escaped death, with divine interference, several times. Achilles in his wrath filled a nearby river so full of Trojan bodies that the waters overflowed and nearly drowned him. The gods, too engaged in battle, as Athena felled Ares, Hera and Artemis began a fierce boxing match, and Poiseidon provoked Apollo into a rage.
Much later in the day, Achilles and Hektor finally engaged in direct combat with each other. In the ensuing duel, Hektor managed to avoid Achilles’ javelin several times, parrying with throws of his own. Frustrated, Athena weighted things on Achilles’ side, retrieving his weapons after he had thrown them. Hector lost his javelin and fled from Achilles’ presence, circling the entire city of Troy three times. Athena confronted him at last, and tricked him into turning. Achilles seized the opportunity and thrust his spear through Hektor’s throat. Although Hektor had pled with Achilles to allow his family to retrieve his corpse and properly bury it, Achilles grimly denied him. Hektor breathed his last, and Achilles stripped his corpse of its armor as a final degradation. He then tied the body to the back of his chariot and dragged it back to the Achaian camp, as Hektor’s wife watched from the walls of Troy. Only after these events was his grief assuaged enough to arrange the proper burial of Patroklos. (In Greek culture, this was particularly important, as it symbolized the passing of the deceased into the spirit realm. If a body was left unburied, the dead person’s soul was left to wander in darkness.)
Patroklos’ funeral was a spectacle of violent grief. Achilles cut the throats of twelve Trojan nobles as a sacrifice on his friend’s funeral pyre, and funeral contests in athletics followed. For eleven days, Achilles dragged Hektor’s corpse around the pyre, yet Apollo preserved the body from decomposing. Then Zeus directed Thetis to tell her son to accept the ransom offered by Priam for Hektor’s corpse. Zeus also sent Hermes to escort King Priam to Achilles’ camp, for Priam feared Achilles’ wrath and was afraid that the warrior might kill him. But he had no need for fear, for Achilles cordially greeted him with deferential respect. He gave the wizened Priam his son in exchange for Hektor’s weight in gold, and the two made peace. Achilles beseeched Priam to remain the night in his camp, which the king agreed to. Hermes, the keeper of the dead, appeared to Priam in a dream after he had been asleep only a short time, warning him that although Achilles’ anger might have been assuaged, the rest of the Achaian forces might not be so welcoming. Priam rose and took Hektor back to Troy. There followed an eleven-day truce, as both sides mourned for the loss of their heroes.
After the burial of Hektor, the Trojans called on the Amazon warriors, led by Queen Penthesileia, for aid. She came as the winds, quick, furious and mighty. Her forces did much harm to the Achaians, before Achilles managed to kill her in one of the battles that followed her invasion. So great was her beauty and prowess, however, that although they had been enemies, Achilles mourned her death. Their situation did but get worse with the arrival of the Trojan’s Ethiopian reinforcements, under the command of Memnon. Many Achaians were slain in the fierce warfare that ensued, and the ground was stained red with blood. Memnon, too, however, fell under the invulnerable Achilles, for the former had killed Achilles’ friend Antilochus, and Achilles slew him in revenge. Not long after this event, the great Achaian hero met his fate in a duel with Paris, who was assisted by the inimical Apollo. It was Apollo who told Paris of Achilles’ fatal weakness. Guided by the god, Paris shot an arrow into Achilles’ right heel, his only vulnerable place, and killed him instantly. Upon the felling of their great hero, the Achaians flew into a mad battle, and a furious and difficult struggle to retrieve Achilles’ body ensued. It was only through the efforts of Odysseus and Ajax the Greater that his body was retrieved from the Trojans. Seventeen days of mourning followed, at the end of which there was a great dispute between Odysseus and Ajax as to whom should receive Achilles’ resplendent armor.
Agamemnon awarded it to Odysseus, and Ajax flew into a rage. He plotted a fearsome revenge on the Achaian leaders, but, driven mad by Athena, he commenced the butchering of a herd of cattle under the delusion that they were the Achaians. He then drove the few remaining to his tent, and continued his senseless rampage, beheading one in the name of Odysseus, and flogging another he proclaimed to be Agamemnon. Athena finally allowed him to return to his senses, and as realization of his actions dawned, he decided to regain a small measure of the honor he had lost by killing himself, falling upon the very sword that Hektor had awarded him. Thus was the Madness of Ajax ended.
