The mythology about the Trojan War really begins with Leda, daughter of Thestios king of Aitolia, and wife of Tyndareos king of Sparta, one of whose several children was Helen, the ostensible causa belli of the war.
Helen, being by far the most beautiful of women, was striven for by all manner of wooers. The first was Theseus, who carried her off to Aphidnai in Attica, when she was still but a child. Her brothers, the Dioskouroi, brought her back untouched, however, and captured Theseus’ mother Aithra (the Athenians explained lamely that the hero was away at the time), who was given to Helen as an attendant and accompanied her to Troy. Later, she was formally wooed by all the principal men of Greece, including Menelaos—Agamemnon was already married to her sister Klytaimestra, but appeared to press his brother’s suit. On the advice of Odysseus, who also was a suitor, but without much hope of success, Menelaos being the richest of them all, Helen was left free to choose whom she would, and the rest swore to respect her choice and stand by her husband in all need. She chose Menelaos, and for some years lived quietly with him, and bore a daughter Hermione.
Then Paris appeared on the scene, favoured by Aphrodite, and induced Helen to run away with him. Menelaos was absent and could not therefore interfere; but on his return, he and his brother roused all Greece (it is still; remembered vaguely in Homer that Agamemnon was overlord of a great part of the country, in fact an emperor rather than a mere king), and a great expedition was raised against Troy.
After elaborate preparations, the fleet assembled at Aulis, where the incident of Iphigeneia took place. Here also the Greeks saw a portent, interpreted for them by the seer Kalchas. A serpent climbed into a tree wherein was a nest with eight young birds; these it devoured, and then caught and ate the mother-bird, which was fluttering around. It was then turned by Zeus into stone. The meaning of this was, that nine years should pass before the war came to an end, but Troy should fall in the tenth year.
According to the post-Homeric account, all manner of delays befell the expedition besides the one involving Iphigeneia; two or three of these are important enough to be worth mention. One is more or less Homeric, at least in outline. The arrows of Herakles were necessary to the taking of Troy; now these had descended from Poias to his son Philoktetes. He showed the Greeks the way to an island where was the shrine of the obscure deity Chryse, to whom they wished to sacrifice; as the rite was going on, a serpent bit him in the foot, producing so loathsome a wound and causing him to utter in his spasms of pain such loud and ill-omened cries that they were obliged to set him ashore on Lemnos. At last however Helenos, the Trojan seer, captured by the guile of Odysseus, declared that only by the arrows of Herakles could the city be taken; Diomedes therefore (in Sophokles it is Neoptolemos, son of Achilles) and Odysseus went to Lemnos and induced Philoktetes to come with them. The two sons of Asklepios, Machaon and Podaleirios, were with the army; the former contrived to heal the sore, and Philoktetes slew Paris and helped to win the campaign.
Another delay is not in the Homeric tradition at all, but is quite respectably old. The fleet, on its way to Troy, somehow took a wrong direction, and landed in Mysia. The inhabitants, finding a strange army in their country, turned out in force under their king Telephos, a son of Herakles, who distinguished himself in the battle, but was wounded by Achilles. The wound would not heal, so, after the Greeks had gone away—for they had no serious quarrel with the Mysians—Telephos went to Delphoi and asked Apollo for advice. He was told, ‘he that wounded shall also heal’, and therefore set out to find Achilles. According to Euripides at any rate, Telephos came among the Greeks disguised as a beggar; in one account, which may or may not derive from Euripides, he somehow got hold of the baby Orestes and threatened to kill the infant if he were not relieved. At all events, whether by persuasion or threats, he secured a hearing; Achilles protested that he knew no medicine, but it was explained by Odysseus that the giver of the wound was the spear itself. The scrapings of this were therefore applied and Telephos was healed.
At length the fleet arrived before Troy, the ships were drawn up on the beach, and the Greeks settled down to a long campaign of attrition. A skirmish on landing caused them their first serious loss; Protesilaos, king or baron of part of the region of Thessaly just opposite the southern end of Magnesia, was the first to spring on shore, and was cut down by a Trojan, usually said (but not by Homer) to have been Hektor. Protesilaos had left at home a young wife.
