The Trojan War is the central event of Greek mythology, the great conflict from which the most celebrated epics of the ancient world were born. A ten-year siege of the wealthy city of Troy on the coast of Asia Minor, the war pitted the Greek coalition, led by Agamemnon of Mycenae, against the Trojans, led by King Priam and his warrior son Hector. Its opening cause, the abduction of Helen, and its closing event, the ruse of the Trojan Horse, have been retold in every medium of art for nearly three thousand years.
How to Read This Guide
The Trojan War is the most historical of the great Greek myths. The war is the subject of a historical tradition (the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, the Epic Cycle now lost, the Aeneid of Virgil), and the war is the subject of a historical archaeology (the site of Hisarlik in Turkey, identified as Troy by Schliemann in the 1870s, excavated continuously since). The two traditions — the literary and the archaeological — do not always agree (Homer’s Troy is a much larger and more splendid city than Hisarlik was at the time of the war), and the reader who wants the historical version of the war should treat the two traditions separately.
The four great sources for the Trojan War are the Iliad of Homer (the central poem, covering 24 days in the tenth year of the war), the Odyssey of Homer (the return of the hero, covering the aftermath), the Aeneid of Virgil (the Roman version, the founding of Rome story, the Aeneas who escaped Troy and led the survivors to Italy), and the Epic Cycle (lost, summarised in Proclus’ Chrestomathy, the source of the Cypria, Aethiopis, Little Iliad, Iliou Persis, and Nostoi). The standard scholarly reading of the war is the Cambridge Companion to Homer (2004), and the standard historical-archaeological treatment is the Cambridge Companion to Homer (2004), chapter 14, and the Cambridge Ancient History, volume 2 (the Bronze Age, edited by Ward, Joukowsky, and Dyson, 2014). For the modern reception, see our guide to Greek mythology in modern culture.
The reader who wants a quick start should begin with the Iliad (Richmond Lattimore or Robert Fagles translation), the Achilles profile, and the wooden horse truth page. The reader who wants the comprehensive picture should read the Aeneas, Paris, Helen, and Patroclus profiles alongside this guide.This guide traces the war from its mythological origins to its long aftermath, introducing the heroes, the gods’ interventions, the major battles, and the fates of the survivors. For the historical question of whether the war actually happened, see our discussion of the archaeology of Troy at the end of this guide.
The Causes of the Trojan War
The Trojan War had multiple causes, woven together over generations. The most distant cause was the Judgment of Paris, in which a Trojan prince, Paris, was asked to choose the most beautiful of three goddesses: Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. Each goddess offered him a bribe. Hera offered him political power. Athena offered him wisdom and skill in war. Aphrodite offered him the most beautiful woman in the world, who was already married to Menelaus, king of Sparta. Paris chose Aphrodite.
The more proximate cause was the abduction (or, in some versions, elopement) of Helen. Helen was the daughter of Zeus and Leda, and as a young woman she was the most beautiful mortal alive. Suitors from across Greece came to seek her hand, and her stepfather Tyndareus, king of Sparta, was afraid of the jealous quarrels that would follow her marriage. He made all the suitors swear an oath that they would defend the chosen husband of Helen against anyone who wronged him. Helen chose Menelaus, and the oath was sworn.
When Paris of Troy visited Sparta on a diplomatic mission, he and Helen fell in love (or were overcome by Aphrodite’s enchantment). They fled to Troy together, taking with them much of Menelaus’s wealth. Menelaus called on his brother Agamemnon, who called on the suitors’ oath, and the great Greek coalition was assembled.
The Oath of Tyndareus and the Assembly at Aulis
The oath sworn by Helen’s suitors bound every major Greek king to the cause. This was the political basis for the Greek coalition: not a single kingdom’s decision, but a panhellenic commitment. The fleet gathered at the port of Aulis, on the Greek mainland, before sailing for Troy.
The voyage was delayed by unfavorable winds. The seer Calchas revealed that the winds were sent by Artemis, angry because Agamemnon had killed a sacred deer and boasted that he was a better hunter than the goddess. The only way to appease her was to sacrifice Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia, which he did. This act would come back to haunt him.
