The Library of Greek Mythology (Oxford World's Classics) (26 page)

13. The Trojan War

¹
Afterwards Alexander abducted Helen,
*
in accordance, some

3

say, with the will of Zeus, so that his daughter would become famous for having brought Europe and Asia to war, or, as others have said, to ensure that the race of demigods
*
would be raised to glory.
²
For one of these reasons,
*
Eris threw an apple
*
in front of Hera, Athene, and Aphrodite as a prize for the most beautiful, and Zeus instructed Hermes to take them to Alexander on Mount Ida, to be judged by him for their beauty. They promised to give Alexander gifts; Hera promised him universal dominion if she were preferred above all other women, while Athene offered victory in war, and Aphrodite the hand of Helen. He decided in favour of Aphrodite, and sailed to Sparta with ships built by Phereclos.
*
³
He was entertained for nine days by Menelaos, and on the tenth, when
Menelaos departed for Crete to celebrate the funeral of his maternal grandfather Catreus,
*
Alexander persuaded Helen to go away with him. She abandoned Hermione, who was nine years old at the time, and loading most of the treasures
*
on board, she set out to sea with him by night.
⁴
Hera sent a violent storm against them, which forced them to put in at Sidon;
*
and fearing that he might be pursued, Alexander delayed a long while in Phoenicia and Cyprus. When he thought that there was no further risk of pursuit, he went on to Troy with Helen.
⁵
It is said by some, however, that Helen was stolen by Hermes in obedience to the will of Zeus and taken to Egypt, where she was entrusted to Proteus, king of the Egyptians, for safe keeping, and Alexander went to Troy with a phantom of Helen
*
fashioned from clouds.

⁶
When Menelaos heard of the abduction, he went to Agamemnon in Mycenae,
*
and asked him to assemble a force to attack Troy and to levy troops in Greece. So Agamemnon, sending a herald to each of the kings, reminded them of the oaths
*
that they had sworn, and warned each of them to look to the safety of his own wife, saying that this insult to Greece affected all of them equally and in common. When most were eager to take part in the expedition, envoys also visited Odysseus in Ithaca,
⁷
but he was unwilling to go, and pretended to be mad.
*
Palamedes, son of Nauplios, however, proved his madness to be a sham; for he followed Odysseus while he was making this pretence of madness, and snatching Telemachos from Penelope’s lap, drew his sword
*
as if he were about to kill him. And Odysseus, fearing for his son’s safety, confessed that his madness was merely a sham, and joined the expedition.

⁸
[Later, at Troy,] after capturing a Phrygian, Odysseus forced him to write a treasonable letter, supposedly addressed from Priam to Palamedes; and then, after burying some gold under Palamedes’ tent, he dropped the letter in the camp. Agamemnon read it, discovered the gold, and delivered Palamedes to the allies to be stoned as a traitor.
*
⁹
Menelaos went to Cyprus with Odysseus and Talthybios to persuade Cinyras to join the allies. He presented a breast plate
*
to the absent Agamemnon and swore to send fifty ships; but in fact he sent a single ship, commanded by ..., son of Mygdalion, and fashioned the rest from earthenware and sent those off to sea.

¹⁰
Elais, Spermo, and Oino,
*
the daughters of Anios, son of Apollo, are called the Wine-Growers. Dionysos granted them the power to draw oil, corn, and wine from the earth.

¹¹
The army assembled at Aulis. Those who took part
*
in the expedition against Troy were the following: of the Boeotians, ten leaders, who brought forty ships; of the Orchomenians, four, who brought thirty ships; of the Phocians, four, who brought forty ships; of the Locrians, Aias, son of Oileus, who brought forty ships; of the Euboeans, Elephenor, son of Chalcodon and Alcyone, who brought forty ships; of the Athenians, Menestheus, who brought fifty ships; of the Salaminians, Aias, son of Telamon, who brought twelve ships;
¹²
of the Argives, Diomedes, son of Tydeus, and his companions, who brought eighty ships; of the Mycenaeans, Agamemnon, son of Atreus and Aerope, a hundred ships; of the Lacedaimonians, Menelaos, son of Atreus and Aerope, sixty ships; of the Pylians, Nestor, son of Neleus and Chloris, forty ships; of the Arcadians, Agapenor, seven ships; of the Eleans, Amphimachos and his companions, forty ships; of the Doulichians, Meges, son of Phyleus, forty ships; of the Cephallenians, Odysseus, son of Laertes and Anticleia, twelve ships; of the Aetolians, Thoas, son of Andraimon and Gorge, who brought forty ships;
¹³
of the Cretans, Idomeneus, son of Deucalion, forty ships; of the Rhodians, Tlepolemos, son of Heracles and Astyoche, nine ships; of the Symaeans, Nireus, son of Charopos, three ships; of the Coans, Pheidippos and Antiphos, the sons of Thessalos, thirty ships;
¹⁴
of the Myrmidons, Achilles, son of Peleus and Thetis, fifty ships; from Phylace, Protesilaos, son of Iphiclos, forty ships; of the Pheraeans, Eumelos, son of Admetos, eleven ships; of the Olizonians, Philoctetes, son of Poias, seven ships; of the Ainianians, Gouneus, son of Ocytos, twenty-two ships; of the Triccaeans, Podaleirios [and Machaon, sons of Asclepios], thirty ships; of the Ormenians,
Eurypylos [son of Evaimon], forty ships; of the Gyrtonians, Polypoites, son of Peirithoos, thirty ships; and of the Magnesians, Prothoos, son of Tenthredon, forty ships. So in all there were one thousand and thirteen ships, forty-three leaders, and thirty contingents.