Later authors elaborate this story, which Homer touches upon but briefly. It was fated that the first Greek to leap ashore should fall, and thus Protesilaos in a manner sacrificed himself for his comrades. His wife was called Laodameia, and her story—curiously enough, no surviving Greek of the classical epoch mentions it, but it is familiar from the Latins—goes on to say that she was inconsolable for her husband’s death; that the gods, in pity, let him return to her for three hours; and that, when he departed again, she did not survive him. In the same battle Kyknos, an invulnerable son of Poseidon, was overcome and strangled by Achilles, whereat he turned into a swan (kyknos in Greek).
The state of affairs at Troy itself was as follows. Paris, as was natural, headed the war-party. He was the son of king Priam and his chief wife Hekabe (Latin Hecuba). It had been foretold to his father that he would be the ruin of the city, for his mother had dreamed that she was delivered of a firebrand. Therefore he was exposed on Mt. Ide (Doric and Latin Ida), but was suckled by a she-bear, saved by shepherds and brought up among them. From his valour he got the name Alexandros (practically=warrior, champion), and one day, descending to the city from the mountains, he so distinguished himself in sports that he was recognized as being no commoner, and thus regained his rank. While still among the shepherds, he had won the love of a nynph, Oinone, whom he deserted to go after Helen. Long after, when wounded by Philoktetes with one of the poisoned arrows of Herakles, he sought her out and craved for her help to cure his wound. She refused, but on learning that he was dead, remorsefully ended her own life.
An obscure story states that Priam tried to elude the fates by putting to death, not Paris, but another child who was born on the same day, his illegitimate son by the wife of a citizen called Thymoites.
Strong on the other side—against the war—was Antenor, one of the principal elders of Troy, who on moral grounds disapproved of Paris’ kidnapping of Helen, and urged that she and the wealth she had brought with her should be given back. A tradition as old as the Epic Cycle says that the Greeks recognized his virtues and fairmindedness, and therefore spared him and such of his family as had survived the war, when Troy fell. He had been advised by them to hang a panther-skin outside his door, to indicate that his house was not to be sacked.
From this there grew up a later account which made him out a most contemptible person, little better than a spy and a traitor in Greek pay. He, or his wife Theano the prophetess, betrayed the Palladion to the Greeks, and he opened the door of the Wooden Horse.
The sympathies of Aineias were on the whole with the peace-party, and his own actions during the war, although correct and patriotic enough, were not especially distinguished. His house, the junior branch of the royal family, had been cast into the shade by the ruling branch, and he is represented as feeling his position rather strongly. The foremost champion of Troy was one of the fifty sons whom Priam had had by various wives and concubines, Hektor, son of Hekabe. He is never represented as having much to do with diplomacy; he is a chivalrous and most valiant warrior, a terror to the Greeks in combat, inferior only to Achilles, and an affectionate husband. His wife was Andromache, daughter of Eetion king of Thebe in the Troad, who, with his sons, was slain when Achilles took his town. Their son, Astyanax or Skamandrios, who was born during the war, did not long survive it, according to the post-Homeric account, being flung from the battle ents by the victorious Greeks, who feared to leave any of Hektor’s stock alive. Andromache herself became the slave-concubine of Neoptolemos and after his death, according at least to the account followed by Euripides and others, wedded Helenos, who had taken refuge in Epeiros. She thus became the ancestress of the Molossian kings of later times.
Most of the other sons of Priam are mere names; they appear for a moment in a battle-scene, only to be killed or captured by one of the Greek champions. One of the youngest, Troilos, fell in a combat with Achilles early in the war. For some reason, he became rather prominent in later legend. No really important story, however, is connected with him.
Of the two daughters of Priam who appear in legend, one, Kassandra, was the object of one of the god Apollo’s numerous ill-fated passions. On her he showered his favours, including the gift of prophecy; but in the end she would not yield to him. Now no god can recall his gifts; but Apollo took measures to render her powers a curse rather than a blessing, for while she always foretold truly, this doom was on her and her people, that she should never be believed. Hence her warnings against the dangers threatening Troy fell on deaf ears.
Besides her prophecies, the following events make up her career. At the time of the fall of Troy she was unmarried. Taking refuge in the temple of Athena in Ilion, she was dragged from the image of the goddess and violated by Aias the Lokrian. For this sacrilege his people, the Lokrians of Opus, were obliged yearly to send certain virgins of their noblest families (the Hundred Houses) as temple-servants to Athena. If they were caught on the way to the temple by the people of Ilion, they were put to death; if they reached it, they performed the duties of the meanest slaves, apparently for life. There is both literary and inscriptional evidence of the sending of these unfortunate girls to Ilion, and the term of the penance, a thousand years, expired somewhere near the beginning of the Christian era. The story goes on to say that Kassandra was assigned to Agamemnon as his share of the booty, and was murdered with him by Klytaimestra.