The Catalogue of Ships
The Iliad includes the famous Catalogue of Ships, a long list of the Greek contingents and their leaders. From the major regions of Greece, the following kings led forces:
- Agamemnon of Mycenae, commander-in-chief
- Menelaus of Sparta, husband of Helen
- Achilles of Phthia, son of Peleus and Thetis
- Odysseus of Ithaca, son of Laertes
- Ajax the Greater of Salamis, son of Telamon
- Ajax the Lesser of Locris, son of Oileus
- Diomedes of Argos, son of Tydeus
- Nestor of Pylos, the old wise counselor
- Idomeneus of Crete
- Tlepolemus of Rhodes, son of Heracles
- Philoctetes, owner of Heracles’s bow
- Neoptolemus, son of Achilles (joined late)
- And many more
On the Trojan side, the major warriors were:
- Hector, eldest son of Priam, the greatest Trojan warrior
- Paris, abductor of Helen
- Deiphobus, another son of Priam
- Aeneas, son of Anchises and Aphrodite
- Memnon, the Ethiopian king, son of Eos
- Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons
- Sarpedon, son of Zeus
- Glaucus, leader of the Lycians
The Wrath of Achilles: The Story of the Iliad
Homer’s Iliad does not cover the entire ten-year war. It covers a few weeks in the tenth and final year, during the period of Achilles’s withdrawal from battle. The poem opens with a quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon over a captive woman, Chryseis, whom Agamemnon had taken as a prize. When her father, a priest of Apollo, came to ransom her, Agamemnon refused, and Apollo sent a plague on the Greek camp. The seer Calchas revealed the cause, and Achilles publicly demanded that Agamemnon return Chryseis to her father. In a rage, Agamemnon not only complied but took Achilles’s own captive, Briseis, as compensation. Humiliated, Achilles withdrew from the fighting and prayed to his mother Thetis to ask Zeus to favor the Trojans until the Greeks honored him.
The war turned against the Greeks. Hector broke through the Greek wall, set fire to a Greek ship, and seemed poised to destroy the Greek camp. Patroclus, Achilles’s beloved companion, could not bear to watch and borrowed Achilles’s armor to lead the Myrmidons. He drove the Trojans back but was killed by Hector, who stripped the divine armor from his body.
Achilles, learning of Patroclus’s death, was consumed with grief and rage. He returned to battle, killed Hector, and dragged his body behind his chariot back to the Greek camp. The Iliad ends with the ransom of Hector’s body. Priam, the aged Trojan king, came secretly into the Greek camp, embraced the knees of Achilles, and begged for the return of his son’s body. Achilles, moved by the old man’s grief, agreed, and the two men shared a meal together in the tent.
The Fall of Troy
The fall of Troy is not actually told in the Iliad but in the later Epic Cycle and in Virgil’s Aeneid. According to these sources, the war was finally won through a trick conceived by Odysseus and executed with the help of Athena. The Greeks built a great wooden horse, hid a force of armed men inside it, and left it outside the walls of Troy as if it were an offering to Athena, while the Greek army sailed away to hide behind the island of Tenedos.
The Trojans, divided, debated what to do. Laocoön, a Trojan priest, warned against trusting the horse, crying “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes” (I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts). He was silenced when two great serpents emerged from the sea and crushed him and his two sons to death, an omen the Trojans took as a sign of the horse’s sanctity. The Greek spy Sinon, planted in the Trojan camp, told a false story of why the horse had been built.
The Trojans brought the horse inside the walls of Troy, and that night, the warriors hidden within it, led by Odysseus, Neoptolemus, and Menelaus, opened the gates to the Greek army, which had sailed back under cover of darkness. Troy was sacked and burned. King Priam was killed at his own altar. Hector’s infant son Astyanax was thrown from the walls to end the royal line. The Trojan women were taken as captives. Helen was returned to Menelaus.
The Long Aftermath: The Returns of the Heroes
The return of the Greek heroes was as eventful as the war itself. The myths tell the fates of the major survivors:
- Agamemnon returned to Mycenae to be killed by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, the beginning of the cycle of vengeance that the Oresteia of Aeschylus dramatized.
- Menelaus wandered the Mediterranean for eight years before reaching Sparta, where he and Helen lived out their lives.
- Ajax the Lesser, who had violated Cassandra in Athena’s temple, was shipwrecked on his return and killed by the god for his impiety.
