Legends of Troy

Legends of Troy

How the Hellespont got its name

Helle was the daughter of King Athamas of Boiotia by the cloud-nymphe Nephele. Her step-mother Ino was jealous of Helle and her brother Phrixus. She tricked Athamas into offering them as a sacrifice to the gods but Nephele sent an aeronautical ram with a golden fleece to rescue them. As they were flying to safety high above the sea, Helle fell off the ram and drowned in the sea below. The Straits were thereafter given the name “Hellespontos” (Sea of Helle) in her memory.

Are the Hellespont and Dardanelles the same?

“Dardanelles” later gained favor as the name for the Straits in place of “Hellespont” (variously called Hellesponium Pelagus, Rectum Hellesponticum, and Fretum Hellesponticum in classical literature). The name “Dardanelles” is derived from Dardanus, son of Zeus and Electra, who founded the city of Dardania below Mount Ida. “Dardanos” was a city on the Dardanelles in Hellenistic times and there is a range of peaks in California, USA named the “Dardanelles”.

Who founded Troy? How did it get its name?

Dardanus, the son of Zeus and Electra, was born on the island of Samothrace. One day it started to rain cats and dogs and didn’t stop. Water covered the land. Dardanus, already saddened by the death of his brother, escaped from the island on a raft of animal skin. He hit land somewhere near Mount Ida, where he was welcomed by King Teucer or “Teucrus”, originally from Crete. That’s why the Trojans are sometimes called Teucrians or “Teukroi”. Dardanus married the king’s daughter and when King Teucer died he inherited the throne. Dardanus called the area and the city he founded “Dardania”, after himself, so the people who lived on Mount Ida were called Dardanians. Dardanus is considered the first king of “Troy”. When Dardanus died, his son Erichthonius succeeded him.

Tros was the son of Erichthonius. He named the country “Troas”, after himself, and the people were called “Trojans”.

Tros had 3 sons: Ilus, Assaracus and Ganymede. While Assaracus succeeded his father and ruled at Dardania, Ilus thought it would be more pleasant to live near the sea. He entered games hosted by the King of Phrygia and won the wrestling match. His prize was 50 youths and maidens. More prophetically, in accordance with an oracle, the king gave him a spotted cow and advised him to found a city where the cow lay down. Ilus followed the cow and founded a city, naming it “Ilios” after himself (rather than the cow). The royal dynasty of Mount Ida thereafter split into two, Dardania and Ilios, both rich cities. King Ilus was succeeded by Laomedon (see following story) then King Priam. In this way, the city-region of Troas became Ilios, though the name Troas still lived on.

(Ed. note: We are talking here about a region, the people of that region, and more than one city. While there are ancient remains on the slopes of Mount Ida, no particular site has been identified as “Dardania”. Down by the coast, however, the area was called the Troas or Troad and the people the “Trojans”, while concurrently, one particular city, on the hill of Hisarlik, was known as “Ilios”. “Troy” is just an anglicized version of the Latin name “Troia”. Thus we have: (1) Dardanus, Dardanos, Dardania, Dardanians. (2) Tros, Troes, Troas, Troad, Trojans, Troia, Troy. (3) Ilus, Ilios, Ilion, Wilusa, Iliad, Ilium.)

Who built the walls of Troy?

King Laomedon of Troy needed new walls. Disguised as laborers, the gods Poseidon and Apollo built massive new city walls of well-cut stone for him. On completion of the contract, Laomedon double-crossed Apollo and Poseidon and refused to pay their agreed reward. In retribution, Apollo inflicted a plague upon the Trojans and Poseidon sent a sea monster to terrorize the Trojans. For what happened next, read on...