Kassandra’s sister Polyxena appears in the post-Homeric tradition as a pathetic and noble figure. When Troy was taken, the ghost of Achilles claimed her as his share of the spoil; she was therefore sacrificed at his tomb—or, to speak more correctly (for human sacrifice is a very rare phenomenon in ancient Greek myths), she was put to death at his tomb in order to accompany her dead master to the other world.
Hence, no doubt, springs the romantic story that Achilles was violently in love with her during his lifetime. This, in the later accounts, led to his death, for he was decoyed into an interview with her at the temple of Apollo Thymbraios, and there set upon and killed by Paris.
Finally, Hekabe herself stands out very prominently in all versions of the Troy-saga, as a majestic but most unhappy figure. She sees her children slain one after another, and her husband cut down in the courtyard of his own palace. In the form of her story familiar in the classical (but not Homeric) tradition, she was apportioned as a slave to Odysseus. On its return from Troyland, the Achaian fleet touched at a point on the Thracian coast. Here she learned that her last son, Polydoros, who had been entrusted to Polymestor, king of that place, had been murdered by him for the sake of the treasure he had brought with him. She therefore decoyed Polymestor into her tent, pretending to have treasure hidden somewhere, and to know nothing of the boy’s death. Her women meanwhile coaxed his children to come with them; these were murdered before the eyes of their father, who was then blinded by the women with their brooch-pins (fibulae). Finally, Hekabe herself was metamorphosed, turning into a bitch. As to what became of her after that, the stories differ; but she died and was buried, and the spot called Kynos Sema (Dog’s Monument), between Abdera and Dardanos, was said to be named in memory of her.
Various elaborations and rationalizings were current; she was called a dog because in her anger she howled and barked like one, or because she died a dog’s death (by stoning), or the like. In dog-form she haunted Thrace for a great while, or she turned into a dog after she was stoned for being abusive, or in that shape she became one of Hekate’s hell-hounds. None of these tales is early.
Of the many Greek leaders, a few deserve especial mention. Agamemnon, son of Atreus and brother of Menelaos, appears, in accounts from Homer down, as a man of great prestige owing to his high position, rather than of outstanding personal merit, although he fights bravely enough; he is apt to be irresolute, and easily discouraged. Menelaos is somewhat eclipsed by his more eminent brother; as a warrior, he is not in the very first rank, although efficient; Achilles, Agamemnon, the two Aiantes, Diomedes, and, in the other camp, Hektor, outclass him.
Of these, the greater Aias (Latin Aiax), the son of Telamon, Herakles’ old comrade, and commander of the little contingent from Salamis, is one of the most prominent figures of saga. Unlike some of the others, he is slow-witted, no speaker, but with a certain bluff common sense and unshakable courage. In the absence of Achilles, he is the most reliable champion of the invaders, especially good when things are looking most hopeless. With his courage go self-will and pride, the latter proving in the end his ruin. After the death of Achilles, his armour was claimed by both Aias and Odysseus, as the most notable of the surviving champions. The matter was tried before the assembled host, Athena presiding and the Trojan prisoners acting as evidence. On their testifying that they had been more harmed by Odysseus, the arms were awarded to him. Aias went mad with resentment, and in his madness slaughtered a number of sheep, which he supposed to be his enemies. On recovering his senses, he killed himself for grief and shame.
The lesser Aias is is a splendid fighter, but violent and ill-mannered, and inferior in every way to his greater namesake. He is leader of the Lokrian contingent. After his crime against Kassandra, he departed for home and was shipwrecked on the way; swimming ashore, by the help of Poseidon, at the Gyrai Petrai, a range of cliffs near Naxos, he boasted that he had escaped despite the gods; whereat Poseidon smashed the rock on which he stood, and drowned him.
Diomedes was the son of Polyneikes’ old comrade Tydeus. He is prominent throughout the Iliad, both for his valour and also, especially from the tenth book onwards, for his frank and good advice to Agamemnon. Athena favours him, as she did his father, and by her he is emboldened to meet Ares and Aphrodite in battle, wounding both. Meeting Glaukos, one of the leaders of the Lykians, who fight on the side of Troy, he asks his name, and on finding that a hereditary friendship exists between them, proposes that they should avoid encountering each other in battle. In token of friendship they exchange armour; as Diomedes was wearing a plain bronze suit, while Glaukos had golden armour worth a hundred oxen, this gave rise to a favourite proverb for an unequal bargain, ‘gold for bronze.’
