48 Fun Facts About Trojan War

Which goddess, uninvited to Peleus and Thetis's wedding, threw the apple 'to the fairest'?

Eris, goddess of strife: Hera, Athena and Aphrodite each claimed her apple, and the mortal chosen to judge between them was a Trojan prince, whose verdict set the war in motion.

In which modern country do the ruins of Troy lie?

Turkey: nine cities were built one on top of another on the same mound, and the legend drew visitors long before archaeology, with Alexander the Great stopping there on his way to conquer Asia.

Why was Paris raised as a shepherd on Mount Ida instead of in Troy?

A prophecy said he would destroy the city: his pregnant mother dreamed she gave birth to a burning torch, so the baby was left out on the mountain to die, and a herdsman raised him instead.

In the best-known version, how did Thetis try to make Achilles invulnerable?

By dipping him in the River Styx: she held him by the heel, so it stayed mortal. In an older telling she laid the baby in a fire each night to burn his mortality away, until his father caught her.

Which god fathered Helen, taking the form of a swan with Leda?

Zeus: Helen was said to have hatched from an egg, and one version makes her true mother the goddess Nemesis, with Leda only raising the girl as her own.

Why were Greece's kings bound to go to war when Helen was taken?

An oath sworn as her suitors: her stepfather feared the losers would turn on the winner, so every man swore to defend whoever was chosen, and that vow later marched them all to Troy.

From which Greek city, ruled by her husband Menelaus, did Paris carry off Helen?

Sparta: Menelaus had welcomed Paris as a guest, then sailed to Crete for a family funeral, leaving his wife to look after the visitor.

In one ancient version of the myth, what did the gods send to Troy in place of the real Helen?

A likeness made of clouds: in this telling, which Euripides put on stage, the real Helen sat out the war in Egypt, so the armies at Troy were fighting over a phantom.

How did the king of Ithaca try to dodge the war against Troy?

By pretending to be mad: in one telling he yoked a horse with an ox and ploughed away, giving up the act only when Palamedes laid his baby son in the plough's path.

How was Achilles unmasked while hiding as a girl on Skyros?

He seized a spear at a horn blast: Greek envoys had laid weapons among gifts of jewellery, then sounded a trumpet as if the palace were under attack, and only one 'girl' reached for arms.

How did King Cinyras cheat on his promise of fifty ships for the Greeks?

Most were models made of clay: he sent a single real ship, moulded the other forty-nine out of earth and set them afloat on the sea.

For how long did the Greeks besiege Troy before the city fell?

Ten years: the seer Calchas foretold it at Aulis after a serpent swallowed nine sparrows, a mother and her eight chicks, one bird for each year of fighting before the city fell.

Whose death in Achilles's borrowed armour drove Achilles back into the war?

Patroclus: he was told only to drive the Trojans from the ships and come back, but chased them to the city wall, where Hector killed him and stripped the armour.

Whom did Agamemnon have to sacrifice at Aulis to appease Artemis and free the becalmed fleet?

Iphigenia: she was lured to Aulis with the promise of marriage to Achilles, and in many versions Artemis snatched her from the altar at the last moment and left a deer in her place.

Which English playwright called Helen 'the face that launched a thousand ships'?

Christopher Marlowe: in Doctor Faustus the line greets a spirit conjured in Helen's shape, and it rounds down, since the ancient tallies of the Greek fleet run to more than a thousand.

Why was the keeper of Heracles's bow abandoned on Lemnos on the way to Troy?

He carried the bow and arrows of Heracles, and a prophecy later said Troy could not fall without them.

Why did the Greeks hesitate to land at Troy?

The first man ashore was fated to die: Protesilaus leapt anyway and was killed, and the gods were said to have pitied his grieving wife and let him come back from the dead to see her.

Which two gods built Troy's walls for King Laomedon, who then refused to pay them?

Poseidon and Apollo: cheated of their wages, they sent a sea monster and a plague, and when the king also cheated the hero who killed the monster, Heracles sacked Troy a generation before the famous war.

What were the soldiers Achilles led to Troy called?

The Myrmidons: they followed him so faithfully, even sitting out the war when he did, that 'myrmidon' entered English as a word for someone who carries out orders without question.

Achilles killed which Trojan prince because Troy would not fall if he reached the age of 20?

Troilus: Achilles lay in wait for the boy and killed him inside a sanctuary, and centuries later Chaucer and Shakespeare remade the doomed prince as the lover of Cressida.

Which Trojan princess foresaw the city's fall but was cursed never to be believed?

Cassandra: in the usual telling a god taught her prophecy to win her over, and when she then refused him he saw to it that no one would ever act on what she foretold.

How did the king of Ithaca take revenge on Palamedes for forcing him to war?

Framed him with a forged letter: in the usual telling it seemed to come from the Trojan king, gold was buried under Palamedes's tent to match it, and the army stoned an innocent man as a traitor.

Which captive woman did Agamemnon seize from Achilles, prompting him to quit the fighting?

Briseis: forced by a plague to hand back his own captive, Agamemnon seized her to save face, and the sulk that followed is the 'wrath of Achilles' that opens the Iliad.

Which Greek hero wounded the gods Aphrodite and Ares in battle with Athena's help?

Diomedes: Athena cleared the mist from his eyes so he could tell gods from men, then pushed his driver aside and rode beside him herself when he speared the god of war.