- Neoptolemus traveled to Epirus and founded a kingdom. He was killed at Delphi in a quarrel over an oracle, and his descendants later became rulers of Macedon.
- Idomeneus, the king of Crete, was shipwrecked on his return journey and made a terrible vow to the sea-god, which led to a plague in Crete and his exile.
- Diomedes was shipwrecked but reached Argos. He eventually left Greece and founded cities in southern Italy, where his companions were said to have become birds or fish.
And Odysseus, of course, wandered for ten years before reaching Ithaca, a journey that is the subject of Homer’s Odyssey. For the full account of his trials, including the encounter with Polyphemus, the enchantment of Circe, the deadly song of the Sirens, and the descent into the underworld, see our guide to Odysseus.
Aeneas and the Founding of Rome
The Trojan survivors had their own epics. The most important of these was the journey of Aeneas, the son of Anchises and Aphrodite, who carried his father on his back out of burning Troy and led a small band of Trojans on a long Mediterranean voyage, finally reaching Italy and founding the line of the Roman kings. His story is told in Virgil’s Aeneid, the great national epic of Rome.
Aeneas’s journey paralleled Odysseus’s in many ways, but with very different emotional tone. Odysseus was trying to return home. Aeneas was destined to found a new home. Both encountered storms, monsters, magical women, and the underworld. The Romans considered Aeneas the founder of their civilization, and his descendant Romulus would found Rome.
The Gods in the Trojan War
The Trojan War was unusual among Greek wars in that the gods intervened directly and visibly. The Olympians split into factions: Hera, Athena, and Poseidon supported the Greeks. Ares, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, and Leto’s twin arrows supported the Trojans. Zeus tried to remain neutral, but was repeatedly distracted or bribed by the others.
Apollo was the divine archer of Troy. He guided the arrow that killed Achilles, struck Patroclus before Hector finished him off, and sent plague among the Greeks at the opening of the Iliad. Athena, in turn, was the Greeks’ great champion, deceiving Hector with a phantom at his most vulnerable moment. The gods fought each other in the battles: Ares was wounded by Diomedes with Athena’s aid, and Aphrodite was wounded when she tried to save him.
The Historical Trojan War
For centuries, scholars debated whether the Trojan War was a real event or a complete invention of Greek epic. The answer changed dramatically in the 1870s, when the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann began excavating at Hisarlik in modern Turkey, the traditional site of Troy. He found the remains of a fortified city that had been destroyed by fire around 1180 BCE, the right period for the legendary war.
The archaeologist Manfred Korfmann continued the work in the 1980s and 1990s, demonstrating that Troy at the time of its destruction was a large, wealthy city that controlled the Dardanelles and the trade routes between the Aegean and the Black Sea. This is consistent with a historical war fought over trade, hostages, and strategic control.
The archaeological evidence from Troy itself does not support the story of a wooden horse. There is no inscription of “Agamemnon” at Troy, no trace of a great Greek coalition, and the literary details of the Iliad and Odyssey are not confirmed by the spade. But the archaeology does support the destruction of Troy around 1180 BCE, the right period for the legendary war — Troy VIIa was almost certainly destroyed by fire and warfare.
The Legacy of the Trojan War
The Trojan War has been told and retold in every period of Western literature. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are its primary sources, but the war appears in:
- Greek tragedy: Aeschylus’s Oresteia, Sophocles’s Ajax and Philoctetes, Euripides’s Iphigenia in Aulis and Iphigenia in Tauris and Hecuba and The Trojan Women
- Roman literature: Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid’s Heroides and Metamorphoses
- Medieval literature: Benoît de Sainte-Maure’s Roman de Troie, Guido delle Colonne’s Historia destructionis Troiae
- Renaissance literature: Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus
- Modern literature: Joyce’s Ulysses, Cavafy’s Ithaca, Derek Walcott’s Omeros
- Film and television: Troy (2004), the 2018 BBC Troy: Fall of a City, Percy Jackson and many others
The war has also been a touchstone for thinking about the morality of warfare, the role of women in conflict, the psychology of veterans, and the meaning of homeland. From Homer to Hollywood, the story of Troy has shaped how the West thinks about war itself.
The Causes of the Trojan War: A Deeper Analysis
The Trojan War was caused by a chain of events that began long before the actual war. The Judgment of Paris was the immediate cause, but the deeper causes were the ancient feuds of the gods, the human desire for glory and revenge, and the inevitable conflict between the Greek and Trojan worlds.
