This point in the story is where the Iliad ends. Hector is dead, but the war goes on. With the help of Achilles, the Greeks defeat both the Amazons female warriors led by their queen Penthesilea and the Ethiopians under King Memnon. But Achilles knows that he is fated to die young, for his divine mother once foretold that he would have a short life if he stayed to fight at Troy. It is Paris, the Trojan prince whose abduction of Helen started the war, who kills Achilles.
The Greeks finally win the war by an ingenious piece of deception dreamed up by the hero and king of Ithaca, Odysseus — famous for his cunning. They build a huge wooden horse and leave it outside the gates of Troy, as an offering to the gods, while they pretend to give up battle and sail away.
Secretly, though, they have assembled their best warriors inside. The Trojans fall for the trick, bring the horse into the city and celebrate their victory. But when night falls, the hidden Greeks creep out and open the gates to the rest of the army, which has sailed silently back to Troy.
Troy has fallen. After the fall of Troy, the surviving heroes and their troops have little chance to enjoy their victory. The gods are angry because many Greeks committed sacrilegious atrocities during the sacking of Troy. Few Greeks reach their homes easily, or live to enjoy their return. He is forced to travel to the furthest reaches of the Mediterranean Sea, tormented by the sea god Poseidon. He is waylaid by storms, shipwreck and a colourful crowd of strange beings and treacherous people, from the one-eyed giant Cyclops to the Sirens with their mesmerising song.
Odysseus finally reaches his homeland, only to find his house besieged by suitors for the hand of his wife who had thought he would not survive his voyage. Yet after 10 years at sea, Odysseus also overcomes this final challenge.
He kills the suitors and is reunited with his faithful wife, Penelope. With Odysseus home at last, the events of the Trojan War come to a close. Whether Greek or Trojan, victorious or defeated, the heroes and heroines of the story have enthralled audiences from antiquity to today.
Buy the book accompanying the exhibition here. Map Data. Terms of Use. Report a map error. Exhibitions and events The myth of the Trojan War You may have heard of the city of Troy, the Trojan War, the wooden horse, and Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world. But there's much more to the ancient myth of Troy. Determined to get Helen back and punish the Trojans, Agamemnon and his brother marched a mighty army against Troy, and eventually succeeded in bringing its people to their knees.
Helen of Troy, portrayed here in a painting by Edward Burne-Jones, has fascinated artists through the centuries Credit: Trustees of the British Museum. In antiquity, even respected historians were willing to believe that this war actually happened. Modern scholars, however, have tended to be more sceptical.
Did the Trojan War happen at all? Greek vases, Roman frescoes, and more contemporary works of art depicting stories inspired by Troy are exhibited alongside archaeological artefacts dating from the Late Bronze Age.
What emerges most palpably from the exhibition is how eager people have been through history to find some truth in the story of the Trojan War. The Romans went so far as to present themselves as the descendants of the surviving Trojans. In his poem, the Aeneid , Virgil described how the hero Aeneas escaped the burning citadel with a group of followers after the Greeks entered in their wooden horse. Aeneas and his men left to found a new home in Italy. The grim realities of battle are described so unflinchingly in the Iliad that it is hard to believe they were not based on observation.
Troy, too, is portrayed in such vivid colour in the epic that a reader cannot help but to be transported to its magnificent walls. Told of a possible location for the city, at Hisarlik on the west coast of modern Turkey, Schliemann began to dig, and uncovered a large number of ancient treasures, many of which are now on display at the British Museum.
Although he initially attributed many finds to the Late Bronze Age — the period in which Homer set the Trojan War — when they were in fact centuries older, he had excavated the correct location. The first open engagement in the war begins, in which, under the protection of Athena, Diomedes performs miracles of bravery and wounds even Aphrodite and Ares. Diomedes and the Lycian Glaucus are on the verge of fighting, when they recognize one another as hereditary guest-friends and stop their duel, a marker of how important is the concept of hospitality XENIA, in Greek.
