The reason for the Trojan War is known, it seems, even to a schoolboy, but a few words are still necessary to say about this. And it’s worth starting with the wedding of Thetis, the sea goddess and the hero Peleus. Almost all the gods were invited to this wedding, with one small exception: Eris, the goddess of discord, decided not to invite. And, quite naturally, she was offended by such a turn of events. Eris was famous for her evil jokes, and this time she did not give up her habits. On the festive table, she threw a golden apple on which was written "The Most Beautiful."
Three goddesses claimed this title: Athena, Aphrodite and Hera. And at the banquet, they could not resolve their dispute. Then Zeus ordered the decision to take Paris, the Trojan prince, the son of Priam. The goddesses approached him when he grazed sheep outside the city walls and asked for help, while each of the goddesses promised Paris some reward for the “right” choice. Hera promised Paris power over Asia, Athena - military glory, and Aphrodite - the love of the most beautiful woman, Elena.
It is predictable that Paris chose the most beautiful Aphrodite. Elena was the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta. Paris arrived in Sparta and, neglecting the laws of hospitality, took Elena with him, along with the slaves and treasures stored in the palace. Upon learning of this, Menelaus turned to his brother, Agamemnon, king of Mycenae , for help. Together they gathered an army, which was joined by all the kings and princes, who had once married to Elena and vowed to defend her and her honor.
Thus began the Trojan War. The invaders did not succeed in taking the city quickly, as it was very well defended. The siege dragged on for a long 9 years, but the events of the last 10 years are most well known to us. The changes begin with the moment when Agamemnon takes away from Achilles his captive, Briseis. She was a priestess in the temple of Apollo, and she had to be returned to avoid the wrath of God. Achilles was offended and refused to participate in further hostilities.
From that moment, military fortune turned its back on the Greeks. No persuasion helped, Achilles was firm in his decision. Only the field where the Trojans broke into the camp and set fire to one of the ships did Achilles allow his friend, Patroclus, to change into his armor and lead a detachment of his soldiers. They drove away the Trojans, but their leader, the eldest son of Priam, Hectar, killed Patroclus.
This event infuriated Achilles, and he, having reconciled with Agamemnon, went to avenge the offender. He was so furious that after killing Hector, he tied his corpse to a chariot and drove several times around the city. And soon after that, the hero himself found his death.
It was almost impossible to kill Achilles, the fact is that his mother immediately after birth dipped him in a source that made him invulnerable. But dipping, she held him by the heel. Apollo told Paris that it was the heel that needed to hit Achilles.
After his death, the Greeks began to share his armor, two heroes claimed for them: Odysseus and Ajax. As a result, the armor went to the first, and then Ajax killed himself. Thus, the Greek army lost two heroes at once. The Trojan War has come to a new turning point. To again swing the thicket of scales in their direction, the Greeks called for the help of two other heroes: Philoctetus and Neoptolem. They killed the two remaining leaders of the Trojan army, after which the latter stopped going out to fight in the field. It was possible to keep the city under siege for a very long time, and therefore Odysseus, famous for his cunning, proposed to deceive the inhabitants of Troy. He proposed to build a huge horse from a tree and bring it as a gift to the besieged city, and to pretend that they were floating away. The Greeks burned the campground, boarded their ships and sailed for the nearest cape.
The Trojans decided to drag the horse into the city, not suspecting that the best wars of the Greeks hid in its womb. Priest Laocoon warned the inhabitants, foreseeing misfortune, but no one listened. The horse did not go through the gate and the Trojans dismantled part of the wall. On the night of the war, they got out of the womb of a horse and let the returning Greeks into the city. They killed all the men, and captured women and children. Thus ended the Trojan War.
We learned most of the information about this event from the poem Iliad, attributed to Homer. However, it has now been reliably established that, in fact, this is a Greek folk epic, which was told by local singers, aids to the residents of the cities, and Homer was either the most famous of the Aeds, or simply gathered in different passages as a whole.
For a long time, the Trojan War was considered a myth, a beautiful fairy tale, but nothing more. In particular, the reason for this was that it was not known where Troy was located, which suggested that such a city did not exist at all.
But then the archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann found the ruins of Troy. Then it became clear that the Trojan War, the story of which was told in the Iliad, was in fact.