What did Achilles do with Hector's body after killing him?

Dragged it behind his chariot: he hauled it round his dead friend's tomb day after day, yet the gods kept the body unmarked until the dead man's father came to ransom it.

Which god guided King Priam to Achilles's tent to beg for Hector's body?

Hermes: disguised as a young man, he put the sentries to sleep, opened the gates of the camp and drove the old king's wagon through, then roused him in the night to slip away again.

Which Ethiopian king, son of the dawn goddess Eos, was killed by Achilles while fighting for Troy?

Memnon: Greek visitors to Egypt later gave his name to two colossal statues of a pharaoh that still stand near Luxor.

With what weapon did Paris kill Achilles?

An arrow: a god was said to have steered it, and the death had been foretold by Hector, who warned Achilles with his last breath that he would fall at Troy's Scaean Gate.

To whom were Achilles's arms awarded after his death, driving Ajax mad?

Odysseus: Ajax, who had carried the body out of the battle, was so crushed by the verdict that he slaughtered the army's livestock in a frenzy, taking the animals for his comrades, and then killed himself.

Which archer with Heracles's bow killed Paris?

Philoctetes: he brought Paris down with the hero's bow, and in the usual story the dying prince was refused help by Oenone, the wife he had left for Helen.

Which sacred statue did the Greeks steal from Troy because the city could not fall while it stayed?

The Palladium: a captured Trojan seer gave the secret away, so two Greeks crept into the city by night and carried off the image of Athena that was said to have fallen from heaven.

In Virgil's telling, what befell Laocoon after he warned Troy against the horse?

Sea serpents killed him and his sons: he had just hurled a spear into the horse's side, so the Trojans read his death as a god's punishment and hauled the horse into the city.

Which Greek spy signalled the fleet at Tenedos once the Trojans were drunk and asleep?

Sinon: he let the Trojans capture him and swore that the Greeks had given up and sailed away, then raised the fire signal that called the fleet back once the city slept.

Which warrior, the son of Achilles, killed King Priam at an altar during the sack of Troy?

Neoptolemus: a prophecy said the city could not be taken without him, so the Greeks fetched the boy from Skyros late in the war.

Why did Menelaus spare Helen when he found her in Troy?

Overcome by her beauty, he dropped his sword: he had stormed in to kill her, having just cut down her latest Trojan husband, and instead led her back to the ships as his wife.

What did the Greeks do to Hector's infant son Astyanax?

Threw him from the walls of Troy: his mother Andromache was then handed as a prize to the son of Achilles, the man who had killed her husband.

Which Trojan was spared for his piety and led survivors to Italy, becoming an ancestor of the Romans?

Aeneas: the piety that saved him was plain to see, as he walked out of the burning city with his aged father on his shoulders, a scene Virgil made the heart of Rome's national epic.

Why did Athena wreck the homebound ship of Ajax the Lesser?

He tore a suppliant from her temple: the woman was clinging to the goddess's own statue. He swam from the wreck to a rock and bragged that he had beaten the gods, so the sea god split the rock under him.

Who murdered Agamemnon on his return to Mycenae?

Clytemnestra and Aegisthus: she had taken her husband's cousin as a lover during the long war, and her own son Orestes later killed them both to avenge his father.

Troy's traditional fall date, 1184 BC, sits near the end of which age?

Bronze Age: the scholar Eratosthenes worked the date out centuries later, yet it sits close to a real burning of Troy and to the collapse that ended the palace kingdoms of Greece.

Which German archaeologist was convinced by Frank Calvert in 1868 that Troy lay at Hisarlik?

Heinrich Schliemann: the gold he dug up and hailed as King Priam's treasure turned out to be about a thousand years too old to have belonged to anyone in the Trojan War.

Which name in Hittite records do many scholars identify with Ilios, another name for Troy?

Wilusa: the link began with the sound, since early Greek 'Ilios' was once pronounced 'Wilios', and though it is widely accepted, scholars still do not count it as proven.

The Trojan hero Hector gave English the verb 'to hector', meaning what?

To bully: for centuries a 'Hector' in English meant a valiant warrior, until 1650s slang turned the name of Troy's noblest defender into a word for a blustering thug.

Which actor played Achilles in the 2004 film Troy?

Brad Pitt: Wolfgang Petersen's film rewrites the ending, killing Menelaus and Agamemnon at Troy, though in the ancient story both kings sail home.

How did Palamedes's father avenge him on the Greek fleet sailing home?

Lit false beacons: Nauplius set his fire on rocky Cape Caphereus during a storm, and crews steering for what looked like help were wrecked on the rocks.

What kind of being was Thetis, the mother of Achilles?

A sea nymph: in the best-known version two great gods courted her until a prophecy warned that her son would outdo his father, so they hurriedly married her off to a mortal.

In later tradition, what did the Cretan king Idomeneus sacrifice to keep a vow made in a storm?

His own son: he had promised the first living thing he met on landing, and the gods answered the killing with a plague, so his people drove him out of Crete.

Which French composer wrote the opera Les Troyens, about the fall of Troy and its aftermath?

Berlioz: he wrote his own libretto from Virgil and counted the five-act epic his greatest work, yet he never saw it staged whole, since only its last three acts were performed in his lifetime.