly fit for the part assigned him, i.e., the
founding of Roman greatness.
It was Virgil who gave the
various strands of legend related to Aeneas the form they have
possessed ever since. The family of Julius Caesar, and
consequently of Virgil’s patron Augustus, claimed descent from
Aeneas, whose son Ascanius was also called Iulus. Incorporating
these different traditions, Virgil created his masterpiece, the
Aeneid, the Latin epic poem whose hero symbolized not only the
course and aim of Roman history but also the career and policy
of Augustus himself. In the journeying of Aeneas from Troy
westward to Sicily, Carthage, and finally to the mouth of the
Tiber in Italy, Virgil portrayed the qualities of persistence,
self-denial, and obedience to the gods that, to the poet, built
Rome.
The Aeneid (written c. 29–19
bc) tells in 12 books of the legendary foundation of Lavinium
(parent town of Alba Longa and of Rome) by Aeneas after he left
the burning ruins of Troy to found under supernatural guidance a
new city with a glorious destiny in the West.
When Troy fell to the Greeks,
Virgil recounts, Aeneas, who had fought bravely to the last, was
commanded by Hector in a vision to flee and to found a great
city overseas. Aeneas gathered his family and followers and took
the household gods (small images) of Troy, but, in the confusion
of leaving the burning city, his wife disappeared. Her ghost
informed him that he was to go to a western land where the Tiber
River flowed. He then embarked upon his long voyage, touching at
Thrace, Crete, and Sicily and meeting with numerous adventures
that culminated in shipwreck on the coast of Africa near
Carthage. There he was received by Dido, the widowed queen, to
whom he told his story. They fell in love, and he lingered there
until he was sharply reminded by Mercury that Rome was his goal.
Guilty and wretched, he immediately abandoned Dido, who
committed suicide, and Aeneas sailed on until he finally reached
the mouth of the Tiber. There he was well received by Latinus,
the king of the region, but other Italians, notably Latinus’
wife and Turnus, leader of the Rutuli, resented the arrival of
the Trojans and the projected marriage alliance between Aeneas
and Lavinia, Latinus’ daughter. War broke out, but the Trojans
were successful and Turnus was killed. Aeneas then married
Lavinia and founded Lavinium.
The death of Aeneas is
described by Dionysius of Halicarnassus. After he had fallen in
battle against the Rutuli, his body could not be found, and he
was thereafter worshiped as a local god, Juppiter indiges, as
Livy reports.
Agamemnon
in Greek legend, king of Mycenae or Argos. He was the son
(or grandson) of Atreus, king of Mycenae, and his wife Aërope
and was the brother of Menelaus. After Atreus was murdered by
his nephew Aegisthus (son of Thyestes), Agamemnon and Menelaus
took refuge with Tyndareus, king of Sparta, whose daughters,
Clytemnestra and Helen, they respectively married. By
Clytemnestra, Agamemnon had a son, Orestes, and three daughters,
Iphigeneia (Iphianassa), Electra (Laodice), and Chrysothemis.
Menelaus succeeded Tyndareus, and Agamemnon recovered his
father’s kingdom.
When Paris (Alexandros), son of
King Priam of Troy, carried off Helen, Agamemnon called on the
princes of the country to unite in a war of revenge against the
Trojans. He himself furnished 100 ships and was chosen commander
in chief of the combined forces. The fleet assembled at the port
of Aulis in Boeotia but was prevented from sailing by calms or
contrary winds that were sent by the goddess Artemis because
Agamemnon had in some way offended her. To appease the wrath of
Artemis, Agamemnon was forced to sacrifice his own daughter
Iphigeneia.
After the capture of Troy,
Cassandra, Priam’s daughter, fell to Agamemnon’s lot in the
distribution of the prizes of war. On his return he landed in
Argolis, where Aegisthus, who in the interval had seduced
Agamemnon’s wife, treacherously carried out the murders of
Agamemnon, his comrades, and Cassandra. In Agamemnon, by the
Greek poet and dramatist Aeschylus, however, Clytemnestra was
made to do the killing. The murder was avenged by Orestes, who
returned to slay both his mother and her paramour.