Diomedes survived the war, and returned safe home to Argos, or Kalydon. There, however, fresh trouble awaited him, in the post-Homeric story. Aphrodite was wroth with him for the wound he had given her, and Diomedes found that his wife Aigialeia had played him false. Apparently his own life was threatened too, for he took refuge at the altar of Hera. Leaving Greece, he wandered through Libya and Iberia (Africa and Spain) till he reached Italy, where he was supposed to have founded Arpi, Canusium and Sipontum, and visited a number of places. In particular, the Islands of Diomedes, off the coast of Apulia, were said to be frequented by a particular kind of sea-birds, friendly to Greeks, but hostile to every one else, which were originally the comrades of Diomedes turned into bird shape. He was buried there, and the birds daily sprinkled his tomb with water. There and at several other places worship was paid to him, or a local deity was identified with him. Various tales were current as to the manner of his death or vanishing; one, as old as Pindar, was that Athena made him immortal; he married Hermione, adds the scholiast, and lives with the Dioskuroi.
Of course, local legends were common. Argos claimed to possess a shield (there were many relics in the temple of Hera and other shrines, some, no doubt, really very old), and also the Palladion; there was certainly an old image of Athena which was annually bathed and the shield with it; but Sparta also had the Palladion, and so had Athens, where Diomedes had left it with Demophon son of Theseus, or had landed there at night, when Demophon, mistaking his men for enemies, had taken it in the ensuing skirmish, and so forth.
Still more prominent is Odysseus, king of Ithake, husband of Penelope and father of Telemachos. During the war, he was prominent in every episode which required quick wits; in battle, he was formidable, but not one of the very foremost champions; when it is a question of casting lots to see who shall fight Hektor, the Greeks pray that the lot may fall upon the greater Aias, Diomedes, or Agamemnon (Achilles being absent), not on Odysseus, although he also has volunteered. Besides giving much shrewd and good advice on many occasions, it was he who volunteered, among others, to go with Diomedes on the perilous night expedition described in Iliad X, and was chosen ‘because he can use his wits exceeding well.’ He and Diomedes are constantly represented, in Homer and after Homer, as acting in conjunction. In particular, they made their way into Troy and stole the Palladion together, the fatal image of Pallas Athena on the possession of which the luck of the city depended. But Odysseus was alone when he marked himself with weals, dressed as a beggar, and, pretending to have deserted, entered Troy as a spy.
After Homer, the character of Odysseus suffers a remarkable degeneration. From the Cyclic epics on, and especially in Attic tragedy, he is a most villainous double-dealer. His conduct in regard to Palamedes is especially vile, and he drags Diomedes down with him. Palamedes, son of Nauplios, was as clever as Odysseus himself; he was credited with having invented several letters of the alphabet, together with other ingenuities. When the muster for the war was forward, Odysseus pretended to be mad, so as to avoid serving: he therefore yoked a horse (or an ass) and an ox to his plough and prcceeded to plough with them; but Palamedes put the infant Telemachos in the way, and noted that Odysseus was sane enough to turn aside and avoid him; or he drew his sword against the child. Odysseus was henceforth his enemy, and found occasion to get him out of the way. He and Diomedes drowned him while he was fishing, or he forged a letter, supposed to come from Priam, promising Palamedes gold if he would betray the Greek camp, and, producing this before the host, bade them search Palamedes’ tent. The gold being found there (Odysseus had taken care to hide it previously), Palamedes was found guilty and stoned. Another version is, that Odysseus and Diomedes told him there was a treasure hidden down a well, and flung stones upon him when he went down to look for it, thus killing him; but this is later than the others.
One of the best-known characters in the whole cycle is Nestor, and this is largely due to the loving, yet humorous drawing of him in the Iliad. He is the sole surviving son of Neleus, and king of Pylos. He is much older than the rest and no longer able to do much in the field, but highly honoured for his sage counsels and his somewhat long-winded, but interesting, reminiscences. He appears always as a peace-maker when the younger chiefs quarrel, and for the first half of the poem his advice is Agamemnon’s chief guide; after the failure of his scheme, the embassy of reconciliation to Achilles, he drops somewhat into the background, his place being taken in large measure by Diomedes, who has an old head on young shoulders. After the war, he reaches Pylos in safety, and appears in the Odyssey enjoying a dignified old age, still full of good advice and old stories, and having only one serious regret, the death in battle of his heroic son Antilochos, who was killed by Memnon while covering his father’s retreat.