¹⁵
While the army was at Aulis and a sacrifice was being offered to Apollo, a snake darted from the altar to a plane tree nearby, which contained a nest; and after swallowing down the eight sparrow chicks in the nest along with their mother, the snake turned to stone. Calchas said that this sign had been sent to them by the will of Zeus, and he concluded from the incident that Troy was destined to be taken after ten years.
*
And they made ready to set sail against Troy.
¹⁶
Agamemnon himself was commander of the whole force, while Achilles, at fifteen years of age, took command of the fleet.

¹⁷
Lacking any knowledge of the route to Troy, they landed in Mysia
*
and put it to the sack, in the belief that it was Troy. Now the king of the Mysians was Telephos, son of Heracles,
*
and when he saw his country being pillaged, he armed the Mysians and pursued the Greeks in a body to their ships, killing a large number of them, including Thersandros, son of Polyneices, who stood his ground. But when Achilles rushed to the attack, Telephos failed to hold firm and was put to flight; and during the pursuit, he became entangled in a vine branch
*
and suffered a wound in the thigh from a spear.

¹⁸
Leaving Mysia, the Greeks put out to sea, and when a violent storm set in, they became separated from one another and returned to land in their own countries. Because the Greeks turned back at this time, the war is said to have lasted twenty years;
*
for it was in the second year after the abducttion of Helen that the Greeks, when they had completed their preparations, launched the expedition [for the first time], and following their withdrawal from Mysia to Greece, it was eight years before they returned to Argos and went back to Aulis.

¹⁹
When they had gathered again at Argos after this delay of eight years, they were in great perplexity about their route,
for want of a guide who could show them the way to Troy.
²⁰
But Telephos (since his wound had failed to heal and Apollo had told him that he would be cured when the man who had inflicted the wound became his healer) arrived in Argos from Mysia dressed in rags and begged Achilles to help him, promising that, in return, he would show them the route to Troy. So Achilles healed him by scraping rust from his Pelian spear.
*
Once he was cured, Telephos revealed the route, and Calchas, by the use of his own powers of divination, confirmed the accuracy of his directions.

²¹
When, after sailing over from Argos, they arrived in Aulis for the second time, the fleet was held back by adverse winds. Calchas declared that they would be unable to sail unless the most beautiful of Agamemnon’s daughters was offered in sacrifice to Artemis; for the goddess was angry with Agamemnon, because he had said when shooting a deer at a hunt on Icarion, ‘Not even Artemis
*
[could have shot as well as that],’ and because Atreus had failed to sacrifice the golden lamb to her.
²²
On hearing this oracle, Agamemnon sent Odysseus and Talthybios to Clytemnestra to ask her for Iphigeneia, claiming that he had promised to give her in marriage to Achilles as a reward for taking part in the expedition. So Clytemnestra sent her off, and Agamemnon brought her to the altar and was just about to slaughter her when Artemis carried her off to the land of the Taurians and installed her there as her priestess, substituting a deer for her at the altar.
*
According to some accounts, Artemis made her immortal.

