Who ended the Trojan War?

Answer 1

The legend is that it ended when the Greeks captured the city through Odysseus' ruse of getting soldiers inside in the belly of a wooden horse-god, then opening the gates during the night. The reality is that we don't know just what really happened. Homer's story was written down in the later 8th C BCE (after writing was invented), four hundred years after the events reported. Homer's was but one version. The bards used to make up the story as they went along, each version therefore different but following a theme. The material covered spans an even longer period. The hero Ajax was dead before the war occurred. The boar tusk helmet mentioned was in fashion two centuries before the war, and a lot of the background setting reflects social and political conditions of Homer's 8th Century. Also remember that the Iliad is not the story of the Trojan War. It is a few weeks of the alleged tenth year, when the Greeks arrived at Troy to have a second go at it after an abortive attempt years earlier. Intervening raids on other cities and islands are mentioned. However the subject of Iliad is 'The Wrath of Achilles' - in other words a petty spat bettween Achilles and uber-King Agamemnon over a slave girl. It ends with Hector's death at Achilles' hand, but Troy still going strong. We have to piece in other later bits from fragmentary later sources including pottery depictions and later tragedy plays and minor epics. The best guess is that there was a decade of piratical raids by the Greeks on the coast of Asia Minor and the islands. When the countryside had been thoroughly looted, they had to try the harder targets of walled cities. Troy was an obvious one as it had good revenues from servicing the trading fleets which harboured waiting for the right winds and tides to get through the Dardanelles strait to and from the Black Sea. When Troy was looted, there was little else to do but go home.