Paris awarded the golden apple to Aphrodite, who ensured Helen fell in love with him. Hundreds of regions sent their warriors to the first great meeting of the army at Aulis, where they intended to sail for Troy. There, the soothsayers predicted the campaign would take ten years. Sailing for Troy, the fleet mistakenly attacked the wrong place and were beaten back all the way to Greece.
It took years to reassemble another fleet at Aulis for a second campaign, but this time, the leader Agamemnon had to appease the goddess Artemis in return for favourable winds to sail to Troy.
She demanded the King sacrifice his own daughter, Iphigenia. With the sacrifice made, the Greek forces sailed again and landed on the beaches near Troy. They did not spend a decade besieging the city, however. They raided up and down the coast and only really settled in to the all-out attack on Troy in the tenth year since they had first left Aulis, as the soothsayers had said.
There are two elements then to understand about the Iliad and the larger story of the Greek campaign against Troy. The first is that Homer was, in many ways, more interested in the human and divine interactions in and around the pressure-cooker of the battlefield at Troy than about the war itself. Paris wanted to be heroic, but lacked courage to defend his siblings and city.
Hector deeply loved his wife, child and city, but as a man of courage and honour could not ignore the call to defend his home to the death.
All the warriors fought for their communities and their own personal glory — glory they hoped would be spoken about for all time. At the same time, the gods were portrayed not as benevolent and just overlords, but as having human tendencies. They fought, they argued, they plotted, they felt jealousy, and they showed support to particular sides.
The Iliad tells the tale of the painful and glorious overlapping of these divine and human worlds, leaving no character completely without fault — even the heroic Hector ignored clear warnings from the gods — and no character completely without our sympathy either.
Readers of the Iliad are confronted with a rich, complex, difficult and murky world in which there is no clear right or wrong. It is this tension that makes the Iliad one of the greatest works of world literature. The second element to understand is the extent to which Homer based his tale on fact. Was there really a Trojan War? The legacy of the war certainly remained present in Greek lives. One region, Locris, continued throughout antiquity to send some of their women each year to act as priestesses of the Temple of Athena at Troy, supposedly to atone for a wrong done by their ancestors during the attacks to take the city.
Even a millennium later, Alexander the Great made sure to visit the remains of Troy on his way to conquer Asia, and supposedly picked up Greek armour left there from the time of the war. The Romans, too, were fascinated with the story. In their own epic tales, their progenitor was a surviving Trojan warrior named Aeneas who made his way to Italy.
Modern scholarship has, on the whole, been more sceptical. In the 19th century, the site of what is now believed to be Troy was discovered a the mound of Hisarlik in modern-day Turkey. Yet subsequent excavations and historical enquiry have shown that, while the site is almost definitely Troy, it is not of the size recounted by Homer.
The city does show signs of destruction — although archaeological efforts were complicated by the existence of multiple settlements laying on top of one another — and clear signs of connection with the Mycenaean world of the Greeks. In reality, what the site probably indicates is a raid by Mycenaean Greek states on the territory and citadel of Troy in the 13th century BC, which formed nothing more than part of the ongoing military to and fro of the ancient Mediterranean world at the time.
This raid became, perhaps as it was one of the last great campaigns before the Mycenaean world started to collapse in on itself, a suitable foundation for oral poets in the following centuries wanting to compose a tale about the heroism and deeds of former battles. From that process of oral composition and re-composition grew the fabulous and fantastical stories of the Trojan War, of which the Iliad is a crowning glory.
As such, the heroes of antiquity can be assured of one thing: they achieved their desire for immortal glory. Michael Scott is professor of classics and ancient history at the University of Warwick, president of the largest regional branch of the Classical Association, and director and trustee of Classics for All. He stabbed Hector in the throat, killing him.
Hector had begged for an honorable burial in Troy, but Achilles was determined to humiliate his enemy even in death.