²³
After putting out from Aulis, they called in at Tenedos, which was ruled by Tenes, son of Cycnos and Procleia, or according to some, of Apollo. He lived there because he had been sent into exile by his father.
²⁴
For after having this son Tenes and a daughter, Hemithea, by Procleia, daughter of Laomedon, Cycnos
*
had later married Philonome, daughter of Tragasos; and she fell in love with Tenes, and when she was unable to win him over, made false accusations against him, telling Cycnos that he had tried to seduce her and producing
as her witness a flute player named Eumolpos.
²⁵
Cycnos believed her, and put Tenes and his sister into a chest, which he threw into the sea. When the chest ran ashore on the island of Leucophrys, Tenes stepped out, and he settled on the island, calling it Tenedos after himself. Later, when Cycnos learned the truth, he had the flute player stoned and his wife buried alive in the earth.

²⁶
So when Tenes saw the Greeks sailing in towards Tenedos, he tried to turn them away by pelting them with stones; but he was killed by Achilles with a sword blow to the breast, although Thetis had warned Achilles beforehand not to kill Tenes, for if he did, he himself would die at the hand of Apollo.
²⁷
While the Greeks were offering a sacrifice to Apollo,
*
a water-snake advanced from the altar and bit Philoctetes. The wound failed to heal and began to stink, and because the army could not abide the stench, Odysseus, on the orders of Agamemnon, put Philoctetes ashore on Lemnos, together with the bow of Heracles
*
which was now in his possession; and he maintained himself in the wilderness by shooting birds with it.

²⁸
Leaving Tenedos, the Greeks set sail for Troy, sending Odysseus and Menelaos
*
ahead to demand the return of Helen and the treasures. But the Trojans, after they had summoned an assembly, not only refused to return Helen, but even wanted to kill the envoys.
²⁹
Antenor saved the envoys, but the Greeks, angered by the insolence of the barbarians, took up their arms and sailed to attack them. Achilles had been warned by Thetis not to be the first to disembark from the ships, because the first man ashore would be the first to die. When the barbarians learned that the fleet was sailing against them, they hurried to the sea under arms and tried to prevent the enemy from landing by pelting them with stones.
³⁰
The first of the Greeks to disembark
*
from his ship was Protesilaos, who killed a good many of the barbarians, but died at the hand of Hector. His wife, Laodameia,
*
continued to love him even after his death, and making an image in his likeness, she lived with it as though
they were man and wife. The gods took pity on her, and Hermes brought Protesilaos up from Hades. Seeing her husband and thinking he had returned from Troy, Laodameia was overjoyed at the time, but later, when he was taken back to Hades, she took her own life.

³¹
After the death of Protesilaos, Achilles disembarked with the Myrmidons, and killed Cycnos by hurling a stone at his head.
*
When the barbarians saw that Cycnos was dead, they fled to the city, and the Greeks, leaping ashore from their ships, filled the plain with dead bodies; and when they had penned the Trojans in, they put them under siege, and hauled their ships from the water.
³²
Since the courage of the barbarians had failed, Achilles laid an ambush for Troilos
*
in the sanctuary of Thymbrian Apollo and slew him, and raided the city by night and captured Lycaon.
*
And then, taking some of the foremost warriors with him, he laid waste to the land, and went to Mount Ida to rustle the cattle of Aeneas
*
[and] Priam. When Aeneas fled, Achilles killed the herdsmen and Mestor, son of Priam, and drove away the cattle.
³³
He also captured Lesbos and Phocaia, then Colophon and Smyrna, and Clazomenai, and Cyme, and after these, Aigialos and Tenos [, the so-called Hundred Cities]; and then, successively, Adramytion and Side, and then Endion, Linaion, and Colone. He also captured Hypoplacian Thebes and Lyrnessos, and furthermore, [Ant]andros, and many other cities.

³⁴
After nine years had passed, the following allies
*
arrived to help the Trojans. From the neighbouring cities came Aeneas, son of Anchises, and with him Archelochos and Acamas, sons of Antenor and Theano, leading the Dardanians. Of the Thracians, Acamas, son of Eusoros; of the Ciconians, Euphemos, son of Troizenos; of the Paeonians, Pyraichmes; of the Paphlagonians, Pylaimenes, son of Bilsates;
³⁵
from Zelia, Pandaros, son of Lycaon; from Adrasteia, Adrastos and Amphios, sons of Merops; from Arisbe, Asios, son of Hyrtacos; from Larissa, Hippothoos, son of [Lethos] the Pelasgian; from Mysia, Chromios and Ennomos, sons of Arsinoos; of the Alizones, Odios and Epistrophos, sons of Mecisteus; of the Phrygians, Phorcys and Ascanios, sons of Aretaon; of the Maeonians, Mesthles and Antiphos, sons of
Talaimenes; of the Carians, Nastes and Amphimachos, sons of Nomion; of the Lycians, Sarpedon, son of Zeus, and Glaucos, son of Hippolochos.