But pre-eminent over all the rest is Achilles (properly Achilleus or Achileus), son of Peleus and Thetis, the strongest, swiftest, most valiant and most handsome of the whole army.
The story of his origin is the story of his mother Thetis’ marriage. A legend of which the earlier authors know nothing states that Thetis dipped him, while he was yet an infant, in the Styx, and thus made him proof against all manner of wounds, save in the heel by which she held him. A like invulnerability is claimed for the greater Aias, whom, while he was a baby, Herakles wrapped in the invulnerable skin of the Nemean lion, thus communicating its property to him. There was one spot which the skin did not touch however, and through that, in the end Aias thrust his own sword. In like manner Achilles, in the later versions of his story, died from an arrow-wound in the heel.
Thetis knew that her son might either live a long and inglorious life, or go to Troy, cover himself with glory, and die young. Therefore she, or Peleus, hid him away, when the army was mustering, knowing that, as it was fated that Troy could not be taken without him, he would be asked to go, although he was not one of the suitors of Helen, having still, at that time, been under the care of Cheiron, by whorn he, like Jason, was educated. Thetis therefore took him to the island of Skyros, where she dressed him as a girl, and left him at the court of king Lykomedes, lord of that island. Here he met and loved Deidameia, Lykomedes’ daughter, who became by him the mother of a son, Pyrrhos (Red-head), afterwards nicknamed Neoptolemos (young warrior, new recruit) because he joined the army at Troy late in the war. But it was found out where Achilles was, and Odysseus and Diomedes went to Skyros. Here they contrived to leave armour in the chambers of the women and Achilles soon betrayed his sex by the interest with which he handled it. He therefore joined the fleet at Aulis.
For the first nine years, after one or two fruitless enbassies to try and arrange a peaceful settlement, the war consisted of a series of raids by the Greeks on the minor cities supporting Troy, and on the hinterland generally. The fortress itself, strongly garrisoned and supported by a considerable force of Trojans and allies, was impregnable to the rudimentary siege operations of those days, but the campaign of attrition wore down Priam’s resources and stopped all possibility of increasing them by trade. In the tenth year occurred the events which form the subject of the Iliad. Agamemnonn had had for his portion of the spoil Chryseis, daughter of Chryses, a priest of Apollo. Much captivated by her beauty, he refused to let her father ransom her; the priest therefore besought his god to punish the Achaioi, and a plague came upon the camp. Kalchas explained the cause of the plague, and that it could be stopped only by returning Chryseis without ransom. Agamemnon grudgingly consented, but indemnified himself by seizing on Briseis, a slave girl belonging to Achilles, who was much attached to her. The latter therefore withdrew from any further allegiance to Agamemnon, and he and his contingent, the Thessalian Myrmidones, for some time took no part in the fighting. Deprived thus of their foremost champion, the Greeks, despite the valour shown by Diomedes, Aias and others, were driven back on their camp, which they found it expedient in such circumstance to fortify with a palisade.
Agamemnon, by the advice of Nestor, now sent to Achilles an embassy, consisting of Aias of Salamis, Odysseus, and Phoinix son of Amyntor, with instructions to offer the return of Briseis, a huge honour-price, and, if the war should be brought to a successful conclusion, marriage, without bride-price, to one of the royal princesses, with seven cities for her dower. All three ambassadors urged him warmly to accept, in particular old Phoinix, who was in some sense a client of Achilles’ father Peleus. Phoinix, when a young man, had incurred the anger of his own father, by forming a liaison with a slave-concubine of the latter’s of whom his mother was jealous. His father cursed him with childlessness, a curse which was fulfilled; Phoinix then, despite all efforts to prevent his leaving, ran away and took refuge with Peleus, who was kind to him and later gave him a barony. He had known and tended Aehilles from babyhood, and might be described as his tutor. Even he, however, failed to overcome Achilles’ bitterness against Agamemnon, and the embassy departed, having apparently achieved nothing.
