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90-608: According to mythology, after the fall of Troy , Greek immigrants led by Chytros, son of Alexander and grandson of the Athenian Acamas , hero of the Attic tribe of the same name, settled in Cyprus. The modern village of Kythrea is situated near the ancient kingdom of Chytroi which was founded by Chytros. A necropolis has been discovered. In the time of the Assyrian king Assurbanipal , Pilagura

180-477: A hecatomb , a sacrifice of 100 oxen, if he won Helen, but forgot about it and earned her wrath. Menelaus inherited Tyndareus' throne of Sparta with Helen as his queen when her brothers, Castor and Pollux , became gods, and when Agamemnon married Helen's sister Clytemnestra and took back the throne of Mycenae. Paris, under the guise of a supposed diplomatic mission, went to Sparta to get Helen and bring her back to Troy. Before Helen could look up to see him enter

270-406: A better hunter than she. The only way to appease Artemis, he said, was to sacrifice Iphigenia , who was either the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, or of Helen and Theseus entrusted to Clytemnestra when Helen married Menelaus. Agamemnon refused, and the other commanders threatened to make Palamedes commander of the expedition. According to some versions, Agamemnon relented and performed

360-456: A co-commander, which he was granted. The last commander to arrive was Achilles , who was then 15 years old. Following a sacrifice to Apollo , a snake slithered from the altar to a sparrow's nest in a plane tree nearby. It ate the mother and her nine chicks, then was turned to stone. Calchas interpreted this as a sign that Troy would fall in the tenth year of the war. When the Achaeans left for

450-536: A foul smell; on Odysseus's advice, the Atreidae ordered Philoctetes to stay on Lemnos . Medon took control of Philoctetes's men. While landing on Tenedos, Achilles killed king Tenes , son of Apollo, despite a warning by his mother that if he did so he would be killed himself by Apollo. From Tenedos, Agamemnon sent an embassy to the Priam king of Troy composed of Menelaus and Odysseus, asking for Helen's return. The embassy

540-546: A foundation of historical events in the Homeric narrative, but say that, in the absence of independent evidence, it is not possible to separate fact from myth. In The World of Odysseus , Finley presents a picture of the society represented by the Iliad and the Odyssey , avoiding the question as "beside the point that the narrative is a collection of fictions from beginning to end". Finley

630-565: A location, presumably in the Bronze Age , with a city. This city was near Mount Ida in northwest Turkey . Such a city did exist, at the mound of Hisarlık . Hittite texts provide evidence that Late Bronze Age Troy was indeed a regionally important city, that it was already known by variants of its later names, and that it was of political interest to Mycenaean Greeks ( Ahhiyawans ). Some stray details appearing in these records have been speculatively linked to mythic characters and events. However,

720-539: A nostalgic recall of the Mycenaean age, Finley asserts that "the catalog of his errors is very long". His arms bear a resemblance to the armour of his time, quite unlike the Mycenaean, although he persistently casts them in antiquated bronze, not iron. His gods had temples, and the Mycenaeans built none, whereas the latter constructed great vaulted tombs to bury their chieftains in and the poet cremates his. A neat little touch

810-515: A period of four days and two nights in the tenth year of the decade-long 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 ancient Greeks believed that Troy

900-701: A section divider in the Manapa-Tarhunta letter seems to suggest that Piyamaradu's activities were not related to Wilusa. Similarly, although the Tawagalawa letter alludes to a previous disagreement between the Hittites and Ahhiyawa concerning Wilusa, it gives no indication that tensions escalated beyond strongly worded cuneiform tablets. Noted Hittiteologist Trevor Bryce cautions that our current understanding of Wilusa's history does not provide evidence for there having been an actual Trojan War since "the less material one has,

990-632: A treaty was drawn up about 1280 BCE between the Hittite king Muwatalli II and Alaksandu of Wilusa ( Alexander of Ilios ), guaranteed by the Wilusan patron deity Apaliunas (Apollo). From the texts, one can infer Wilusa's location relative to other identified places such as the Seha River , and combining these data points places Wilusa in the Troad —a region in which Hisarlik is the only major Bronze Age city attested in

