The Trojan War: A New History

Achilles drags the body of Hector around Patroclus’s tomb three times and slaughters twelve noble Trojan youths before the body. After nine days, Zeus insists Hector’s corpse be returned to Troy. Risking death, Priam ventures to the Greek camp and begs Achilles for his son’s corpse. The Greeks grant an eleven-day truce to allow for Hector’s funeral to take place.

The Aethiopis tells the story of a female warrior, Penthesilea, descended from Ares, who aids the Trojans before being slain by Achilles. She is so beautiful that Achilles falls in love after removing the dead woman’s helmet. Thersites taunts him, and pays with his life. Achilles travels to Lemnos to purify himself for this deed before returning to fight.

Memnon of Aethiopia appears in the Odyssey, killing Nestor’s son, Antilochus, before being slain by Achilles. Achilles was en route to forcing his way into Troy when he was struck by Paris, probably by a poison-tipped arrow, though this is not specified. According to the Epic Cycle, Achilles’s heel was the only place where he was vulnerable. In the Aethiopis, Achilles falls at Troy’s Scaean Gate. The Odyssey states that mourning for Achilles lasted seventeen days. To avoid civil war, the Trojans decide who is to inherit Achilles’s armor, opting for wily Odysseus over athletic Ajax. The latter goes mad and kills the Greeks’ cattle and then himself.

The final phase of the war is characterized by the guile of Odysseus. Ambushing Helenus, Priam’s seer son, the Greeks obtain a prophecy that with the help of Philoctetes and his bow, Troy will fall. Bitten by a snake on Lemnos, Philoctetes has been abandoned. Diomedes is dispatched to fetch him. The physician Machaon heals Philoctetes, who kills Paris using the bow of Heracles. The Trojans fight to recover Paris’s body, and it is buried. Helen marries Paris’s brother, Deiphobus.

A new generation of warrior undertakes the conflict. Odysseus travels to the island of Scyros, where he recruits Achilles’s son, Neoptolemus. Priam recruits the son of Telephus of Myseia, Eurypylus (who is descended from Heracles) and his troops. Eurypylus is killed by Neoptolemus. Odysseus sneaks into Troy, is helped by Helen, and kills many Trojans before returning to camp. Odysseus has intended to steal the Trojan’s Palladium, a sacred statue of Athena and a totemic object for the Trojans. It was thought that this would weaken Troy. The Sack of Ilium says that Odysseus mistakenly stole a fake. Troy’s walls stand firm but its people despair.