Next day, after vigorous resistance on the part of the Greeks, Hektor drove them back to the ships, and attacking the wall with several columns at once, contrived to force an entrance and set one of the ships on fire. But now Patrokles (or Patroklos), the favourite retainer of Achilles, got leave to go out wearing Achilles’ armour and leading the Myrmidones. The Trojans, supposing that Achilles himself was upon them, retreated in disorder, but after a while Patroklos was killed, by the help of Apollo, and the Greeks in turn began to fall back. Achilles, frightfully distraught upon hearing of the death of his friend, appeared, unarmed, at the trench around the Achaian camp, where the sound of his war-cry and terrifying spectacle of flame seeming to play about the bare crown of his head, made the Trojans give back and let the body of Patrokles be rescued. Achilles now was anxious to fight at once; Odysseus, however, insisted on the feud between him and Agamemnon being healed in proper fashion, with payment of the compensation due to Achilles; and meanwhile Thetis persuaded Hephaistos to make a new suit of armour for her son, who of course had lost his own upon the death of Patroklos. Achilles next day utterly routed the Trojans, met and killed Hektor in single combat, and returned to camp, dragging Hektor’s body behind his chariot. Funeral games were held over Patroklos, and Priam, coming secretly by night to Achilles, ransomed the body of his son. With Hektor’s funeral the Iliad ends.
Despite their much pillaging of places near Ilion, never during the entire war were the Greeks able to cut the Trojan communications with their numerous allies in Thrace and in Asia. The steadiest and most loyal support was given by the strong Lykian contingent, led by Sarpedon, son of Zeus, and his kinsman Glaukos, of whom the latter has already been mentioned, the former was killed by Patroklos. A formidable body of Thracians was brought to the Troad by Rhesos, the night before Hektor’s final and nearly successful attempt on the camp; but Odysseus and Diomedes, volunteering to go as scouts and see what the enemy were doing, caught a Trojan spy, Dolon, who had been persuaded with a promise of Achilles’ immortal horses to bring word of the Greek movements, and they found out from him where Rhesos was, stole into his unguarded bivouac, and killed him and several of his followers, helped in their enterprise by Athena. Later tradition had it that if the horses of Rhesos, which the two adventurers carried off, had had time to feed on the pasture and drink the water of Troy, the city could never have been taken. Rhesos himself, being the son of one of the Muses, escaped the usual fate of men after his death, and became a kind of demi-god in Thrace, concerning whose origin and functions not a little difference of opinion prevails in the ancient sources. But still more noteworthy were two contingents which appeared on the scene after the death of Hektor.
The first of these was a body of Amazons, led by their queen Penthesileia, daughter of Ares. At once we notice a different tone from that of Homer’s story; the Amazons are outside his purview altogether, save as a vague and distant people with whom Priam once fought in his youth (which may indeed be the original suggestion for the later story about Amazons actually at Troy). Penthesileia was as beautiful as she was valiant, and did much damage before she fell in battle with Achilles, who mourned over her after he had slain her. Hereupon Thersites took it upon himself to mock Achilles, who in a rage killed him. In Homer this low-born but glib-tongued demagogue, ‘the uncomeliest man that came before Ilion’, rails on the lords at the great council which follows the defection of Achilles; and he is soundly beaten by Odysseus for his insolence. In the later tales, however, he is provided with a respectable pedigree and made a kinsman of Diomedes, who is highly displeased at his death; an example of a sort of snobbishness in the later mythology, which tended to make every one royal if he is at all prominent.
After Penthesileia came Memnon, son of Eos and Tithonos. He also distinguished himself against the Greeks, but like Penthesileia he fell before Achilles. His comrades, the Ethiopians, were turned into birds, who still fight around his tomb. He represents the far South, or East, as Penthesileia does the North; thus, figuratively, the ends of the earth were drawn into the fray at Troy.
Soon after this followed the death of Achilles himself, who was shot either by Paris, or by Apollo (disguised as Paris, in some accounts); his body was got out ofthe battle after a furious struggle (an imitation surely of the comparable struggle over the body of fallen Patroklos in the Iliad) and he was magnificently buried and mourned not only by all the Greeks, but by Thetis and her sister Nereids (as was Patroklos). As to his fate after death, the early accounts vary from the later, and these from each other; in Homer, he goes to the House of Hades like anyone else; later it was said that he lived immortal, either on the island of Leuke, in the Euxine (the Black Sea), or in the Elysian Fields, and by some that he was wedded to Helen. Close upon his death followed the suicide of Aias son of Telamon, already mentioned. The Greeks now sent for Achilles’ son, as without him Troy could not be taken; and after him, for Philoktetes, for a like reason.