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1080-447: A village with ruins two hours south of Kyrka. However, the historical texts mention only one town. Diogenes Laërtius writes that there was a festival held at Chytri with theatrical plays . Chytri was at an early date an episcopal see. Lequien 's list of the bishops of the see (II, 1069) is very incomplete, only eight being recorded: the first is St. Pappus, who suffered martyrdom under Licinius , Maximinus or Constantius Chlorus ;

1170-537: A woman so that he would not have to go to war, but, according to one story, they blew a horn, and Achilles revealed himself by seizing a spear to fight intruders, rather than fleeing. According to another story, they disguised themselves as merchants bearing trinkets and weaponry, and Achilles was marked out from the other women for admiring weaponry instead of clothes and jewellery. Pausanias said that, according to Homer, Achilles did not hide in Skyros, but rather conquered

1260-541: Is attributed to the 6th century BC Sicilian poet Stesichorus , while for Homer the Helen in Troy was one and the same. The ship then landed in Sidon . Paris, fearful of getting caught, spent some time there and then sailed to Troy. Paris' abduction of Helen had several precedents. Io was taken from Mycenae, Europa was taken from Phoenicia , Jason took Medea from Colchis , and

1350-861: Is given by the Bibliotheca that differs somewhat but agrees in numbers. Some scholars have claimed that Homer's catalogue is an original Bronze Age document, possibly the Achaean commander's order of operations. Others believe it was a fabrication of Homer. The second book of the Iliad also lists the Trojan allies , consisting of the Trojans themselves, led by Hector, and various allies listed as Dardanians led by Aeneas, Zeleians , Adrasteians , Percotians , Pelasgians , Thracians , Ciconian spearmen, Paionian archers, Halizones , Mysians, Phrygians , Maeonians , Miletians , Lycians led by Sarpedon and Carians . Nothing

1440-575: Is known from a summary included in Proclus ' Chrestomathy . The authorship of the Cyclic Epics is uncertain. It is generally thought that the poems were written down in the 7th and 6th century BC , after the composition of the Homeric poems, though it is widely believed that they were based on earlier traditions. Both the Homeric epics and the Epic Cycle take origin from oral tradition . Even after

1530-497: Is now accepted by most scholars. The historicity of the Trojan War remains 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

1620-422: Is provided by the battle chariots . Homer had heard of them, but he did not really visualize what one did with chariots in a war. So his heroes normally drove from their tents a mile or less away, carefully dismounted, and then proceeded to battle on foot. What the poet believed he was singing about was the heroic past of his own Greek world, Finley concludes. During recent years , scholars have suggested that

1710-472: Is said of the Trojan language ; the Carians are specifically said to be barbarian-speaking , and the allied contingents are said to have spoken many languages, requiring orders to be translated by their individual commanders. The Trojans and Achaeans in the Iliad share the same religion, same culture and the enemy heroes speak to each other in the same language, though this could be dramatic effect. Philoctetes

1800-525: Is unlikely that Homer would have managed to name successfully a diverse list of important Bronze Age cities that were, in his time, only a few blocks of rubble on the surface, often without even names. Furthermore, the cities enumerated in the Catalogue are given in geographical clusters, this revealing a sound knowledge of Aegean topography. Some evidence is equivocal: locating the Bronze Age palace of Sparta ,

1890-466: Is usually credited as Zeus' daughter, and sometimes Nemesis is credited as her mother. Helen had scores of suitors , and her father was unwilling to choose one for fear the others would retaliate violently. Finally, one of the suitors, Odysseus of Ithaca, proposed a plan to solve the dilemma. In exchange for Tyndareus' support of his own suit towards Penelope , he suggested that Tyndareus require all of Helen's suitors to promise that they would defend

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1980-464: The 12th or 11th century BC , often preferring the dates given by Eratosthenes , 1194–1184 BC, which roughly correspond to archaeological evidence of a catastrophic burning of Troy VII , and the Late Bronze Age collapse . The events of the Trojan War are found in many works of Greek literature and depicted in numerous works of Greek art . There is no single, authoritative text which tells

2070-497: The Caucasus , that, like his father Cronus, he would be overthrown by one of his sons. Another prophecy stated that a son of the sea-nymph Thetis, with whom Zeus fell in love after gazing upon her in the oceans off the Greek coast, would become greater than his father. For one or both of these reasons, either upon Zeus' orders or because she wished to please Hera, who had raised her, Thetis