Ajax
in Greek legend, son of Telamon, king of Salamis, described
in the Iliad as being of great stature and colossal frame,
second only to the Greek hero Achilles in strength and bravery.
He engaged Hector (the chief Trojan warrior) in single combat
and later, with the aid of the goddess Athena, rescued the body
of Achilles from the hands of the Trojans. He competed with the
Greek hero Odysseus for the armour of Achilles but lost, which
so enraged him that it caused his death. According to a later
story Ajax’ disappointment drove him mad. On coming to his
senses he slew himself with the sword that he had received as a
present from Hector. The legend has it that from his blood
sprang a red flower that bore on its leaves the initial letters
of his name, AI, letters that are also expressive of lament.
Ajax was the tutelary hero of the island of Salamis, where he
had a temple and an image and where a festival called Aianteia
was celebrated in his honour.
Calchas
in Greek mythology, the son of Thestor (a priest of Apollo)
and the most famous soothsayer among the Greeks at the time of
the Trojan War. He played an important role in the quarrel
between Achilles and Agamemnon that begins Homer’s Iliad.
According to the lost poems of the Epic Cycle (a collection of
at least 13 ancient Greek poems, many of them concerning the
Trojan War), Calchas foretold the duration of the siege of Troy,
demanded the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, daughter of Agamemnon
(king of Mycenae), and advised the construction of the wooden
horse with which the Greeks finally took Troy. It had been
predicted that he should die when he met his superior in
divination; the prophecy was fulfilled when Calchas met Mopsus
(who was the son of Apollo and Manto, the daughter of the blind
Theban seer Tiresias), after the war, at Claros in Asia Minor or
at Siris in Italy. Beaten in a trial of soothsaying, Calchas
died of chagrin or committed suicide.
Diomedes
in Greek legend, the son of Tydeus, the Aetolian hero who
was one of the Seven Against Thebes. Diomedes was the commander
of 80 Argive ships and one of the most respected leaders in the
Trojan War. His famous exploits include the wounding of
Aphrodite, the slaughter of Rhesus and his Thracians, and
seizure of the Trojan Palladium, the sacred image of the goddess
Pallas Athena that protected Troy. After the war Diomedes
returned home to find that his wife had been unfaithful
(Aphrodite’s punishment) and that his claim to the throne of
Argos was disputed. Fleeing for his life, he sailed to Italy and
founded Argyripa (later Arpi) in Apulia, eventually making peace
with the Trojans. He was worshipped as a hero in Argos and
Metapontum. According to Roman sources, his companions were
turned into birds by Aphrodite, and, hostile to all but Greeks,
they lived on the Isles of Diomedes off Apulia.
Hector
in Greek legend, the eldest son of the Trojan king Priam and
his queen Hecuba. He was the husband of Andromache and the chief
warrior of the Trojan army. In Homer’s Iliad he is represented
as an ideal warrior and the mainstay of Troy. His character is
drawn in most favourable colours as a good son, a loving husband
and father, and a trusty friend. His leave-taking of Andromache
in the sixth book of the Iliad, and his departure to meet
Achilles for the last time, are movingly described. He is an
especial favourite of Apollo, and later poets even described him
as son of that god. His chief exploits during the Trojan War
were his defense of the wounded Sarpedon, his fight with Ajax,
son of Telamon (his particular enemy), and the storming of the
Greek ramparts. When Achilles, enraged with Agamemnon, deserted
the Greeks, Hector drove them back to their ships, which he
almost succeeded in burning. Patroclus, the friend of Achilles,
who came to the help of the Greeks, was slain by Hector with the
help of Apollo. Then Achilles, to revenge his friend’s death,
returned to the war, slew Hector, dragged his body behind his
chariot to the camp, and afterward round the tomb of Patroclus.
