The Trojan War
According to legend, the chain of events that led to the Trojan War started at the royal wedding of Peleus (King of Myrmidons) and Thetis, a sea nymph. Many gods attended the wedding except Eris, daughter of Zeus, king of gods. She wasn't invited because she was the godess of discord and bound to cause trouble.
Mad because of being excluded, Eris decided to interupt the wedding banquet. She threw a golden apple marked "for the fairest" among the guest. After several goddesses argued about who should receive the apple, Zeus sent them to a prince named Paris to decide who was the fairest between Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite.
All three godesses tried to persuade Paris. Out of all three, he picked Aphrodite for the Apple of discord because she offered him the prettiest woman in the world.
Aphrodite sent him to Sparta to collect his prize. There was just one problem. The prettiest girl or woman was already married. This woman was named Helen. Many powerful men had wanted to marry her. Her step-father, King Tyndareus of Sparta, was afraid that it would lead her to war. He also was afraid that someone would try to kidnap her.
When Paris showed up in Sparta, Menelaus and Helen welcomed him as a guest. When Menelaus left Sparta for a while, Paris and Helen eloped. Menelaus was furious. So he summoned the princes who had promised to protect Helen, and they agreed to help him attack Troy. His brother Agamemnon was the leader of the expedition.
Achilles, son of Thetis and Peleus, was also a member of the expedition. When he was a baby, Thetis had dipped him in the River Styx. This made him invulnerable; no weapon could pierce his skin. One problem though, Thetis had held him by his heels when she dipped him in the River Styx, so Achilles could still be injured in his heels.
The Greeks beseiged Troy for 10 years. In the 10th year of the seige, Agamemnon took Achilles's female prisoner, Briseis, for himself. Achilles was so angry that he refused to fight for the Greeks any longer. When his friend Patroclus was killed by Hector, a mighty Trojan, Achilles returned to the war.
The war ended when Odysseus, wisest of the Greeks, devised a plan. The Greeks pretended to surrender, sailing away in their ships. They left a wooden horse as a prize to the people of Troy for winning the war. When the Trojans saw this, they opened the gate to the city and brought the horse inside. Then they had a celebration that lasted late into the night.
When the Trojans finally fell asleep, Greek warriors came out of their hiding place inside the wooden horse. They opened the gates of the city, and the rest of the Greeks, who had sailed back to Troy in the night, entered and destroyed the city.
Most of the Trojans women were enslaved. Cassandra became Agamemnon's captive. He and her were both murdered by Agamemnon's wife Clytemnstra in revenge for the death of her daughter Iphigenia.
by Isaiah Wiggins.
Source Book: Various internet web
sites
If you liked this report, please tell us about it.