2160-530: The Iliad and Odyssey themselves. Despite these achievements, there remains no consensus for or against a real Trojan War, and some scholars regard the question as unanswerable. The more that is known about Bronze Age history, the clearer it becomes that it is not a straight forward question, but one of assessing of how much historical knowledge is present in Homer, and of what historical period. Finley concludes that it represents memories of Dark Age Greece , while

2250-579: The Peloponnese , the Dodecanese islands, Crete, and Ithaca, comprising 1186 pentekonters , ships with 50 rowers. Thucydides says that according to tradition there were about 1200 ships, and that the Boeotian ships had 120 men, while Philoctetes ' ships only had the fifty rowers, these probably being maximum and minimum. These numbers would mean a total force of 70,000 to 130,000 men. Another catalogue of ships

2340-511: The Roman empire , even after its Christianization . In the time of Strabo , geographic writings discussed the identity of sites mentioned by Homer . Eusebius of Caesarea 's influential Chronicon gave Troy the same historical weight as Abraham in his universal history of humankind. Jerome 's Chronicon followed Eusebius, and all the medieval chroniclers began with summaries of this universal history. Medieval Europeans continued to accept

2430-536: The Styx , the river that runs to the underworld , making him invulnerable wherever he was touched by the water. Because she had held him by the heel, it was not entirely immersed during the bathing and thus the heel remained mortal and vulnerable to injury (hence the expression " Achilles' heel " for an isolated weakness). He grew up to be the greatest of all mortal warriors. After Calchas' prophecy, Thetis hid Achilles in Skyros at

2520-479: The University of Delaware presented the results of investigations into the geology of the region that had started in 1977. The geologists compared the present geology with the landscapes and coastal features described in the Iliad and other classical sources, notably Strabo 's Geographia . Their conclusion was that there is regularly a consistency between the location of Troy as Hisarlik (and other locations such as

2610-454: The 12th or 13th century BC. The war was waged by the Achaeans ( Greeks ) against the city of Troy 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 it has been narrated through many works of Greek literature , most notably Homer 's Iliad . The core of the Iliad (Books II – XXIII) describes

2700-505: The Homeric stories represented a synthesis of many old Greek stories of various Bronze Age sieges and expeditions, fused together in the Greek memory during the " dark ages " which followed the end of the Mycenean civilization. In this view, no historical city of Troy existed anywhere: the name perhaps derives from a people called the Troies, who probably lived in central Greece. The identification of

2790-502: The Linear B tablet is a shepherd, not a king or warrior, but the very fact that the name is an authentic Bronze Age name is significant. These names in the Homeric poems presumably remember, if not necessarily specific people, at least an older time when people's names were not the same as they were when the Homeric epics were written down. Some story elements from the tablets appear in the Iliad . In November 2001, geologist John C. Kraft from

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2880-665: The Trojan War On the Greek side: On the Trojan side: The historicity of the Iliad or the Homeric Question has been a topic of scholarly debate for centuries. While researchers of the 18th century had largely rejected the story of the Trojan War as fable, the discoveries made by Heinrich Schliemann at Hisarlik reopened the question. The subsequent excavation of Troy VIIa and

2970-536: The Trojan War as historical, with dynasties often claiming descent from Trojan heroes. Geoffrey of Monmouth 's pseudo-genealogy traced a Trojan origin for royal Britons in Historia Regum Britanniae , and Fredegar gave a similar origin myth for the Merovingians in which they were descended from a legendary King Francio, who had built a new Troy at Treves . In the early modern era, attitudes towards

3060-465: The Trojan War circulated. In later ages playwrights , historians , and other intellectuals would create works inspired by the Trojan War. The three great tragedians of Athens , Aeschylus , Sophocles and Euripides , wrote a number of dramas that portray episodes from the Trojan War. Among Roman writers the most important is the 1st century BC poet Virgil; in Book 2 of his Aeneid , Aeneas narrates

3150-474: The Trojan princess Hesione had been taken by Heracles, who gave her to Telamon of Salamis . According to Herodotus , Paris was emboldened by these examples to steal himself a wife from Greece, and expected no retribution, since there had been none in the other cases. According to Homer, Menelaus and his ally, Odysseus, travelled to Troy, where they unsuccessfully sought to recover Helen by diplomatic means. Menelaus then asked Agamemnon to help him enforce