Aphrodite and Apollo preserved it from corruption and
mutilation. Priam, guarded by Hermes, went to Achilles and
prevailed on him to give back the body, which was buried with
great honour. Hector was afterward worshipped in the Troad and
also at Tanagra, east of Thebes.
Helen
in Greek legend, the most beautiful woman of Greece and the
indirect cause of the Trojan War. She was daughter of Zeus,
either by Leda or by Nemesis, and sister of the Dioscuri. As a
young girl she was carried off by Theseus, but she was rescued
by her brothers. She was also the sister of Clytemnestra, who
married Agamemnon. Her suitors came from all parts of Greece,
and from among them she chose Menelaus, Agamemnon’s younger
brother. During an absence of Menelaus, however, Helen fled to
Troy with Paris, son of the Trojan king Priam; when Paris was
slain, she married his brother Deiphobus, whom she betrayed to
Menelaus when Troy was subsequently captured. Menelaus and she
then returned to Sparta, where they lived happily until their
deaths.
According to a variant of the
story, Helen, in widowhood, was driven out by her stepsons and
fled to Rhodes, whose queen, Polyxo, hanged her in revenge for
the loss of her husband Tlepolemus in the Trojan War. The poet
Stesichorus, however, related in his second version of her story
that she and Paris were driven ashore on the coast of Egypt and
that Helen was detained there by King Proteus. The Helen carried
on to Troy was thus a phantom, and the real one was recovered by
her husband from Egypt after the war. This version of the story
was used by Euripides in his play Helen.
Helen was worshipped and had a
festival at Therapnae in Laconia; she also had a temple at
Rhodes, where she was worshipped as Dendritis (the tree
goddess). Like her brothers, the Dioscuri, she was a patron
deity of sailors. Her name is pre-Hellenic and in cult may go
back to the pre-Greek periods.
Helenus
in Greek legend, son of King Priam of Troy and his wife
Hecuba, brother of Hector, and twin brother of the prophetess
Cassandra. According to Homer he was a seer and warrior. After
the death of Paris in the Trojan War, Helenus paid suit to Helen
but when she rejected him for his brother, Deiphobus, he
withdrew in indignation to Mt. Ida, where he was captured by the
Greeks. Other accounts, however, relate that Odysseus captured
him, or he surrendered voluntarily in disgust at the treacherous
murder of Achilles. He told the Greeks that in order to capture
Troy they must gain possession of the Trojans’ image of Pallas
Athena (the Palladium), and they must slay Paris with the help
of Achilles’ son Neoptolemus and of Philoctetes, who possessed
the bow of Heracles.
Helenus and Andromache, his
brother Hector’s widow, were later taken by Neoptolemus to
Epirus. After Neoptolemus’ death, Helenus married Andromache and
became ruler of the country. In Virgil’s Aeneid, Book III,
Aeneas visits them on his way to Italy. They have reconstructed
a new Troy, and Aeneas must found a new city.
Laocoon
in Greek legend, a seer and a priest of the god Apollo; he
was the son of Agenor of Troy or, according to some, the brother
of Anchises (the father of the hero Aeneas). Laocoön offended
Apollo by breaking his oath of celibacy and begetting children
or by having sexual intercourse with his wife in Apollo’s
sanctuary. Thus, while preparing to sacrifice a bull on the
altar of the god Poseidon (a task that had fallen to him by
lot), Laocoön and his twin sons, Antiphas and Thymbraeus (also
called Melanthus), were crushed to death by two great sea
serpents, Porces and Chariboea (or Curissia or Periboea), sent
by Apollo. A much better-known reason for his punishment was
that he had warned the Trojans against accepting the wooden
horse left by the Greeks. This legend found its most famous
expressions in Virgil’s Aeneid (ii, 109 et seq.) and in the
Laocoön statue (now in the Vatican Museum) attributed by Pliny
the Elder to three Rhodian sculptors, Agesander, Polydorus, and
Athenodorus. The statue was for a time in the palace of the
Emperor Titus (ad 79–81). After its rediscovery during the
Renaissance, it regained its exalted reputation, inspiring
Gotthold Lessing’s famous essay on art, Laocoon (1766).
