Trojan War
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Trojan War
Achilles tending the wounded Patroclus
(Attic red-figure kylix, c. 500 BC)
Setting: Troy (modern Hisarlik, Turkey)
Period: Bronze Age
Traditional dating: c. 1194–1184 BC
Modern dating: between 1260 and 1240 BC
Outcome: Greek victory, destruction of Troy
See also: Historicity of the Iliad
Iliad · Epic Cycle · Aeneid, Book 2 ·
Iphigenia in Aulis · Philoctetes ·
Ajax · The Trojan Women · Posthomerica
See also: Trojan War in popular culture
Judgement of Paris · Seduction of Helen ·
Trojan Horse · Sack of Troy · The Returns ·
Wanderings of Odysseus ·
Aeneas and the Founding of Rome
Agamemnon · Achilles · Helen · Menelaus · Nestor · Odysseus · Ajax · Diomedes · Patroclus · Thersites · Achaeans · Myrmidons
See also: Catalogue of Ships
Priam · Hecuba · Hector · Paris · Cassandra · Andromache · Aeneas · Memnon · Troilus · Penthesilea and the Amazons · Sarpedon
See also: Trojan Battle Order
Homeric question · Archaeology of Troy · Mycenae · Bronze Age warfare
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In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans (Greeks) after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology and has been narrated through many works of Greek literature, most notably through Homer's Iliad. The Iliad relates a part of the last year of the siege of Troy; the Odyssey describes the journey home of Odysseus, one of the war's heroes. Other parts of the war are described in a cycle of epic poems, which have survived through fragments. Episodes from the war provided material for Greek tragedy and other works of Greek literature, and for Roman poets including Virgil and Ovid.The war originated from a quarrel between the goddesses Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite, after Eris, the goddess of strife and discord, gave them a golden apple, sometimes known as the Apple of Discord, marked "for the fairest". Zeus sent the goddesses to Paris, who judged that Aphrodite, as the "fairest", should receive the apple. In exchange, Aphrodite made Helen, the most beautiful of all women and wife of Menelaus, fall in love with Paris, who took her to Troy. Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and the brother of Helen's husband Menelaus, led an expedition of Achaean troops to Troy and besieged the city for ten years because of Paris' insult. After the deaths of many heroes, including the Achaeans Achilles and Ajax, and the Trojans Hector and Paris, the city fell to the ruse of the Trojan Horse. The Achaeans slaughtered the Trojans (except for some of the women and children whom they kept or sold as slaves) and desecrated the temples, thus earning the gods' wrath. Few of the Achaeans returned safely to their homes and many founded colonies in distant shores. The Romans later traced their origin to Aeneas, one of the Trojans, who was said to have led the surviving Trojans to modern-day Italy.The ancient Greeks treated the Trojan War as an historical event which had taken place in the 13th or 12th century BC, and believed that Troy was located in modern-day Turkey near the Dardanelles. As of the mid-19th century, both the war and the city were widely believed to be non-historical. In 1868, however, the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann met Frank Calvert, who convinced Schliemann that Troy was at Hissarlik and Schliemann took over Calvert's excavations on property belonging to Calvert; this claim is now accepted by most scholars. Whether there is any historical reality behind the Trojan War is an open question. Many scholars believe that there is a historical core to the tale, though this may simply mean that the Homeric stories are a fusion of various tales of sieges and expeditions by Mycenaean Greeks during the Bronze Age. Those who believe that the stories of the Trojan War are derived from a specific historical conflict usually date it to the 12th or 11th centuries BC, often preferring the dates given by Eratosthenes, 1194–1184 BC, which roughly corresponds with archaeological evidence of a catastrophic burning of Troy VII.
^ Bryce, Trevor (2005). The Trojans and their neighbours. Taylor & Francis. p. 37. ISBN 978-0-415-34959-8.
^ Rutter, Jeremy B. "Troy VII and the Historicity of the Trojan War". Retrieved 2007-07-23.
^ In the second edition of his In Search of the Trojan War, Michael Wood notes developments that were made in the intervening ten years since his first edition was published. Scholarly skepticism about Schliemann's identification has been dispelled by the more recent archaeological discoveries, linguistic research, and translations of clay-tablet records of contemporaneous diplomacy. Wood, Michael (1998). "Preface". In Search of the Trojan War (2 ed.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. p. 4. ISBN 0-520-21599-0. Now, more than ever, in the 125 years since Schliemann put his spade into Hisarlik, there appears to be a historical basis to the tale of Troy
^ Wood (1985: 116–118)
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