3240-535: 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, Aphrodite's son and one of

3330-484: The Trojans, who was said to have led the surviving Trojans to Italy . The following summary of the Trojan War follows the order of events as given in Proclus' summary, along with the Iliad , Odyssey , and Aeneid , supplemented with details drawn from other authors. According to Greek mythology, Zeus had become king of the gods by overthrowing his father Cronus ; Cronus in turn had overthrown his father Uranus . Zeus

3420-452: The anti-Hittite activities of a warlord named Piyamaradu . Since Piyamaradu appears to have been supported by the Ahhiyawa and these letters also mention Wilusa, these events have sometimes been interpreted as a historical basis for the Trojan War, particularly in popular literature. Although this interpretation remains a viable hypothesis, it is not favored by current scholarship. For instance,

3510-523: The apple. They submitted the judgment to a shepherd they encountered tending his flock. Each of the goddesses promised the young man a boon in return for his favour: power, wisdom, or love. The youth—in fact Paris, a Trojan prince who had been raised in the countryside—chose love, and awarded the apple to Aphrodite. As his reward, Aphrodite caused Helen, the Queen of Sparta, and most beautiful of all women, to fall in love with Paris. The judgement of Paris earned him

3600-520: The archaeological record. However, despite the strength of this argument, it is still grounded in circumstantial evidence, and scholars do not regard it as beyond question. A number of Hittite documents attest to ongoing political turmoil in Western Anatolia which affected Wilusa on occasion. Notable among these documents are the Manapa-Tarhunda letter and Tawagalawa letter , which concern

3690-408: The composition of the Iliad , Odyssey , and the Cyclic Epics, the myths of the Trojan War were passed on orally in many genres of poetry and through non-poetic storytelling. Events and details of the story that are only found in later authors may have been passed on through oral tradition and could be as old as the Homeric poems. Visual art, such as vase painting , was another medium in which myths of

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3780-513: The court of King Lycomedes , where he was disguised as a girl. At a crucial point in the war, she assists her son by providing weapons divinely forged by Hephaestus (see below ). The most beautiful woman in the world was Helen, one of the daughters of Tyndareus , King of Sparta. Her mother was Leda , who had been either raped or seduced by Zeus in the form of a swan. Accounts differ over which of Leda's four children, two pairs of twins, were fathered by Zeus and which by Tyndareus. However, Helen

3870-604: The details of the story were matters of debate. For instance, Herodotus argued that Homer had exaggerated the story and that the Trojans had been unable to return Helen because she was in Egypt. When sixth century Athenians cited Homer to justify their side in a territorial dispute with Megara , the Megarans responded by accusing the Athenians of falsifying the text. The Trojan War continued to be regarded as essentially historical during

3960-412: The discovery of the toponym " Wilusa " in cuneiform Hittite correspondence has made it plausible that the Trojan War cycle was at least remotely based on a historical conflict of the 12th century BC, even if the poems of Homer remembered the event only through the distortion of four centuries of oral tradition . In Ancient Greece , the Trojan War was generally regarded as a historical event, though

4050-456: The dominant view, expressed in A Companion to Homer by Wace and Stebbings (1962), believes that Homer has preserved memories of Mycenaean Greece . The narrative focus of the Iliad is not the strategy of the war, but the psychology of the warriors, assuming common knowledge of the Trojan War as a back-story. No scholars now hold that the specific events of the tale (many involving divine intervention) are historical fact; however, few claim that

4140-403: The downfall of Troy. After bathing in the spring of Ida, the goddesses appeared to him naked, either for the sake of winning or at Paris' request. Paris was unable to decide among them, so the goddesses resorted to bribes. Athena offered Paris wisdom, skill in battle, and the abilities of the greatest warriors; Hera offered him political power and control of all of Asia ; and Aphrodite offered him

4230-477: The east, via traders, and these older poems were used to demonstrate the uses of writing, thus heavily influencing early Greek literature. Another opinion is that Homer was heir to an unbroken tradition of oral epic poetry reaching back some 500 years into Mycenaean times. The case is set out in The Singer of Tales by Albert B. Lord , citing earlier work by folklorist and mythographer Milman Parry . In this view,