Hercules and the Sea Monster

.... The soothsayers declared the only way to save Troy from this crisis was to sacrifice Laomedon's daughter Hesione to the sea monster. She was fastened securely to a rock by the sea to await the next visit by the monster. Hercules (Heracles) was passing by at the time between performing his Twelve Labors. He offered to kill the monster and save his daughter in return for Laomedon’s famed horses, inherited from his father Tros and given by Zeus. Laomedon agreed. Hercules allowed himself to be swallowed by the enormous sea monster, spent 3 days in its stomach, then slew it and rescued Hesione. Did Laomedon deliver on his promise? No. Hercules departed in a huff, raised an army, sailed back in six ships, and sacked Troy. Laomedon was killed along with most of his sons but Hercules gave Hesione, who would be taken away as a concubine, the chance to ransom one of the captives in return for a gold veil embroidered by herself. She chose her youngest brother Podarces, who became king of Troy and changed his name to Priam, which means “ransomed”. Under King Priam, Troy entered its greatest and longest era of prosperity.

The Golden Apple

Eris was the goddess of trouble and strife who was the companion of Ares, the God of War and Battle. When Peleus and Thetis were drawing up the invitation list for their forthcoming wedding ceremony, they excluded Eris, not wanting to spoil such a happy event. But spoil it she did. During the wedding feast when all was going well she threw a golden apple into the room marked “For the Fairest of them all”. The discord among the stunning goddesses, all immaculately dressed and coiffeured, can easily be imagined. Each and ever one of them wanted that gleaming golden apple. The result was a beauty contest – the Judgment of Paris – which would lead in the end to the Trojan War.

Hecuba’s Dream

King Priam was a family man. He loved his children and had 50 sons and approximately the same number of daughters, and more than one wife. His main wife was Hecuba - she bore him about 20 children. But while pregnant, Hecuba had a terrible dream in which she gave birth to fire and snakes. This was interpreted by the court prophets as a bad omen, that the child (Paris) would bring about the downfall of the Troy (which is what happened), so the baby was ordered to be left to die on Mount Ida. The instructions were not carried out, Paris lived, and Troy was indeed burnt to the ground. Hecuba was taken prisoner by Odysseus. Before the war, Hecuba had asked Polymestor, King of Thrace, to take care of her youngest son Polydorus. When Hecuba arrived in Thrace she learned that Polymestor had been killed. In anger and revenge, she tore out the eyes of Polymestor and murdered his two sons. Odysseus tried to control her rage but the gods intervened and transformed her into a dog. The Tomb of Hecuba can still be seen to this day, formerly a landmark for sailors, now a mosque, at Cynossema (now “Kilitbahir”) on the Gallipoli Peninsula, near Eceabat. The plateau above Kilitbahir is called the “Hill of Dogs”.

How Paris met Helen

Helen and Paris – it was a match made in heaven, literally. It was divined. The once-married Paris and the currently-married Helen. Ostensibly, it was a diplomatic mission to Sparta by a group of Trojan envoys. But Aphrodite was orchestrating events, she who now possessed the golden apple denoting her the most gorgeous goddess of them all, in a beauty contest chaired by Paris at which she had promised him the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, which was Helen. Now they had met up at last, Aphrodite arranged that Cupid (Eros) shoot arrows at them both. It was love at first sight. Love in full bloom. So bewitched, bothered and bewildered were Paris and Helen that they ran off together, not forgetting to loot the treasury of King Menelaus for travelling expenses. Mayhem broke out when Menelaus returned. Because of the love of Paris for Helen, and vice versa, war broke out between Greece and Troy, the Trojan War.

Why did Odysseus pretend to go mad?

Odysseus was bound by the oath he had sworn, like all the other suitors of Helen, that he would come to the assistance of whoever married her (which was Menelaus) if he was in trouble. Menelaus desperately needed all the help he could get to retrieve his wife from the Trojans, Paris in particular. The guys strapped on their bronze armor ready to go to war with Troy but where was Odysseus? He wasn’t so keen. An oracle said that if he went off to war, he wouldn’t get back for 20 years. Odysseus didn’t want to leave his wife and newly-born baby Telemachus for so long. He pretended to lose his marbles. The other warriors found him stripped to the waist ploughing a field with a donkey and an ox, planting salt instead of seeds. They thought he really had gone bonkers. Palamedes smelled a rat, and to test Odysseus they put his own baby right in the path of the plough. Odysseus swerved away at the last moment, proving that he was sane after all, and so he departed with the others to do battle at Troy.

