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Trojan War
The Trojan War was a major event in Greek mythology. According to the stories, it was triggered when Paris, the prince of Troy, either seduced or kidnapped the beautiful Helen away from her husband, the king of Sparta. The war lasted twenty years.
1,190 Questions
I believe the Trojan War was fought in today's Western Europe. That's were Troy was located back then. Another answer: The Trojan War was fought in Homer's the Iliad. That is a work of fiction. Trying to find out if such a thing has really occurred, archeologists have found remains of a city that might have been Troy in today's Turkey, which is in Asia.
The Ancient Greeks thought that it took place in the 13th or 12th century BC. Those who believe the Trojan War existed date it to 12th or 11th century BC.
Often people accept 1194-1184 BC which was given by Eratosthenes of Cyrene.
In 1870, German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann excavated an area which He identified as Troy. Most scholars today accept this claim.
However, whether there is an real historicity to the Trojan War remains still an open question.
Which Greek Hero is the greatest Trojan Hero?
Heroes and gods are not the same thing. The gods did participate in the Trojan War to a degree, but they are divine, and did divine things. The heroes were just mortal men (despite some of them having divine heritage).
What hero settled in Italy after Trojan war?
According to Virgil, Diomedes escaped the destruction of Troy and settled in Italy. According to the legend, he founded the city of Argyria in Apulia.
Who controlled Greece after the Trojan war?
Ancient Greece was divided into city-states and leagues which continually vied for power with each other, but one of them ever became strong enough to control all of Greece. Later Greece was controlled by the Macedonian Empire, the Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, and the Ottoman Turkish Empire. Finally in the 19th Century Greece became an independent country which controlled itself, and a united country for the first time in history.
Wife of Menelaus cause of Trojan War?
Helene Queen of Sparta, also called Helene of Troy for her marriage to Prince Paris and Prince Deiphobus, sons of Priam King of Troy.
Why do the Achaeans took so long to defeat the Trojans?
We do not know much about the actual timing of the Trojan War, so this will focus on what is written in The Iliad and The Odyssey. The first issue is that the beachhead was difficult for the Greeks to take. The ground was strongly sloped and the Trojans had the high-ground. The second major issues is that Ancient Greeks did not have sophisticated siege weaponry, which meant that it was effectively impossible for them to breach the Trojan Walls surrounding the city until Odysseus came up with the idea of the Trojan Horse, which allowed for the Trojans to "self-breach" the city walls.
Why might the account of the Trojan War in the Illiad be unreliable?
It was sung by the strolling bards for 400 years before it was written down. Each bard had his own version, so what came down had myriad variations. The written version by Homer was itself published over the years in many differing versions. Where facts lie is a guess. It is fairly well recognised that stories over three generations become so distorted that it is difficult to know what is fact and what is fiction. There is a game you can play today - sit 12 people around a room and whisper a story to one, and this story is passed around the participants. When it comes back to the originator, it is materially different. How much so after hundreds of years?
Is Achilles act of killing Hector justifiable?
They were both warriors and fought each other, so death was a natural outcome. Whether the was was justified is another matter. The Greeks were looting western Asia Minor and Troy was one of the targets. Work out what was 'justified' in that.
Who are the second two greatest Greek warriors during the Trojan war?
After Achilles, the greatest two other warriors were Telamonian Ajax (Greater Ajax) and Odysseus. These two warriors competed to see who was the braver warrior.
Which book tells the story of one Greek hero trying to get home after the Trojan War?
The Iliad tells a story of a few weeks towards the end of a decade-long Greek piratical raid on the coast of Asia Minor. Other poems, tales and pottery tell more bits about it. There is no book about the Trojan story from antiquity.
What did menelaus did during the Trojan war?
All of the suitors of Helen, which was essentially every king in Greece, took a vow that they would defend the honor of whomever was chosen as her husband, so as to prevent war from breaking out over the quest for her hand.
When she was spirited away by Paris, Menelaus forced them to fulfill their oaths. They laid siege to Troy for 10 years before finally defeating the city and razing it to the ground.
What happens to Menelaus after the Trojan war?
Of the major Greek heroes at the siege of Troy, Menelaus has one of the thinnest stories after the fall of the city.
Menelaus appears in Homer's Odyssey (IV) back home in Sparta, re-united with his wife Helen. Helen is unable to bear a son to Menelaus, and the king himself seems tortured by memories of the futility and destructiveness of the war. Like most of the Greek heroes, Menelaus found the journey home difficult, and in fact was stranded in Egypt for several years.