4320-415: The entire events of the war. Instead, the story is assembled from a variety of sources, some of which report contradictory versions of the events. The most important literary sources are the two epic poems traditionally credited to Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey , composed sometime between the 9th and 6th centuries BC. Each poem narrates only a part of the war. The Iliad covers a short period in

4410-424: The fairest"). The apple was claimed by Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. They quarrelled bitterly over it, and none of the other gods would venture an opinion favouring one, for fear of earning the enmity of the other two. Eventually, Zeus ordered Hermes to lead the three goddesses to Paris, a prince of Troy, who, unaware of his ancestry, was being raised as a shepherd on Mount Ida , because of a prophecy that he would be

4500-549: The hill at Hisarlık as Troy is, in this view, a late development, following the Greek colonisation of Asia Minor during the 8th century BC. It is also worth comparing the details of the Iliadic story to those of older Mesopotamian literature—most notably, the Epic of Gilgamesh . Names, set scenes, and even major parts of the story, are strikingly similar according to some scholars. Some academics believe that writing first came to Greece from

4590-581: The interior of Asia Minor. Reinforcements continued to come until the very end. The Achaeans controlled only the entrance to the Dardanelles, and Troy and her allies controlled the shortest point at Abydos and Sestos and communicated with allies in Europe. Achilles and Ajax were the most active of the Achaeans, leading separate armies to raid lands of Trojan allies. According to Homer, Achilles conquered 11 cities and 12 islands. According to Apollodorus, he raided

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4680-545: The ire of both Hera and Athena, and when Helen left her husband, Menelaus, the Spartan king, for Paris of Troy, Menelaus called upon all the kings and princes of Greece to wage war upon Troy. Menelaus' brother Agamemnon , king of Mycenae , 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

4770-507: The island, as part of the Trojan War. The Achaean forces first gathered at Aulis . All the suitors sent their forces except King Cinyras of Cyprus. Though he sent breastplates to Agamemnon and promised to send 50 ships, he sent only one real ship, led by the son of Mygdalion, and 49 ships made of clay. Idomeneus was willing to lead the Cretan contingent in Mycenae's war against Troy, but only as

4860-667: The land of Aeneas in the Troäd region and stole his cattle. He also captured Lyrnassus, Pedasus , and many of the neighbouring cities, and killed Troilus ; it was said that if he reached 20 years of age, Troy would not fall. According to Apollodorus, He also took Lesbos and Phocaea , then Colophon , and Smyrna , and Clazomenae , and Cyme ; and afterwards Aegialus and Tenos , the so-called Hundred Cities; then, in order, Adramytium and Side ; then Endium, and Linaeum, and Colone. He took also Hypoplacian Thebes and Lyrnessus, and further Antandrus , and many other cities. Historicity of

4950-626: The last year of the siege of Troy, while the Odyssey concerns Odysseus's return to his home island of Ithaca following the sack of Troy and contains several flashbacks to particular episodes in the war. Other parts of the Trojan War were told in the poems of the Epic Cycle , also known as the Cyclic Epics: the Cypria , Aethiopis , Little Iliad , Iliou Persis , Nostoi , and Telegony . Though these poems survive only in fragments, their content

5040-467: The leader of the coalition was a king named Agamemnon; 4. Agamemnon's overlordship was recognized by the other chieftains; 5. Troy, too, headed a coalition of allies. Finley does not find any evidence for any of these elements. Aside from narrative detail, Finley pointed out that, aside from some correlation of Homeric placenames and Mycenaean sites, there is also the fact that the heroes lived at home in palaces ( oikoi ) unknown in Homer's day; far from

5130-465: The legends grew more skeptical. Blaise Pascal characterized the story as merely a " romance ", commenting that "nobody supposes that Troy and Agamemnon existed any more than the apples of the Hesperides . [Homer] had no intention to write history, but only to amuse us." During the 19th century the stories of Troy were devalued as fables by George Grote . In the 1870s, Heinrich Schliemann reopened

5220-430: The love of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Sparta. Paris awarded the apple to Aphrodite, and, after several adventures, returned to Troy, where he was recognised by his royal family. Peleus and Thetis bore a son, whom they named Achilles. It was foretold that he would either die of old age after an uneventful life, or die young in a battlefield and gain immortality through poetry. Furthermore, when Achilles