The myth of the Judgment of Paris, in which the Trojan prince Paris chose Aphrodite as the most beautiful of three goddesses, was the immediate cause of the war. Paris’s choice of Aphrodite’s gift, the most beautiful woman in the world, who happened to be Helen, the wife of the Spartan king Menelaus, set in motion the chain of events that led to the war.
The deeper cause, however, was the divine plan. The gods, particularly Zeus, had decided that the human race had become too numerous and too wicked, and they used the Trojan War as a means of reducing the human population and of punishing the wicked. The war was a kind of cosmic plan, a divine intervention in human affairs, and the heroes of the war were the instruments of the divine will.
The human cause of the war was the oath of Tyndareus, the king of Sparta, who made all the suitors of Helen swear to defend the chosen husband of Helen against anyone who wronged him. The oath was the basis for the Greek coalition, and it was the source of much of the tragedy of the war. The suitors were bound by the oath to leave their homes and families to fight in a war caused by Paris’s crime, and they had no choice but to obey.
The political cause of the war was the conflict between the Greek city-states and the wealthy city of Troy, which controlled the trade routes between the Aegean and the Black Sea. The Greeks had long desired to control Troy’s wealth, and the war was a way of justifying the conquest. The myth of Helen’s abduction was a convenient pretext for a war that had political and economic causes.
The Trojan War in the Greek Imagination
The Trojan War was the central event of Greek myth, the story that every Greek knew and that every Greek was proud of. The heroes of the war, including Achilles, Odysseus, Ajax, and Agamemnon, were the models for Greek youth to imitate, and the stories of their deeds were the moral education of the Greek world.
The war was also the source of the great epic poems of the Greek tradition, the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer, and the lost Epic Cycle. The Iliad was the foundational text of Greek literature, the poem that every Greek learned by heart, the model for all subsequent epic poetry. The Odyssey was the foundational text of Greek adventure literature, the story of the long journey home, the model for all subsequent romance.
The war was also the subject of the great tragedies of the Greek stage, including the Oresteia of Aeschylus, the Ajax and Philoctetes of Sophocles, and the Iphigenia in Aulis and Iphigenia in Tauris of Euripides. The tragedies explored the human cost of the war, the moral choices of the heroes, the consequences of violence and revenge.
The war was also the subject of Greek art, particularly vase painting and sculpture. The most famous surviving depictions include the Exekias Ajax and Achilles Playing a Game (c. 540 BCE), the Berlin Painter’s Apotheosis of Heracles (c. 480 BCE), and the Iliupersis relief from the altar of the temple of Athena at Pergamon (c. 200 BCE).
The Trojan War and Greek Identity
The Trojan War was a major source of Greek identity, the shared story that united the Greek world in a common past. The heroes of the war were the ancestors of the Greek ruling families, and the city-states of Greece claimed descent from the heroes of the war. The Spartan kings claimed descent from Heracles, the Athenian kings claimed descent from Theseus, and the Macedonian kings claimed descent from the heroes of the Argonauts and the Trojan War.
The war was also the basis for the Greek sense of cultural superiority over the East. The Greeks, in their self-understanding, were the descendants of the heroes who had conquered Troy, and the Trojans, although they had their own virtues (Hector was as noble as Achilles, in many ways), were the enemies who had been justly punished. The war was the foundation of the Greek sense of identity, the story that explained why the Greeks were the rulers of the Aegean world.
The war was also the source of the Greek concept of aretê, or excellence. The heroes of the war were the embodiment of aretê, and their deeds were the standard for Greek youth to imitate. The war was the ultimate test of aretê, and the heroes who performed great deeds in the war were honored for their courage, their cunning, and their endurance.
The Geography of the Trojan War
The geography of the Trojan War is an essential part of understanding the war. The war was fought in and around the city of Troy, located on the western coast of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), at the entrance to the Dardanelles, the narrow strait that connects the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara and, eventually, to the Black Sea.
The city of Troy, also known as Ilion, was a wealthy and powerful city in the Late Bronze Age. It controlled the trade routes between the Aegean and the Black Sea, and it was the destination of merchants from all over the Mediterranean world. The wealth of Troy was legendary, and it was the source of much of the envy that led to the Greek attack.