Memnon
in Greek mythology, son of Tithonus (son of Laomedon,
legendary king of Troy) and Eos (Dawn) and king of the
Ethiopians. He was a post-Homeric hero, who, after the death of
the Trojan warrior Hector, went to assist his uncle Priam, the
last king of Troy, against the Greeks. He performed prodigies of
valour but was slain by the Greek hero Achilles. According to
tradition, Zeus, the king of the gods, was moved by the tears of
Eos and bestowed immortality upon Memnon. His companions were
changed into birds, called Memnonides, that came every year to
fight and lament over his grave. The combat between Achilles and
Memnon was often represented by Greek artists, and the story of
Memnon was the subject of the lost Aethiopis of Arctinus of
Miletus (fl. c. 650 bc).
In Egypt the name of Memnon was
connected with the colossal (70-foot [21-metre]) stone statues
of Amenhotep III near Thebes, two of which still remain. The
more northerly of these was partly destroyed by an earthquake in
27 bc, resulting in a curious phenomenon. Every morning, when
the rays of the rising sun touched the statue, it gave forth
musical sounds like the twang of a harp string. This was
supposed to be the voice of Memnon responding to the greeting of
his mother, Eos. After the restoration of the statue by the
Roman emperor Septimius Severus (ad 170) the sounds ceased; they
were attributed to the passage of air through the pores of the
stone, caused chiefly by the change of temperature at sunrise.
Menelaus
in Greek mythology, king of Sparta and the younger son of
Atreus, king of Mycenae; the abduction of his wife, Helen, led
to the Trojan War. During the war Menelaus served under his
elder brother Agamemnon, the commander in chief of the Greek
forces. When Phrontis, one of his crewmen, was killed, Menelaus
delayed his voyage until the man had been buried, thus giving
evidence of his strength of character. After the fall of Troy,
Menelaus recovered Helen and brought her home. Menelaus was a
prominent figure in the Iliad and the Odyssey, where he was
promised a place in Elysium after his death because he was
married to a daughter of Zeus. The poet Stesichorus (fl. 6th
century bc) introduced a refinement to the story that was used
by Euripides in his play Helen: it was a phantom that was taken
to Troy, while the real Helen went to Egypt, from where she was
rescued by Menelaus after he had been wrecked on his way home
from Troy and the phantom Helen had disappeared.
Palamedes
in Greek legend, the son of Nauplius (king of Euboea) and
Clymene and a hero of the Trojan War. Palamedes is a prominent
figure in post-Homeric legends about the siege of Troy. Before
the war, according to the lost epic Cypria, he exposed the
trickery of Odysseus, who had feigned madness to avoid military
service; by placing the infant Telemachus in the path of
Odysseus’ plow in the field, he forced that king to admit his
sanity.
During the siege of Troy,
Palamedes alternated with two other Greek heroes, Odysseus and
Diomedes, in guiding the army in the field, but his ability
aroused their envy. In the Cypria the other two drowned
Palamedes while fishing or persuaded him to seek treasure in a
well, which they thereupon filled with stones. In various lost
tragedies, Agamemnon, Diomedes, and Odysseus had an agent steal
into his tent and conceal a letter that contained money and
purported to come from King Priam of Troy. They then accused
Palamedes of treasonable correspondence with the enemy, and he
was stoned to death. His father, Nauplius, avenged him, first by
visiting the homes of Greek leaders and encouraging their wives
to commit adultery and, then when the men were at sea, burning a
light to lead their ships onto dangerous rocks.