According to Euripides' Helen, Menelaus and Helen are re-united after death on the Isles of the Blessed. But Menelaus is as unhappy with his reconditioned wife after death as he was while she lived.
Agamemnon was the King of Mycenae, leader of the Achaeans, and the older brother of Menelaus. Paris was a prince of Troy and therefore not under any obligation to listen to Agamemnon. As long as Troy was willing to defend against the Achaeans, Paris did not need to return Helen.
Who was involved in the Trojan War fighting?
In the Iliad, the Greek Catalogue lists twenty-nine contingents under 46 captains, accounting for a total of 1,186 ships. Using the Boeotian figure of 120 men per ship results in a total of 142,320 men transported to the Troad. They are named by various ethnonyms and had lived in 164 places described by toponyms. The majority of these places have been identified and were occupied in the Late Bronze Age. The terms Danaans, Argives and Achaeans or the sons of the Achaeans are used for the army as a whole. In his Library, Apollodorus lists thirty contingents under 43 leaders with a total of 1013 ships, Hyginus lists 1154 ships, although the total is given as only 245 ships.
***The Catalogue of Ships (Ancient Greek: νεῶν κατάλογος, neōn katalogos) is an epic catalogue in Book 2 of Homer's Iliad (2.494-759), which lists the contingents of the Achaean army that sailed to Troy.
Who started the Trojan War and why?
The stories in the epics are a product of the bards who made them up. This is based on bardic material first written down about 725 BCE, but stretching back for about six hundred years before. Like all such traditions, it is difficult to separate out fact from fiction and embellishment.
From internal evidence in the epic poems and later traditions, correlated with archaeological evidence, it seems that there was an extended period of piratical raids by Greek peoples throughout the Aegean islands and the coast of Asia Minor. The final target was Troy, which had grown rich on supplying and taxing the commercial ships which lay up in the Dardanelles waiting favourable tides and winds.
As for all the rest, the bards made it what it came down to us as, and very popular their performances were in a pre-television era. And just as people today think what they see on television is true, so with the audiences of the bards.
Why is the Trojan War called the Trojan War?
Its proper name is the Iliad. In Classical Attic; sometimes it is referred to as the Song of Ilion or Song of Ilium (Ilium and Troas was the archaic and Classical period Greek names that Troy was known by).
The name of the poem, meaning 'of Ilion', is an ellipsis for 'a book on Ilion'. So no one named the poem this way, that was just how the Greeks referred to it (because of its immense popularity, everybody knew which book on Ilion you were talking about). In present form, the name was probably first employed in an extant written text by Herodotus (II, 116 sq.).
The war was sparked by the theft of Helen the wife of Menelaus of Sparta. The main objective contrary to some flawed and biased opinions was to take back Helen and punish the Trojans for their insolence after initial requests for Helen to be returned had been declined.
Sacking cities during the Homeric bronze age archaic time was a method of waging war. It was how they fed their troops and kept up supplies and how the military was 'paid' for their service. 3,000 years ago it was the way things were. These were ancient warrior cultures and can't be judged by modern standards to fit a modern narrative.
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The main objective of the Greek looting expedition in Asia Minor was the richest city - Troy.
Trojan is a the adjective of Troy.
Why did the Trojans kidnap Helen for some reason?
The legend goes that Paris was visiting Sparta, where Helen was wife of its king Menelaus. She took a fancy to him, and ran off with him, stealing a lot of the family wealth to buy Paris' ongoing favour. The Greeks didn't really worry to much about someone they called 'much manned Helen' (the implication being that she got around quite a bit), they were more concerned about the money. When besieging Troy, the Greeks who weren't making much progress were prepared to negotiate. Trojan king Priam said he would give the woman back. The Greeks responded 'what about the money' Priam said 'no way', so negation ceased and the siege went on. That part of the Iliad puts their values in perspective, and a mere woman wasn't the objective. After Troy was looted, Menelaus just took her home and life went on, subsidised by the 10 years of widespread looting.
So no, Helen was not kidnapped, she ran off most willingly, stealing Sparta's wealth. But this is all part of an entertaining story which the bards of Greece concocted different versions of and made a good living out of for 500 years. If indeed there was a Greek invasion, it was directed at looting Asia Minor over a ten year period. The final attack on the richest prize - Troy - lasted only a few weeks at the end of 10 year rampage around the eastern Aegean Sea.
