The Sack of Troy

The Sack of Troy was the destruction of the city by the Greeks at the end of the Trojan War, on the night after the Trojans pulled the Wooden Horse inside their walls. Odysseus devised the stratagem, in the tenth year of the war, and the Greeks hidden in the Horse opened the gates to the rest of the army. What followed was the death of Priam, the enslavement of the royal women and the end of Troy (Apollodorus, Epitome 5.14–23; Virgil, Aeneid 2). This article recounts what happened after the Greek warriors came out of the Horse.

According to Apollodorus, the Trojans were divided over the Horse. Cassandra said that there was an armed force inside it, and the seer Laocoon agreed; some wanted to burn it and others to throw it down a precipice, but most were in favour of sparing it as an offering sacred to a god, and they betook themselves to sacrifice and feasting (Epitome 5.17). In Virgil, Laocoon struck the Horse with a spear and warned the Trojans against it (Aeneid 2.40–56). Then the Greek Sinon, who had let himself be captured, told Priam that the Horse was an offering to Minerva: if the Trojans harmed it, ruin would come to Priam’s kingdom, but if they brought it into their city with their own hands, Asia would one day carry the war to Greece (Aeneid 2.57–198). When Laocoon was killed with his sons by two serpents from the sea, the Trojans took it as punishment for his spear and breached their own walls to bring the Horse in (Aeneid 2.199–234). That night Sinon let the Greeks out of the Horse by the light of the signal from the royal ship (Aeneid 2.254–259). That night the Greeks sailed back from Tenedos, Sinon kindled the beacon, and the men in the Horse came out; the first to leap down, Echion, was killed, and the rest let themselves down on a rope, took the walls and opened the gates (Epitome 5.19–20). They then entered the houses and slew the sleepers (Epitome 5.21). In the Odyssey, Demodocus sings how the Greeks poured out of the hollow Horse and ravaged the city (Odyssey 8.499–520).

The Fate of the Royal Couple

Priam

Priam was killed by Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, at the altar of Zeus of the Courtyard (Apollodorus, Epitome 5.21). Virgil gives the fullest account. Hecuba and her daughters crouched at the altar in the palace courtyard beneath an old laurel; Priam put on his armour, but Hecuba persuaded him to join them (Aeneid 2.512–525). Then his son Polites, wounded, ran through the halls with Pyrrhus (Neoptolemus) after him, and Neoptolemus killed him in front of his parents. Priam threw a spear at him; it was a weak cast and did not get through the shield. Neoptolemus dragged the old king to the altar through the blood of his son and killed him (Aeneid 2.526–558). According to the Little Iliad, as Pausanias reports it, Priam was not killed at the altar but was dragged away from it and killed at the gate of his own palace (Pausanias 10.27.2).

Hecuba

Apollodorus says that among the special awards Odysseus received Hecuba (Epitome 5.23). In Euripides’ Trojan Women she learns that she has been given to Odysseus and mourns it as the worst fate (Trojan Women 277–291). Her later story follows two lines. In Euripides’ Hecuba, she finds that her youngest son Polydorus, sent to Thrace to be kept safe, has been killed by the Thracian king Polymestor for his gold; she lures Polymestor and his sons into her tent, blinds him and kills his sons (Hecuba 1–58, 1034–1182). Polymestor then prophesies that she will become a dog with bloodshot gaze and that her tomb will be called “the hapless hound’s grave”, a mark for mariners (Hecuba 1259–1273). Apollodorus gives another version: Helenus took Hecuba across to the Chersonese, where she turned into a bitch and was buried at the place called the Bitch’s Tomb (Epitome 5.23). The poet Stesichorus said that Apollo brought her to Lycia (Pausanias 10.27.2).

The Fate of the Trojan Princesses

Cassandra

Cassandra had foretold what was in the Horse (Apollodorus, Epitome 5.17). During the sack the Locrian Ajax (Ajax the Lesser) found her clinging to the wooden image of Athena and violated her; the image is said to look up to heaven because of this (Epitome 5.22). Virgil says that she was dragged from the temple of Minerva with her hair loose, her eyes turned to heaven (Aeneid 2.403–406). In the division of the spoils Agamemnon received Cassandra (Epitome 5.23). She was taken to Mycenae, where Agamemnon was murdered by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. Aeschylus’ Agamemnon shows Cassandra foreseeing both murders at the palace door, and she is killed with him (Agamemnon 1072–1330, 1343–1345).

Polyxena

Polyxena was a daughter of Priam and Hecuba, sacrificed at the tomb of Achilles after the sack (Apollodorus, Epitome 5.23). In Euripides’ Hecuba, the ghost of Achilles rose above his tomb and demanded her as his prize; the Greek army, kept from sailing, debated, Odysseus prevailed, and Neoptolemus cut her throat at the tomb, while she faced her death bravely (Hecuba 37–44, 107–140, 521–582). Quintus of Smyrna says that Achilles’ ghost threatened to keep the Greeks wind-bound until the sacrifice was made, and that she was led to the tomb like a calf dragged from its mother to the sacrifice (Posthomerica 14). In Euripides, Hecuba then learns that the body of Polydorus has been washed up on the shore (Hecuba 658–725).