In his Iliad, Homer does not explain what happened to Achilles. Paris, who was not a brave warrior, ambushed Achilles as he entered Troy. Achilles died on the spot, still undefeated in battle.
But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Hercules known in Greek as Heracles or Herakles is one of the best-known heroes in Greek and Roman mythology.
His life was not easy—he endured many trials and completed many daunting tasks—but the reward for his suffering was a promise that he would live forever among the gods The story of the Trojan War—the Bronze Age conflict between the kingdoms of Troy and Mycenaean Greece—straddles the history and mythology of ancient Greece and inspired the greatest writers of antiquity, from Homer, Herodotus and Sophocles to Virgil.
Since the 19th-century How will it end? Who was the first man? Where do souls go after death? Herodotus was a Greek writer and geographer credited with being the first historian. Sometime around the year B. The so-called golden age of Athenian culture flourished under the leadership of Pericles B. Pericles transformed his The Greek philosopher Aristotle B. Though overshadowed in classical times by the work of his teacher Plato, from late antiquity Viewed by many as the founding figure of Western philosophy, Socrates B.
The Athenian philosopher Plato c. In his written dialogues he conveyed and expanded on the ideas and techniques of his teacher Socrates.
The Academy he In around B. Achilles also faces the Amazons — the tribe of female warriors — and fights their leader, Queen Penthesilea. At the moment Achilles kills her with his spear, their eyes meet and he falls in love with her, too late. Achilles is killed by an arrow, shot by the Trojan prince Paris. In most versions of the story, the god Apollo is said to have guided the arrow into his vulnerable spot, his heel.
In one version of the myth Achilles is scaling the walls of Troy and about to sack the city when he is shot. In other accounts he is marrying the Trojan princess Polyxena and supposedly negotiating an end to the war when Paris fires the shot that kills him.
After his death, Achilles is cremated, and his ashes are mixed with those of his dear friend Patroclus. The Odyssey describes a huge tomb of Achilles on the beach at Troy, and Odysseus meets Achilles during his visit to the underworld, among a group of dead heroes.
For the ancient Greeks he was an archetypal hero who embodied the human condition. Despite his greatness he was still mortal and fated to die. A hero cult for Achilles developed in several areas across Greece where he was venerated and worshipped like a god. For the Romans, Achilles was on the one hand a model of military prowess but also, for poets such as Horace and Catullus, an archetype of brutality.
By the medieval period, Achilles provided a model of how not to behave. Changes to the narrative in the markedly pro-Trojan versions of the myth that were dominant at this time made Achilles into a cowardly scoundrel who destroyed himself through his lustful passions.
In the Renaissance, when there was a renewal of interest in the classical world accompanying the reintroduction of Greek texts into western Europe, Achilles regained interest as a more complex character.
By the early 19th century, the period of Romanticism, he was the perfect hero, embodying a life given over to emotion, and beauty doomed to ruin. A neoclassical sculpture of the period, The Wounded Achilles , shows the perfection of his body even in his dying moments.
Achilles has also served as a heroic justification for the sacrifice of soldiers as well as a symbol of the destruction and brutality of war. Achilles may be a killing machine but he is nevertheless deeply human and that is, perhaps, why his story is still compelling after more than 3, years.
Buy the book accompanying the exhibition here. Map Data. Terms of Use. Report a map error. Exhibitions and events Who was Achilles? The Greek hero Achilles is one of the most famous figures in Greek myth and a key character in the Trojan War. British Museum 15 October Achilles was the son of Peleus, a Greek king, and Thetis, a sea nymph or goddess. Terracotta relief showing Peleus and Thetis, c.
Thetis tries to resist marriage to Peleus by transforming her body into powerful elements such as fire and wild beasts, here a lion. Why was Achilles raised by a centaur? Achilles instructed by Chiron in the Management of the Javelin.
Print after Giovanni Battista Cipriani, Pastel on paper.
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