The Sacrifice of Iphigenia

Artemis, the Goddess of Hunting, was angry with Agamemnon for killing a deer in a sacred grove and bragging what a great hunter he was. So when the Greek fleet was assembled ready to sail from the port of Aulis, she stopped the wind and the ships remained in the harbor. Without wind they couldn’t sail. Years passed and the ships rotted at their moorings. Agamemnon was told by a soothsayer that to appease Artemis he must sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia. Her mother Clytemnestra was deceived into thinking that if she brought her daughter to Aulis she would marry Achilles, and mother and daughter arrived in Aulis. There were arguments and scuffles between Agamemnon and Clytemnestra when the truth got out. Achilles and Clytemnestra tried to prevent it but in the end Iphigenia decided to die honorably. She willingly allowed herself to be sacrificed at the altar of the temple. Whereupon a wind sprang up and the ships set off for Troy. According to another version with a happy ending, at the last moment Iphigenia was saved and a deer is sacrificed in her place.

The plague of mice

When the Teucrians arrived on the coast of Asia Minor from Crete, an oracle said they should settle on the spot where the earth-born attacked them. They had camped in a verdant valley where there was a plentiful supply of fresh water when, that night, a great multitude of field-mice swarmed out of the ground and nibbled away all the leather in their weapons and equipment. The Teucrians remained in this place, called Chryse, and there built a temple to Apollo Smintheus, the “Mouse God”.

During the siege of Troy, the Greeks looted the surrounding countryside to replenish their supplies and take anything valuable as souvenirs. One such “prize of war” was Chryseis, the daughter of the priest at the shrine to Apollo at Chryse, taken by Agamemnon. The priest went to Agamemnon and pleaded for the freedom of his precious daughter. Agamemnon refused and showed him the door. The priest at Chryse prayed to Apollo to punish the king and avenge this indignity. Apollo fired plague-bearing arrows among the Greek troops for 9 days. A great pestilence swept through the army camp. Achilles investigated the cause together with their resident soothsayer and the finger of blame pointed at Agamemnon, who was forced to give back Chryseis and make offerings to Apollo. Agamemnon then took Achilles’ concubine Briseis in return and “Achilles” went into a great sulk. (The temple to Apollo Smintheus” - the “Mouse God” - is at Gulpinar between Assos and Alexandria Troas. Excavations there have been ongoing since 1980.)

What was so tragic about Cassandra?

Cassandra was the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba. She was so beautiful that Apollo took an interest in her and promised to give her the gift of prophecy if they would become lovers. At his temple, snakes licked her ears so that she could hear the future. After accepting the proposal, Cassandra changed her mind, she didn’t fancy a fling with Apollo after all. Apollo wasn’t pleased and laid a curse on her, that nobody would believe her prophecies. And so it came about. Although she foresaw the downfall of Troy, warned them about the Wooden Horse, and other things, nobody took any notice. She was later killed by Agamemnon’s wife and her lover after Agamemnon took her to Mycenae as a concubine.

The armor of Achilles

The armor of Achilles was made by Hephaestus, the blacksmith to the gods. During the war at Troy, Patroclus borrowed the armor to give the impression to the Trojans that Achilles was fighting on the battlefield (which he wasn’t, he was sulking in his tent). Patroclus met Hector, who killed him. Hector took the armor and wore it in his duel with Achilles. Hector lost the duel and Achilles took it back. After Achilles was killed by Paris, Odysseus and Telamonian Ajax both wanted the armor. They competed by giving speeches about who most deserved it, who was the bravest warrior after Achilles, in front of some Trojan prisoners. The prisoners decided in favor of Odysseus. Ajax was a sore loser. He cursed Odysseus, which annoyed Athena. She made Ajax so crazy with grief and anguish that he started killing sheep, thinking they were his comrades. When he woke from this madness and realized what he had done, he killed himself and the armor was eventually given to the son of Achilles, Neoptolemus.

