Source Verification: The Trojan War
Every claim below is either what a named ancient source attests, in its own line or section, or a point where the sources themselves disagree.
What the Sources Attest
How much of the Trojan War does Homer's Iliad actually narrate?
Only a few weeks near the end of the war's tenth year. The poem opens with Agamemnon and Achilles's quarrel, covers the fighting that follows Achilles's withdrawal and return, and ends with Hector's funeral, where his wife Andromache leads the wailing and his mother Hecuba laments him. It never narrates the war's beginning, the wooden horse, or the fall of Troy itself, all of which the poem's first audience is assumed to already know.
Source: Homer, Iliad, Book 1
What actually caused the Trojan War?
The mythic cause is the Judgement of Paris: the Trojan prince chose Aphrodite as fairest among three goddesses in exchange for the most beautiful woman alive, and she guided him to Helen, already married to the Spartan king Menelaus. Homer's Iliad only alludes to this judgement once, near its very end; the full connected story is preserved only in much later prose, chiefly Apollodorus.
Source: Homer, Iliad 24.25-30
How did the Trojan War end?
After ten years of failed direct siege, the Greeks built a hollow wooden horse, hid their best fighters inside it, and pretended to sail home. The Trojans dragged the horse inside their own walls as a trophy; that night the hidden warriors climbed out and opened the gates to the returning army, and Troy fell.
Source: Homer, Odyssey 8.492-495
Why did Achilles withdraw from the fighting, and what brought him back?
Agamemnon seized Achilles's war prize Briseis to replace a captive he had been forced to give up, a public insult that drove Achilles to pull himself and his soldiers out of the war. He returned only after his companion Patroclus, wearing Achilles's own armor, was killed by Hector - grief and rage at that death, not any change of heart toward Agamemnon, is what brings him back.
Source: Homer, Iliad, Book 1
What did Diomedes do in the war that no other mortal in the Iliad matches?
In a single day's fighting, Diomedes wounds the goddess Aphrodite in the wrist as she carries her son Aeneas from the battlefield, then taunts her openly as she flees in pain. No other mortal fighter in the Iliad draws divine blood and lives to be named for it.
Source: Homer, Iliad 5.330-352
Was Helen actually at Troy for the whole war?
Homer's Iliad and Odyssey both keep her at Troy throughout the siege. Herodotus reports a separate, rationalizing Egyptian tradition instead, in which the real Helen never reached Troy at all and spent the war under the protection of the Egyptian king Proteus, while the Trojans and Greeks fought for ten years over a woman who was never in the city.
Source: Herodotus, Histories 2.112-2.120
Where Accounts Differ
- iliad-scope-vs-full-war
- helen-in-troy-vs-helen-in-egypt
- Homer's Iliad narrates only about fifty days near the end of the war's tenth year and never depicts the war's beginning (the Judgement of Paris, Helen's abduction) or its end (the wooden horse, the sack of Troy); those episodes survive complete only in much later prose, chiefly Apollodorus's Epitome, composed centuries after Homer.
- Herodotus reports a rival tradition in which Helen never reached Troy at all and spent the war in Egypt; this entry follows Homer's own account, in which she is at Troy throughout, and records the disagreement rather than resolving it.
Sources
- Homer, Iliad, Book 1
- Homer, Iliad, Book 18
- Homer, Iliad, Book 22
- Homer, Iliad, Book 24
- Homer, Iliad 5.330-352
- Homer, Iliad 24.25-30
- Homer, Odyssey 8.492-495
- Homer, Odyssey 11.409-434
- Apollodorus, Epitome 6.23-6.25
- Herodotus, Histories 2.112-2.120
- Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth (1993)