The Iliad and the Odyssey

The Greek poet Homer recorded the story of the Trojan War and the journeys of Odysseus in The Iliad and The Odyssey in 700 BC, 500 years after the war took place.

When Paris was born in Troy (Ilium), it was prophesied that he would cause its downfall, so his father sent him away to be raised as a shepherd. Meanwhile, a prophecy had been made that the son of Thetis, a sea-nymph with whom Zeus had an affair, would be greater than Zeus. Zeus gave Thetis to King Peleus to marry.

All of the gods were invited to the wedding with the exception of Eris (discord). She showed up anyway, invisible, and left a golden apple on a table with the inscription, “To the fairest.” Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite argued about who was the fairest of them all, and finally Paris was called upon to choose. Aphrodite promised him the most beautiful girl in the world as his wife if he chose her, so he did, and returned to Troy.

Another fellow, Achilles, also had a prophecy that mentioned Troy. The prophecy said that he would be killed at Troy. His mother, Thetis, dipped him in the river Styx to make him invincible. He went on to be one of the greatest warriors of Greek history. He had one weak spot, however. When Thetis dipped him in the river, she held onto him by his heal. This spot was not touched by the water, so it was the one spot that if hit, would kill him.

Helen was the daughter of King Tyndareus of Sparta. Many suitors wanted her hand in marriage, so many in fact that the King was afraid a riot would break out. Odysseus of Ithaca then proposed a plan: “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 the marriage of Helen, regardless of who she chose. The suitors duly swore the required oath, although not without a certain amount of grumbling.” Helen chose Menelaus who went on to become King of Sparta. Paris came to Sparta on a diplomatic mission, met Helen, and they ran off to Troy together. Menelaus called together all the former suitors and their armies, and thus began the Trojan War.

Odysseus had by this time 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 putting his infant son in front of the plough, and Odysseus turned aside, unwilling to kill his son, and so revealed his sanity and joined the war.

The full story of the war is too long to condense into such a short page, but here are some highlights and important information:

  1. over 1,000 ships and 100,000 men sailed to Troy to retrieve Helen
  2. numerous prophecies were told about who would do what to whom and what would happen if so-and-so did such-and-such, so there are several smaller stories about what was done to work around these prophecies and how they were fulfilled
  3. different gods supported the different sides at different times
  4. Apollo sided with Troy when Agamemnon kidnapped the daughter of an Apollonian priest
  5. Zeus sided with Troy until Agamemnon agreed to apologize to Achilles for kidnapping his concubine
  6. Ares supported the Trojan
  7. Athena sided with Odysseus
  8. Hera sided with the Greeks
  1. there were several heroes:
  2. Achilles
  3. Ajax
  4. Hector
  5. Patroclus
  6. Agamemnon
  7. Protesilaus
  8. Philoctetes
  9. Telephus
  10. Diomedes

After nine years, Odysseus came up with the idea of the Trojan Horse. The horse was a sacred animal to the Trojans, so when the Greeks appeared to have left it behind as a peace offering, they were happy to take inside the walls of their city and celebrate, despite the warning of Cassandra, the daughter of King Priam of Troy, who was able to see the future. The Trojans celebrated long into the night until they were all drunk and passed out. A handful of soldiers who had hidden inside the wooden horse slipped out, opened the gates to the city, and the entire Greek army rushed in. Every male was killed – the men, the boys, and the infants; the females were enslaved; and the town was demolished.

Some say the Trojan Horse was a bettering ram; others say it was a metaphor for an earthquake. Either way, this event gave birth to the expression, “Be wary of Greeks bearing gifts.”

Even though the Greeks won the war, tragedy lay in wait for just about all of them.

  1. the Trojan princess Polyxena was sacrificed;
  2. Idomeneus sacrificed his son to Poseidon in exchange for smooth sailing, but then brought a plague to the Greeks and was exiled;
  3. Cassandra was assaulted by Ajax the Lesser
  4. Agamemnon came home to find that his wife, Clytemnestra, was having an

affair and killed him, and then was killed herself, by her children;

  1. Neoptolemus is killed by Orestes in a fight for the hand of Hermione
  2. and on and on and on

What happens to Helen? It depends on who you ask. Some say she died shortly after she returned to Sparta with Menelaus, probably executed. Some say she lived with Menelaus until his death and was then exiled from Sparta by her son. She sought refuge in Rhodes with the widow of Tlepolemus, the first person killed in the Trojan War, who then terrorized her with fake ghosts until she went insane and hung herself.