5310-399: The main narrative, and therefore as likely to be "early and integral". Eight years after the storm had scattered them, the fleet of more than a thousand ships was gathered again. When they had all reached Aulis, the winds ceased. The prophet Calchas stated that the goddess Artemis was punishing Agamemnon for killing either a sacred deer or a deer in a sacred grove, and boasting that he was

5400-412: The marriage of Helen, regardless of whom he chose. The suitors duly swore the required oath on the severed pieces of a horse, although not without a certain amount of grumbling. Tyndareus chose Menelaus. Menelaus was a political choice on her father's part. He had wealth and power. He had humbly not petitioned for her himself, but instead sent his brother Agamemnon on his behalf. He had promised Aphrodite

5490-489: The more easily it can be manipulated to fit whatever conclusion one wishes to come up with". Also, the Catalogue of Ships mentions a great variety of cities, some of which, including Athens , were inhabited both in the Bronze Age and in Homer's time, and some of which, such as Pylos , were not rebuilt after the Bronze Age. This suggests that the names of no-longer-existing towns were remembered from an older time, because it

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5580-507: The most famous is St. Demetrian , 885-912 (?). The Greek, i.e. Orthodox, see of similar title was suppressed in 1222 by Cardinal Pelagius , the papal legate , while the islands was a Latin crusader kingdom. This Cyprus location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Trojan War On the Greek side: On the Trojan side: The Trojan War was a legendary conflict in Greek mythology that took place around

5670-479: The oath of Helen's suitors, which was to defend her marriage, regardless of which suitor was chosen. Agamemnon agreed, and sent emissaries to all the Achaean kings and princes to call them to observe their oath and retrieve Helen. Since Menelaus's wedding, Odysseus had married Penelope and fathered a son, Telemachus . In order to avoid the war, he feigned madness and sowed his fields with salt. Palamedes outwitted him by placing Telemachus, then an infant, in front of

5760-463: The palace, she was shot with an arrow from Eros , otherwise known as Cupid , and fell in love with Paris when she saw him, as promised by Aphrodite. Menelaus had left for Crete to bury his uncle, Crateus. According to one account, Hera, still jealous over the judgement of Paris, sent a storm. The storm caused the lovers to land in Egypt, where the gods replaced Helen with a likeness of her made of clouds, Nephele . The myth of Helen being switched

5850-526: The plough's path. Odysseus turned aside, unwilling to kill his son, so revealing his sanity and forcing him to join the war. According to Homer, however, Odysseus supported the military adventure from the beginning, and travelled the region with Pylos ' king, Nestor , to recruit forces. At Skyros, Achilles had an affair with the king's daughter Deidamia , resulting in a child, Neoptolemus . Odysseus, Telamonian Ajax, and Achilles' tutor Phoenix went to retrieve Achilles. Achilles' mother disguised him as

5940-466: The poem's core could represent a historical campaign that took place at the eve of the Mycenaean era. Much legendary material may have been added, but in this view it is meaningful to ask for archaeological and textual evidence corresponding to events referred to in the Iliad . Such a historical background would explain the geographical knowledge of Hisarlık and the surrounding area, which could alternatively have been obtained, in Homer's time, by visiting

6030-401: The question with his archaeological excavations at Hisarlik . This site had been previously identified as Classical Ilion , where ancients had believed the legendary war to have occurred. Underneath the classical city, Schliemann found the remains of numerous earlier settlements, one of which he declared to be that of the city of Homeric legend. Subsequent excavations have shown that this city

6120-407: The sack of Troy. Traditionally, the Trojan War arose from a sequence of events beginning with a quarrel between the goddesses Hera , Athena , and Aphrodite . Eris , the goddess of discord, was not invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis , and so arrived bearing a gift: a golden apple , inscribed "for the fairest". Each of the goddesses claimed to be the "fairest", and the rightful owner of

6210-426: The sacrifice, but others claim that he sacrificed a deer in her place, or that at the last moment, Artemis took pity on the girl, and took her to be a maiden in one of her temples, substituting a lamb. Hesiod says that Iphigenia became the goddess Hecate . The Achaean forces are described in detail in the Catalogue of Ships , in the second book of the Iliad . They consisted of 28 contingents from mainland Greece,