But still the city held out, and a stratagem was resorted to. Acting upon a cunning suggestion by Odysseus, Epeios, who was a skilled craftsman and helped by Athena, constructed an enormous wooden model of a horse, inside which a band of picked warriors was hidden. The army then sailed away, pretending to abandon the siege of Ilios but actually only heaving to out of sight on the far side of the offshore island Tenedos, and leaving behind Sinon, who purposely let himself be taken prisoner. To the Trojans Sinon then professed himself a bitter enemy of the other Greeks, who had killed his friend and lord Palamedes and would have sacrificed him as well to secure their safe return, and he pretended to reveal the secret of the horse; it was an offering to Athena, purposely made too big to go through the gates, but if it could be brought in, the city would be impregnable. The Trojans for the most part believed him, although Laokoon, priest of Apollo, declared it was all a trick, and that the horse should be destroyed. He and his two sons were, however, killed by a pair of huge serpents which appeared swimming over the sea from Tenedos. The Trojans supposed this to be a punishment for his impiety, and hauled the horse inside the city, breaking down a part of their city wall.
Kassandra warned them in vain, and Helen walked around the horse, calling to the warriors inside in perfect imitation of the voices of their wives; but Menelaos, Diomedes and Odysseus restrained the others from answering Helen. That night little watch was kept by the Trojans, who imagined themselves free at last of the Achaian invaders. But the Greeks returned, the horse was opened, by Sinon or another, and the city was taken, after a sharp fight in which Priam was killed by Neoptolemos; but Aineias and some others escaped to become the subjects of later Italian pseudo-mythology.
Homeward bound from Troyland, the returning Achaian fleet met with disasters, due to the wrath of Athena and the treacherous revenge of Nauplios, father of Palamedes. Athena raised a violent storm which scattered the ships and wrecked many of them; but a greater disaster awaited them off Cape Kaphareus in Euboia, where Nauplios decoyed them upon the rocks by showing false beacons. Several individual heroes escaped these disasters with varying results; Nestor arrived safely at Pylos in a few days; Neoptolemos, warned by Thetis, went home by land; Idomeneus, the Cretan leader at Troy, was caught in a storm on his way home, and vowed to sacrifice the first thing that met him, if he returned safe. This proved to be his own son; on his attempting to fulfill, or actually fulfilling, his vow, he was driven into exile.
Agamemnon arrived home safely, to be met with murder and treachery. His family had been accursed ever since the days of their ancestor Tantalos, whose son Pelops achieved his desires by treachery and violence. Oinomaos, king of Pisa, had a fair daughter Hippodameia, whose hand might be won on certain conditions. The suitor was to take her into his chariot and drive away with her; Oinomaos was to follow, and spear the suitor if he could catch him. Twelve adventurers had perished in this manner, when Pelops arrived on the scene and bribed Myrtilos (in some accounts, with a promise of Hippodameia’s favours) to take out the linch-pin of his master’s chariot-wheel and put in a dummy of wax. Oinomaos was thus thrown and killed; but Pelops avoided his obligations by drowning Myrtilos. The blood-guilt brought evil upon his two sons, Atreus and Thyestes.
Thyestes seduced his brother’s wife Aerope, and stole a marvelous golden ram which the gods had given Atreus, and which was the pledge of sovranty over Mycenae. Atreus banished his brother, but afterwards pretended to be reconciled and recalled him. Having got him thus in his power, he set before him a dish made of the flesh of Thyestes’ own children. On learning what had befllen him, Thyestes invoked a horrible curse on his brother, and departed. He now learned that he might raise up an avenger by a union with his own daughter, Pelopia. To this vile incest there was born a son, Aigisthos, who carried on the feud. In Agamemnon’s absence, he seduced Klytaimnestra, who was already enraged against her husband by the sacrifice of Iphigeneia; greeting Agamemnon with feigned affection upon his return from Troy, she and her paramour set upon and killed him, and with him, Kassandra. It was to revenge this that Orestes killed his mother and Aigisthos.
Menelaos narrates the story of his own return from Troy to Odysseus’ son Telemachos in the Odyssey. For his part, Odysseus, the last of all to reach his homeland, went his own way, and his adventures form the principal part of the Odyssey.
