Troy

Not to be confused with Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 film Troy.

Troy, also called Ilium (Greek Ilios), was the city of King Priam in the Troad, on the Asian side of the Hellespont. In Greek mythology it is the setting of the Trojan War, in which the Achaeans (Greeks) besieged it for ten years to bring back Helen, the wife of Menelaus, and finally took it by the stratagem of the wooden horse. The Iliad and the Odyssey, and Virgil’s Aeneid later, are the main ancient sources for its story.

Where Troy Was

Homer places the city on a plain beneath Mount Ida, near the Hellespont. The Achaeans drew their ships up along the shore, and a mound for a slain champion was to be raised “on the broad Hellespont” (Iliad 7.85–86). In front of the city stood a steep hill in the plain, which men called Batieia (Iliad 2.811–815); the Scaean gates led out from the walls (Iliad 3.145); and two springs of the whirling Scamander rose near the walls, where the Trojan women had washed their clothes in peacetime (Iliad 22.147–156). The Trojans were not Achaeans: Homer has Iris remind Hector that the many allies in Priam’s city each speak a different tongue (Iliad 2.803–804). Strabo, who describes the region in his Geography, says that most of the fighting in the poem takes place in the plain of the Scamander, between the Scamander and the Simoeis, and he distinguishes the Ilium of his own day, which had been only a village-city when the Romans first came to Asia, from the old settlement, which Demetrius of Scepsis placed nearer Mount Ida (Strabo 13.1.27, 13.1.34).

The Founding of Troy

In Homer, Aeneas himself tells the line of the Trojan kings. Zeus fathered Dardanus, who founded Dardania when sacred Ilios had not yet been built in the plain and men lived on the slopes of Mount Ida. Dardanus’ son was Erichthonius, whose son Tros became king of the Trojans. Tros had three sons, Ilus, Assaracus and Ganymede, whom the gods snatched up to pour wine for Zeus. Ilus was the father of Laomedon, and Laomedon of Tithonus, Priam and others, while Assaracus’ line led through Capys and Anchises to Aeneas (Iliad 20.215–240).

Apollodorus gives the same line with more detail. Dardanus came from Samothrace, married the daughter of King Teucer and built a city; Tros named the country Troy after himself; and Ilus, who had won a wrestling contest in Phrygia, followed a dappled cow given to him by the king and founded Ilium where it lay down. When he asked Zeus for a sign, the Palladium, the image of Pallas, fell from heaven in front of his tent (Apollodorus, Library 3.12.1–3).

The Walls and Laomedon

In the Iliad Poseidon reminds Apollo how, for one year, they served King Laomedon for a fixed wage. Poseidon built a broad, beautiful wall around the city to make it unbreakable, and Apollo herded cattle on the slopes of Ida; at the end Laomedon refused to pay and threatened them (Iliad 21.441–457). Pindar says that the gods called Aeacus to help with the wall (Pindar, Olympian 8.30–46). Laomedon later refused to give Heracles the horses he had promised, and Heracles came with six ships and sacked Ilium (Iliad 5.638–651). In Apollodorus, Telamon was the first to breach the wall, and Priam, formerly called Podarces, took the throne (Library 2.6.4, 3.12.5).

The Trojan War

According to Apollodorus, Hermes led Hera, Athena and Aphrodite at Zeus’s command to Paris, son of Priam, on Mount Ida, to have their beauty judged. Paris chose Aphrodite, who had promised him Helen, and, while Menelaus was away in Crete, he persuaded Helen to sail with him to Troy (Apollodorus, Epitome 3.2–3). Menelaus went to his brother Agamemnon at Mycenae, and Agamemnon reminded the Greek kings of the oaths they had sworn and raised an army against Troy (Epitome 3.6). The Iliad covers a few weeks in the tenth year of the war and ends with the funeral of Hector (Iliad 24.804).

On the Trojan side, Homer names Priam as king, Hector as his son and chief defender, and Aeneas as the leading Dardanian. Hector’s story is told in the Iliad. The poet also lists the allies who fought for Troy (Iliad 2.816–877).

The Fall of Troy

The fall of the city is not told in the Iliad, but the Odyssey recalls it in the song of Demodocus: the Greeks hid in the wooden horse that Epeius built, and the Trojans themselves dragged it into the citadel (Odyssey 8.492–520). Apollodorus says that Odysseus advised it and Epeius built it, that the best Greek fighters entered it, and that the others burned their tents, sailed away to Tenedos and left Sinon to give the signal. The Trojans, though warned by Cassandra and Laocoon, decided to spare it as a gift to a god. At night the Greeks returned, entered the city and killed the sleepers; Neoptolemus killed Priam at the altar of Zeus of the courtyard, and the city was burned (Epitome 5.14–23).

Virgil tells the night from the Trojan side: the Greeks’ ships vanish, the horse is drawn in through a breach in the walls, Sinon opens it, and Priam dies at his own altar (Virgil, Aeneid 2.13–25, 2.234–267, 2.506–558). Aeneas flees with his father Anchises on his shoulders (Aeneid 2.707–804). In the Iliad, Poseidon had already said that Aeneas and his descendants would rule the Trojans after Priam’s line (Iliad 20.300–308).