6300-457: The site. Some verses of the Iliad have been argued to predate Homer's time, and could conceivably date back to the Mycenaean era. Such verses only fit the poem's meter if certain words are pronounced with a /w/ sound, which had vanished from most dialects of Greece by the 7th century BC. As mentioned above, though, it is most likely that the Homeric tradition contains elements of historical fact and elements of fiction interwoven. Homer describes

6390-432: The story is entirely devoid of memories of Mycenaean times. Martin L. West has mentioned that such an approach "misconceives" the problem, and that Troy probably fell to a much smaller group of attackers in a much shorter time. Some archaeologists and historians, most notably, until his death in 1986, Moses I. Finley , maintain that none of the events in Homer's works are historical. Others accept that there may be

6480-404: The story was retained after the war had ballooned into ten years and the piece had become rationally incongruous". Finley, for whom the Trojan War is "a timeless event floating in a timeless world", analyzes the question of historicity, aside from invented narrative details, into five essential elements: 1. Troy was destroyed by a war; 2. the destroyers were a coalition from mainland Greece; 3.

6570-523: The texts provide no concrete evidence for the Trojan War having occurred or for any particular historical kernel in the myths. The Hittite placenames Wilusa and Taruisa occurring in these texts are generally regarded as corresponding to the later Greek terms (W)ilios and Troia . These correspondences were first proposed by the Swiss scholar Emil Forrer on the basis of linguistic similarities, but are now supported by geographical evidence as well. Notably,

6660-516: The traditional home of Menelaus , under the modern city has been challenging, though archaeologists have discovered at least one Mycenaean era site about 7.5 miles outside of Sparta. Likewise, in the Mycenaean Greek Linear B tablets, some Homeric names appear, including Achilles (Linear B: 𐀀𐀑𐀩𐀄 , a-ki-re-u ), a name which was also common in the classical period, noted on tablets from both Knossos and Pylos . The Achilles of

6750-471: The war is the least developed among surviving sources, which prefer to talk about events in the last year of the war. After the initial landing the army was gathered in its entirety again only in the tenth year. Thucydides deduces that this was due to lack of money. They raided the Trojan allies and spent time farming the Thracian peninsula. Troy was never completely besieged, thus it maintained communications with

6840-473: The war, they did not know the way, and accidentally landed in Mysia , ruled by King Telephus , son of Heracles, who had led a contingent of Arcadians to settle there. In the battle, Achilles wounded Telephus, who had killed Thersander . Because the wound would not heal, Telephus asked an oracle, "What will happen to the wound?" The oracle responded, "he that wounded shall heal". The Achaean fleet then set sail and

6930-451: The wound must be able to heal it. Pieces of the spear were scraped off onto the wound, and Telephus was healed. Telephus then showed the Achaeans the route to Troy. Some scholars have regarded the expedition against Telephus and its resolution as a derivative reworking of elements from the main story of the Trojan War, but it has also been seen as fitting the story-pattern of the "preliminary adventure" that anticipates events and themes from

7020-459: Was Heracles' friend, and because he lit Heracles's funeral pyre when no one else would, he received Heracles' bow and arrows. He sailed with seven ships full of men to the Trojan War, where he was planning on fighting for the Achaeans. They stopped either at Chryse Island for supplies, or in Tenedos , along with the rest of the fleet. Then Philoctetes was bitten by a snake. The wound festered and had

7110-581: Was King of Kitrusi , one of the ten kingdoms on the island. Numerous inscriptions have been found in the Cypriot dialect, some in ordinary Greek. Chytri was noted for the worship of Apollo , Artemis and Aphrodite Paphia . In Delphic Theorodochoi inscription, one inscription mentions Chytri. Later forms of the name are Cythraia, Cythereia, Cythroi, Chytrides ; according to the work of Athanasios Sakellarios ( Κυπριακά , 1890, 202–205) Kyrka should be Cythera or Cythereia ; he identifies Chytri with Palo-Kythro ,

7200-423: Was betrothed to an elderly human king, Peleus, son of Aeacus . All of the gods were invited to Peleus and Thetis' wedding and brought many gifts, except Eris (the goddess of discord), who was stopped at the door by Hermes , on Zeus' order. Insulted, she threw from the door a gift of her own: a golden apple ( Ancient Greek : το μήλον της έριδος ) on which was inscribed the word καλλίστῃ Kallistē ("To

