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,
the king of Sparta. - A Stan Klos Website
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, the
king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology
and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad and the
Odyssey by Homer. "The Iliad" relates a part of the last year of the siege of
Troy, while the Odyssey describes the journey home of Odysseus, one of the
Achaean leaders. Other parts of the war were told in a cycle of epic poems,
which has only survived in fragments. Episodes from the war provided material
for Greek tragedy and other works of Greek literature, and for Roman poets like
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 thought the Trojan War was a historical event that had taken
place in the 13th or 12th century BC, and believed that Troy was located in
modern day Turkey near the Dardanelles. By modern times both the war and the
city were widely believed to be non-historical. In 1870, however, the German
archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann excavated a site in this area which he
identified as Troy; 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 derive 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 VIIa.