The battlefield of Troy is the subject of the Iliad, and Homer describes it in vivid detail. The plain of Troy, where the battles were fought, was a wide, flat expanse between the city and the sea. The river Scamander (modern Karamenderes) ran through the plain, and it was the site of the famous battle between Achilles and the river god, one of the most memorable scenes in the Iliad. The Mount Ida, located to the southeast of Troy, was the site of the divine assemblies described in the Iliad, where the gods debated the fate of the war.
The Greek camp was located on the beach, near their ships, and the camp is described in the Iliad as a kind of city, with rows of ships and tents. The ships were the Greek lifeline, and they were the source of much of the tension in the Iliad, as the Trojans tried to set them on fire.
The geography of the Trojan War was not just a backdrop for the action. It was an essential part of the story, and it shaped the events of the war. The location of Troy, at the entrance to the Dardanelles, made it a strategic prize, and the war was fought to control the trade routes of the region. The geography of the war was the geography of power, and the war was a war for power.
The Archaeology of Troy
The archaeological site of Troy is located at Hisarlik, in modern Turkey, near the town of Çanakkale. The site was identified as the location of ancient Troy by the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann in the 1870s, and it has been excavated by a succession of archaeologists, including Wilhelm Dörpfeld, Carl Blegen, and Manfred Korfmann.
The archaeology of Troy has revealed a complex history, with the site being occupied and reoccupied many times over the millennia. The most famous of the layers, the so-called “Troy VIIa,” is the layer that most scholars identify with the city of Priam and the Trojan War. This layer shows clear signs of destruction by fire and warfare, including sling stones, arrowheads, and human skeletons, consistent with the kind of warfare described in the Iliad.
The archaeology of Troy has also revealed much about the daily life of the ancient city. The houses were built of mud brick and stone, with courtyards and second stories. The city had a citadel on a hill, with a palace complex that may have been the palace of Priam. The city had a lower town, with workshops, markets, and residential areas. The site has also yielded pottery, jewelry, and other artifacts that give a picture of the wealth and culture of the city.
The question of whether the Trojan War actually happened has been debated for centuries. The archaeological evidence supports the conclusion that a war of some kind did happen, and that Troy VIIa was destroyed by fire around 1180 BCE, the right period for the legendary war. The evidence does not support the details of the myths, however. There is no evidence of a great Greek coalition, no evidence of a wooden horse, no evidence of a great warrior like Achilles. The archaeology tells us that a war happened, but the myths tell us how the Greeks remembered it.
The Enduring Power of the Trojan War Story
The Trojan War has been the most influential story in Western culture for three thousand years. From Homer to Shakespeare, from Virgil to Joyce, from the medieval romance to the Hollywood blockbuster, the war has been retold, reinterpreted, and reimagined in every period of Western history. The story of Achilles and his wrath, the story of Odysseus and his long journey home, the story of the Trojan Horse and the fall of the city, all have become part of the Western imagination.
The war has been particularly important in the development of the Western concept of heroism. The heroes of the war, particularly Achilles and Odysseus, are the models for the heroes of Western literature, from the medieval knights of the Round Table to the modern heroes of the silver screen. The values they embody, courage in battle, cunning in strategy, loyalty to friends, endurance in suffering, are the values that the Western world has cherished for three thousand years.
The war has also been important in the development of the Western concept of tragedy. The Greek tragedies of the war, particularly the Oresteia of Aeschylus, are the foundations of the Western tragic tradition. The cycle of violence, the cycle of revenge, the cycle of suffering that is the war’s legacy, has been the subject of countless works of Western literature and art.
The war has also been important in the development of the Western concept of the East. The war was the first great conflict between the West and the East, the first great conflict between the Greek and the Asian worlds. The war was the foundation of the Greek sense of the East as the other, the strange, the dangerous, the rich, the corrupt, the seductive. This sense of the East has been a powerful force in Western culture for three thousand years.
For deeper coverage of the war’s central figures, see our profiles of Achilles, Odysseus, the Trojan Horse, and Helen of Troy. For a full treatment of the major heroes of the war, see our Greek Heroes guide. For the broader context, see our complete guide to Greek mythology, our guide to the Olympian gods, our guide to monsters, and our guide to mythology in modern culture.