7290-448: Was first to leap off his ship, he was not the first to land on Trojan soil. Hector killed Protesilaus in single combat, though the Trojans conceded the beach. In the second wave of attacks, Achilles killed Cycnus , son of Poseidon . The Trojans then fled to the safety of the walls of their city. The walls served as sturdy fortifications for defence against the Greeks. The build of the walls

7380-471: Was in a minority when his World of Odysseus first appeared in 1954. With the understanding that war was the normal state of affairs, Finley observed that a ten-year war was out of the question, indicating Nestor's recall of a cattle-raid in Elis as a norm, and identifying the scene in which Helen points out to Priam the Achaean leaders in the battlefield as "an illustration of the way in which one traditional piece of

7470-469: Was in fact a millennium too early to have coexisted with Mycenaean palaces. Since Schliemann, the site has been further excavated and reappraised numerous times, with particular attention to the layers which did coexist with the Mycenaeans, known collectively as Late Bronze Age Troy . Additional lines of research have included excavations at other sites such as Mycenae , examination of potential references to Troy in Hittite records, and philological study of

7560-560: Was located near the Dardanelles and that the Trojan War was a historical event of the 13th or 12th century BC . By the mid-19th century AD, both the war and the city were widely seen as non-historical, but in 1868, the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann met Frank Calvert , who convinced Schliemann that Troy was at what is now Hisarlık in modern-day Turkey . On the basis of excavations conducted by Schliemann and others, this claim

7650-653: Was meditating marvelous deeds, even to mingle storm and tempest over the boundless earth, and already he was hastening to make an utter end of the race of mortal men, declaring that he would destroy the lives of the demi-gods, that the children of the gods should not mate with wretched mortals, seeing their fate with their own eyes; but that the blessed gods henceforth even as aforetime should have their living and their habitations apart from men. But on those who were born of immortals and of mankind verily Zeus laid toil and sorrow upon sorrow. Zeus came to learn from either Themis or Prometheus , after Heracles had released him from

7740-584: Was nine years old, Calchas had prophesied that Troy could not again fall without his help. A number of sources credit Thetis with attempting to make Achilles immortal when he was an infant. Some of these state that she held him over fire every night to burn away his mortal parts and rubbed him with ambrosia during the day, but Peleus discovered her actions and stopped her. According to some versions of this story, Thetis had already killed several sons in this manner, and Peleus' action therefore saved his son's life. Other sources state that Thetis bathed Achilles in

7830-517: Was not faithful to his wife and sister Hera , and had many relationships from which many children were born. Since Zeus believed that there were too many people populating the earth, he envisioned Momus or Themis , who was to use the Trojan War as a means to depopulate the Earth, especially of his demigod descendants. These can be supported by Hesiod's account: Now all the gods were divided through strife; for at that very time Zeus who thunders on high

7920-570: Was refused. Philoctetes stayed on Lemnos for ten years, which was a deserted island according to Sophocles' tragedy Philoctetes , but according to earlier tradition was populated by Minyans . Calchas had prophesied that the first Achaean to walk on land after stepping off a ship would be the first to die. Thus even the leading Greeks hesitated to land. Finally, Protesilaus , leader of the Phylaceans , landed first. Odysseus had tricked him, in throwing his own shield down to land on, so that while he

8010-460: Was scattered by a storm. Achilles landed in Skyros and married Deidamia. A new gathering was set again in Aulis. Telephus went to Aulis , and either pretended to be a beggar, asking Agamemnon to help heal his wound, or kidnapped Orestes and held him for ransom, demanding the wound be healed. Achilles refused, claiming to have no medical knowledge. Odysseus reasoned that the spear that had inflicted

8100-517: Was so impressive that legend held that they had been built by Poseidon and Apollo during a year of forced service to Trojan King Laomedon . Protesilaus had killed many Trojans but was killed by Hector in most versions of the story, though others list Aeneas, Achates , or Ephorbus as his slayer. The Achaeans buried him as a god on the Thracian peninsula, across the Troäd. After Protesilaus' death, his brother, Podarces , took command of his troops. The Achaeans besieged Troy for nine years. This part of

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