The day ends with an indecisive duel between Hector and Ajax son of Telamon. They call a truce to bury their dead, and the Greeks, acting on the advice of Nestor, surround their camp with a wall and trench. When the fighting begins again, Zeus forbids the gods to take part in it, and ordains that the battle shall end with the defeat of the Greeks.
On the following night Agamemnon already begins to think about fleeing, but Nestor advises reconciliation with Achilles. Agamemnon sends an embassy, including Odysseus, to make amends with Achilles. The efforts of ambassadors are, however, fruitless. Then Odysseus and Diomedes go out on a night-time reconnaissance mission, kill many Trojans, and capture a Trojan spy.
On the succeeding day Agamemnon's bravery drives the Trojans back to the walls of the town; but he himself, Diomedes, Odysseus, and other heroes leave the battle wounded, and the Greeks retire behind the camp walls. The Trojans advance and attack the Greek walls.
The opposition of the Greeks is brave; but Hector breaks the rough gate with a rock, and the stream of enemies pours itself unimpeded into the camp. Once more the Greek heroes who are still capable of taking part in the fight, especially the two Ajaxes and Idomeneus, succeed with the help of Poseidon in repelling the Trojans, while Telamonian Ajax dashes Hector to the ground with a stone; but the latter soon reappears on the battlefield with fresh strength granted to him by Apollo at the command of Zeus.
Poseidon is obliged to leave the Greeks to their fate; they retire again to the ships, which Ajax in vain defends. The Trojans advance still further to where they are able to begin torching the Greek ships. At this point, Achilles allows his friend Patroclus to borrow his armour and enter the battle with their contingent of soldiers to help the distressed Greeks.
Supposing it to be Achilles himself, the Trojans in terror flee from the camp before Patroclus, who pursues them to the town, and lays low vast numbers of the enemy, including the brave Sarpedon, whose corpse is only rescued from the Greeks after a severe fight. At last Patroclus himself is slain by Hector with the help of Apollo; Achilles' arms are lost, and even the corpse is with difficulty saved.
And now Achilles repents of his anger, reconciles himself to Agamemnon, and on the following day, furnished with new and splendid armour by Hephaestus at the request of Thetis, avenges the death of his friend on countless Trojans and finally on Hector himself. The Iliad concludes with the burial of Patroclus and the funeral games established in his honor, the restoration of Hector's corpse to Priam, and the burial of Hector, for which Achilles allows an armistice of eleven days.
Immediately after the death of Hector the later legends bring the Amazons to the help of the Trojans, and their queen Penthesilea is slain by Achilles. Then appears Memnon at the head of an Ethiopian contingent. He slays Antilochus son of Nestor, but is himself slain by Achilles. And now comes the fulfillment of the oracle given to Agamemnon at Delphi; for at a sacrificial banquet a violent quarrel arises between Achilles and Odysseus, the latter declaring craft and not valour to be the only means of capturing Troy.
Soon after, in an attempt to force a way into the hostile town through the Scaean gate, Achilles falls, slain by the arrow of Paris, directed by the god.
After his burial, Thetis offers the arms of her son as a prize for the bravest of the Greek heroes, which provokes a fight among the Greeks for the title and the arms.
Odysseus wins, and his main competition, the Telamonian Ajax, kills himself. Odysseus captures Helenus, son of Priam, who advises the Greeks that Troy could not be conquered without the arrows of Heracles and the presence of someone related to Achilles.
They fetch Philoctetes, the heir of Heracles, whom the Greeks had abandoned and left for dead on the island of Lemnos, and Neoptolemus, the young son of Achilles, who had been brought up on Seyros.
The latter, a worthy son of his father, slays the last ally of the Trojans, Eurypylus, the brave son of Telephus; and Philoctetes, with one of the arrows of Heracles, kills Paris.
0コメント