With the death of their two greatest warriors, the Achaians were faced the dismal prospect of defeat. The thought of ever taking Troy was growing increasedly smaller and more distant. The Achaian setbacks enabled the Trojans to fortify still further their city, and Troy remained standing. Even the untimely death of Paris did nothing to break the deadlock. The war might have remained at a standstill indefinitely, had it not been for the clever cunning of Odysseus. He devised a strategy to attack Troy: not from outside the city, but from within. The skilled craftsman, Epeios, was commissioned to construct a great wooden horse with a hollow belly in which soldiers could hide. In the darkness of the night, the great horse was brought to the Trojan plain, and warriors climbed into the hollow belly of the mammoth creature. The remaining Achaians burned their camps and set sail for the nearby isle of Tenedos.
In the morning, the Trojans awoke to find the Achaians gone and the mysterious horse situated in front of the city gates. They also found an Achaian spy named Sinon, who allowed himself to be captured. Odysseus had prepared him with believable stories of the Greek departure, the wooden horse, and his own presence. As a captive, Sinon was taken inside the city gates, where he explained that he was the bitter enemy of the Achaians who had killed a dear friend of his. Sinon told King Priam that Athena had deserted the Achaians because of a grievous offense on their part. Without her help, all was lost and they had decided to depart. But to gain the goddess’ allowance of a safe journey home, they had to provide her with a human sacrifice. Sinon, he said, had been chosen, but had somehow managed to escape. The horse had been left to placate the angered goddess, and the Achaians were hoping that the Trojans would desecrate it, thus earning Athena’s rage and ensuring Achaian victory. But, he said, if the Trojans could bring it into Troy, it would instead grant the Trojans victory. These lies convinced Priam and the other Trojans, all but Cassandra and the priest Laocoon. They warned that the horse meant destruction for Troy, but no one believed Cassandra at any rate. And when Laocoon hurled a spear at it, a hostile god sent forth two great serpents to devour him and his sons. The Trojans took this as a sign of his impiety, and made haste to bring the horse inside the city, for they had no wish to anger Athena. No watch was kept that night, for the Trojans had with their own eyes seen the retreat of the Achaian forces, and saw no need in precaution.
Under cover of the darkest midnight, the ships stealthily returned. The Achaians disembarked and were let inside by Sinon. Pouring stealthily through the silent streets of Troy, the Achaians slaughtered the inhabitants as they slept, and pillaged the city. The Trojan sentries hastily awaked and ran out to defend the city, but they were too late. Queen Hekabe, Priam’s wife, and her daughters took refuge near the altar of Zeus, from where they watched Priam’s murder by Neoptolemos, Achilles’ son. Hektor’s infant son was thrown from the walls and left to die. Odysseus and Menelaos, with Athena’s aid, killed the prince Deiphobos. Virtually all the house of Priam were killed, with the exception of Aeneas, who managed to escape. Achilles’ Trojan love, the princess Polyxena, was brutally sacrificed on the dead hero’s grave. By the morning, all but a few Trojans were dead, and the city was razed.
After the destruction of the city, decision had to be made about the captives. Helen, naturally, went with Menelaos, to remain unhappily in Sparta until her death. The remaining women of Troy were given to the Achaian leaders as spoils of war, to be used as concubines or slaves. The crazed princess Cassandra was given to the lesser Ajax, but confiscated by Agamemnon, as a prize of leadership. Hektor’s wife, Andromache, was taken home Neoptolemos, the son of Achilles; and Hekabe, the wife of Priam, was given to Odysseus. Troy, the invulnerable, had fallen. The city was devastated, and Hera and Athena fulfilled their revenge on Paris and his city.
Although it is evident that Homer took some literary license with his telling of the fall of Troy, it is undoubtedly one of the greatest epic poems of all time. It flawlessly combined the best of both Greek myth and historical fact. Neither a full-fledged fantasy nor a solely factual treatise can give such a picture of war as was given by Homer. The gods and heroes in it portray both the glories and the foibles of human nature, and how that nature affects circumstances and events around them.
With the light that archaeological discoveries have shed on Mycenaean civilization, it is clear that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries BC saw troubled times for the people in Greece and the surrounding areas. Dynasties were established, to be overthrown by others, which in turn were torn down by other rising powers. More valuable, perhaps, than these mere relics, these pieces of the past, are the immortal tales of epic grandeur that reveal all the glory and grief of past ages with an unfading brilliancy.




THE END