Palamedes had a reputation for
sagacity, and the ancients attributed a number of inventions to
him, including the alphabet, numbers, weights and measures,
coinage, board games, and the practice of eating at regular
intervals.
Paris
in Greek legend, son of King Priam of Troy and his wife,
Hecuba. A dream regarding his birth was interpreted as an evil
portent, and he was consequently expelled from his family as an
infant. Left for dead, he was either nursed by a bear or found
by shepherds. He was raised as a shepherd, unknown to his
parents. As a young man he entered a boxing contest at a Trojan
festival, in which he defeated Priam’s other sons. After his
identity was revealed, he was received home again by Priam.
The “judgment of Paris” was and
continues to be a popular theme in art. According to legend,
Paris, while he was still a shepherd, was chosen by Zeus to
determine which of three goddesses was the most beautiful.
Rejecting bribes of kingly power from Hera and military might
from Athena, he chose Aphrodite and accepted her bribe to help
him win the most beautiful woman alive. His seduction of Helen
(the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta) and refusal to return her
was the cause of the Trojan War. During the war Paris seems to
have had a secondary role: a good warrior but inferior to his
brother Hector and to the Greek leaders whom he faced. Menelaus
would have defeated Paris in single combat, but Aphrodite
rescued him, and the war continued.
Near the end of the war, Paris
shot the arrow that, by Apollo’s help, caused the death of the
hero Achilles. Paris himself, soon after, received a fatal wound
from an arrow shot by the rival archer Philoctetes.
Philoctetes
Greek legendary hero who played a decisive part in the final
stages of the Trojan War.
He (or his father, Poeas) had
been bequeathed the bow and arrows of the Greek hero Heracles in
return for lighting his funeral pyre; Philoctetes thus became a
notable archer. En route to Troy he was incapacitated by a
snakebite, and he was left behind on the island of Lemnos. After
a seer revealed that Troy could be taken only with the aid of
Heracles’ bow and arrows, the Greek warriors Odysseus and either
Diomedes or Neoptolemus went to Philoctetes and persuaded him to
accompany them to Troy. There he was healed of his wound and
killed Paris (son of Priam, king of Troy), by which action he
paved the way for the city’s fall. He subsequently returned home
but later wandered as a colonist to southern Italy, where he
ultimately died in battle.
The theme of this story was
used by the ancient Greek writer Sophocles in his Philoctetes.
Protesilaus
Greek mythological hero in the Trojan War, leader of the
force from Phylace and other Thessalian cities west of the
Pegasaean Gulf. Though aware that an oracle had foretold death
for the first of the invading Greeks to land at Troy, he was the
first ashore and the first to fall. His bride, Laodameia, was so
grief stricken that the gods granted her request that
Protesilaus be allowed to return from the dead for three hours.
At the expiration of the time she accompanied him to the
underworld, either by taking her own life or by immolating
herself in the flames in which her father burned the waxen image
of Protesilaus that she had been cherishing.
Sarpedon
in Greek legend, son of Zeus, the king of the gods, and
Laodameia, the daughter of Bellerophon; he was a Lycian prince
and a hero in the Trojan War. As recounted in Homer’s Iliad,
Book XVI, Sarpedon fought with distinction on the side of the
Trojans but was slain by the Greek warrior Patroclus. A struggle
took place for the possession of his body until Apollo rescued
it from the Greeks, washed it, anointed it with ambrosia, and
handed it over to Hypnos and Thanatos (Sleep and Death), by whom
it was conveyed for burial to Lycia. This episode is illustrated
on the famous Euphronius Vase, now in the Metropolitan Museum of
Art in New York City.
In later tradition, found in
Apollodorus’s Library and Epitome, Book III, Sarpedon was the
son of Zeus and Europa and the brother of King Minos of Crete.
Expelled from Crete by Minos, he and his comrades sailed for
Asia Minor, where he finally became king of Lycia. There a
sanctuary (Sarpedoneum) was erected in his honour.