Andromache

Hector’s wife Andromache was given as a special award to Neoptolemus (Apollodorus, Epitome 5.23). In Euripides’ Trojan Women she hears from the herald Talthybius that her son is to be killed, and is carried away on the ship of Neoptolemus before she can bury him; it is Hecuba who prepares the child’s body for burial (Trojan Women 709–789, 1118–1250). Pausanias writes that Neoptolemus, called Pyrrhus, had by her three sons, Molossus, Pielus and Pergamus, and that after Pyrrhus’ murder at Delphi she was married to Helenus (Pausanias 1.11.1).

The Fate of the Trojan Princes

Deiphobus

After the death of Paris, Helenus and Deiphobus quarrelled over Helen, and she was married to Deiphobus (Apollodorus, Epitome 5.9; 5.22). In the Odyssey, Menelaus recalls that Deiphobus came with Helen when she walked three times round the Horse, calling the Greek chiefs by name in the voices of their wives (Odyssey 4.265–289). Demodocus sings how Odysseus went like Ares with Menelaus to the house of Deiphobus, and that there the fiercest fight of all took place, which Odysseus won with Athena’s help (Odyssey 8.516–520). Apollodorus says that Menelaus killed Deiphobus and led Helen off to the ships (Epitome 5.22). In Virgil, the shade of Deiphobus tells Aeneas that Helen removed his weapons from beneath his pillow and let Menelaus into the house (Aeneid 6.494–530). In Euripides’ Andromache, Peleus tells Menelaus that when he had Helen in his power he did not kill her: as soon as he saw her breast he dropped his sword and took her kisses (Andromache 627–631).

Polydorus

Polydorus was the youngest son of Priam. In the Iliad, Achilles kills a Polydorus, son of Priam by Laothoe, whom his father had forbidden to fight (Iliad 20.407–418). In Euripides’ Hecuba, Polydorus is a son of Hecuba whom Priam secretly sent to Polymestor in Thrace with much gold. When Troy fell, Polymestor killed him for the gold and threw his body in the sea (Hecuba 1–58).

Astyanax

Astyanax, also called Scamandrius, was Hector’s infant son (Iliad 6.402–403). After the sack the Greeks threw him from the battlements (Apollodorus, Epitome 5.23). In Euripides’ Trojan Women Talthybius reports that the Greeks decreed his death on the proposal of Odysseus, who persuaded them that the son of Hector must not be allowed to grow up, and that he was thrown from the wall (Trojan Women 709–739, 1133–1135). The ancient sources differ over who carried out the deed.

The Spared Ones

Two Trojans, Antenor and Aeneas, were spared by the Greeks. Livy says it is generally admitted that the Greeks refused to use the rights of war against them, partly because of old ties of hospitality and partly because they had always argued for peace and the return of Helen (Livy 1.1.1). In the Iliad Antenor does argue that Helen and her goods be given back (Iliad 7.347–353). Apollodorus mentions that Odysseus and Menelaus rescued Antenor’s son Glaucus; Sophocles said that a leopard’s skin was hung in front of Antenor’s house as a sign to the soldiers (Epitome 5.21, with Strabo 13.1.53), and Pausanias saw Antenor’s house with a leopard skin over the entrance in Polygnotus’ painting of the sack at Delphi (Pausanias 10.27.3).

Aeneas took up his father Anchises and fled, and the Greeks left him alone out of respect for his piety (Apollodorus, Epitome 5.21). In Virgil he carries Anchises on his shoulders with his son Ascanius at his side, and Creusa is lost behind them (Aeneid 2.707–795). In Quintus, Calchas tells the Greeks to hold back their weapons from Aeneas, whom the Fates had destined to found a great city by the Tiber (Posthomerica 13).

The End of Troy

Having laid the city waste, the Greeks set fire to it and divided the spoil (Apollodorus, Epitome 5.23). In Virgil, Aeneas sees the house of Deiphobus collapse in the flames and his neighbour Ucalegon’s already burning, the straits lit up by the fire, and at last all Ilium seems to him to sink into the flames (Aeneid 2.310–312, 2.624–625). Livy says that Antenor sailed into the innermost part of the Adriatic with a band of Eneti and founded a settlement there; Aeneas came to Italy, where his line led to Rome (Livy 1.1.2–4). Laodice, the fairest of Priam’s daughters, was swallowed up by a chasm in the earth (Epitome 5.23). Aethra, the mother of Theseus, who was among Helen’s attendants in Troy (Iliad 3.143–144), was led away by Theseus’ sons Demophon and Acamas (Epitome 5.22). The Greeks were about to sail when Calchas told them that Athena was angry about the crime of Ajax, and they would have killed him had he not fled to the altar (Epitome 5.23). The story of the Greeks’ returns is told on the page of the Returns of the Greek Heroes.

The Sack of Troy Sources

The main accounts are the second book of Virgil’s Aeneid (2.40–259, 2.310–312, 2.403–406, 2.512–558, 2.624–625, 2.707–795, with 6.494–530) and the Epitome of Apollodorus (5.14–23, 6.23). Also used are Homer’s Iliad (6.402–403, 7.347–353, 20.407–418) and Odyssey (4.265–289, 8.499–520), Euripides’ Hecuba, Trojan Women and Andromache, Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Quintus of Smyrna (Posthomerica 13 and 14), Pausanias (1.11.1, 10.27.2–3), Strabo (13.1.53) and Livy (1.1.1–4).

See Also: Trojan War, The Trojan Horse, Troy, The Returns of the Greek Heroes