What happened to Agamemnon after the Trojan War?

When Agamemnon returned home to Mycenae with the concubine he had captured in Troy, Cassandra, trouble was waiting. His wife Clytemnestra had not forgotten how he allowed their daughter Iphigenia to be sacrificed in order to let the wind blow for the Greek fleet to sail to Troy. Meanwhile, she had taken a lover, Aegisthus, and they plotted Agamemnon’s death. Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon while he was having a bath, and Cassandra was also killed.

Odysseus and the twelve suitors

Odysseus was away from home for a very long time indeed. After the Trojan War was over he set sail home but on the way encountered Cyclops, lotus flowers, sacred oxen, sirens and had sundry other adventures, often lucky to escape with his life. Eventually he was shipwrecked in the country of the Phaeacians who helped him get back to Ithaca, his own kingdom, secretly at night. Odysseus had been absent from home for so long that some of the local boys began courting his wife Penelope. Penelope only wanted her husband back and was not pleased with this unwelcome attention. As a delaying tactic, she declared that she would marry one of them when she had finishing weaving a shroud for Laertes. She unraveled the shroud every night and so it was never finished. Discovering her trick, the suitors demanded that she marry one of them, and they hung around the palace gardens eating, drinking and making a nuisance of themselves. Odysseus heard that all was not well at his palace. To see for himself, he visited the palace disguised as a vagrant, just in time for an archery contest that Penelope had devised. She announced she would marry whoever could bend the bow of Odysseus and shoot an arrow through 12 arrowheads. None of the suitors were up to the task. The beggar stepped up, bent the bow and shot the arrow. Having won the contest, Odysseus pulled out more arrows and shot the 12 suitors, killing them all. Only then did he reveal his true identity to Penelope, who was very happy to have her husband back at last!

Aeneas and the founding of Rome

Aeneas was the son of Anchises and Aphrodite and the leader of the Dardanians, allies of the Trojans. Though respected and brave enough he was not quite as mighty as some of the others and had to be rescued twice in the middle of battle by his mother. The night that Troy fell, Aeneas fought off the Greeks until the gods told him to flee. Unable to save his wife, who had become separated in the general melee, he took his father and son, and statues of household gods, and managed to escape. His fate was to become king of the Trojan people, what was left of them.

He gathered up a band of Trojan refugees and Apollo told Aeneas to go to the land of his ancestors and build a city. That his true destination was Italy only became apparent later. The survivors built a fleet of ships and sailed around the Mediterranean on a grand tour stopping at Thrace, Delos, Crete, Strophades, Leucata, Sicily, Carthage and other islands. They had good days (Queen Dido of Carthage just adored Aeneas) and bad days (attacked by harpies who stole their packed lunches, being shipwrecked, sailing by Mount Etna as it erupted, etc. etc.) Eventually, Aeneas landed on the Italian peninsula and founded a city, perhaps Lavinium. From this humble beginning, a descendant of Aeneas gave birth to Romulus and Remus, who later argued. Romulus killed Remus, and the city of Rome was founded on 21 April 753 BC, thus fulfilling the prophecy that Aeneas was destined to found the race that would become the Roman people. The interesting thing is that Italy was the original home of Dardanus. History had come full circle.

Who were the Locris Maidens?

During the fall of Troy, Ajax the Locrian violated Cassandra in the Temple of Athena. This sacrilege angered the gods who decreed that the people of Locris had to send two unmarried women to serve in the Temple of Athena at Ilion for a thousand years. The Locris maidens would live there until they died. This custom continued for hundreds of years. Whenever one of the maidens died, another had to be sent to replace her, at night. If the maiden was seen and caught on the way to the temple, the people of Troy had the right to kill her, and some were slain in this way. After a thousand years had passed, Locris sent no maidens to Troy and their city was destroyed. The annual tribute ended.

Tombs of the Greek Heroes

When you are at Troy and look towards the sea, you can see three tumuli along Sigeum Ridge. In ancient times these were believed to be the Tomb of Achilles, the Tomb of Patroclus, and the Tomb of Ajax. Nowadays they are called Kesik Tepe (Cut-away Hill), Kum Tepe (Sand Hill) and Sivri Tepe (Pointed Hill). The archaeologists have found no human remains or other form of identification inside but do admit that they were man-made or enhanced natural features. The most important one is the Tomb of Achilles, which is probably the largest hill, Kesik Tepe. The Greeks from Lesbos who established Troy VIII built a settlement called Achilleum somewhere around here. A long time had passed between the Trojan War and Greek colonization in the Archaic Age; even in ancient times they were unsure of the true locations of the tombs.

The fact that there is supposed to be a Tomb of Patroclus is interesting because the Iliad tells us that Achilles dragged the dead body of Hector around it for 12 days, and after Achilles himself died, he was buried together with Patroclus in a golden urn. So there should only be one tomb.

Alexander the Great was descended from Hercules (and Neoptolemus and Andromache and King Priam) so it was only right and proper that soon after landing on Asian soil to do battle with the Persians in 334 BC, he should visit Troy and pay homage to his ancestors. As a child Alexander knew the Iliad by heart and always slept with a copy of the book (and a sword) under his pillow. Achilles was his greatest hero. To pay his respects, Alexander stripped down to the buff, anointed himself with oil, and ran naked around the tomb with his companions then placed a garland on top. Putting his clothes back on, he visited the Temple of Athena and there donated his armor, being given in return some heroic relics including the five-layered shield of Achilles.

The antics of Alexander pale compared to those of the Roman emperor Caracalla, who visited in 214 AD. He also placed bouquets of flowers on the tomb of Achilles, then looked around for someone to grieve for, as Achilles had grieved for Patroclus. His eye alighted on Festus, the emperor’s favorite freeman whose duty was to keep his diary up to date. Festus was mysteriously poisoned. Caracalla had a huge funeral mound built for him and great was the wailing for his death. This mound became the tomb now known as Uvecik (Ujek) Tepe, the highest man-made hill, to the south of Sigeum Ridge.

The Tomb of Antilochus is also reputed to be along the Sigeum Ridge and the Tomb of Protesilaus (the first Greek to step ashore) on the Thracian Chersonese opposite, better known as the Gallipoli Peninsula.

Hero and Leander

Hero was a priestess of Aphrodite who lived alone in a tall tower at Sestos on the shores of the Dardanelles. One summer there was a great festival at the Temple of Aphrodite and many people came from all around, including Leander, a young man from Abydos on the other side of the Dardanelles. Hero and Leander fell deeply in love. Because her life was devoted to serving Aphrodite at the temple, she had to remain a virgin and they could not marry. She therefore lit a lamp at the top of the tower every night to guide Leander as he valiantly swam across to enjoy her warm embrace. He then swam back before the sun came up. And so it went on. Every night. No easy feat, considering the strong currents. One night as winter was setting in, he set out again but a storm blew up and extinguished Hero’s torch. He lost his way in the tempestuous waves and drowned. She waited all night and in the morning was stricken with grief to see his lifeless body washed up on the shore below the tower. Unable to contemplate life without him, she threw herself off the tower to join him in the afterlife. Some time later, to emulate the exploits of Leander, the hopelessly romantic and handsome Lord Byron (1788-1824) also swam across the Dardanelles (one-way only) in 1810 and wrote a poem about it, called “The Bride of Abydos”.