TROJAN WAR. A famous legendary war, generally placed about the beginning of the twelfth century ; undertaken by the Greeks for the recovery of Helen. wife of King Mene laus of Sparta, who had been carried off by Paris, son of the Trojan King. Priam. At the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, Paris had ad judged the golden apple thrown by Eris, and in scribed "For the Fairest," to Aphrodite, there by securing Helen by her favor and bringing down on the Trojans the lasting wrath of the slighted Hera and Athene. The expedition to avenge the injury to Menelaus was placed under the command of his brother. Agamemnon, King of Argos, and was joined by the Greek heroes, including Achilles, Patroclus, the two Ajaxes, Telmer. Nestor, Odysseus. Diomedes. and Ido meneus. They assembled at Aulis with 100. 000 men and 1186 ships and proceeded to Troy, where their demand for the return of Helen was refused. The siege was then begun. It lasted ten years and terminated only by treachery, when the Greek warriors were introduced into the city in the interior of a great wooden horse. The sack and burning of Troy follow, with the escape of ,Eneas, whose progeny were to be the founders of Rome.
The story of the war is told in various classical epic poems, of which the Iliad is the most fa mous. It terminates with the death of Ilector, the principal hero of the Trojans. The Little Iliad, ascribed to Lesches of Lesbos, was com posed about n.c. M. In four books it gave the story of the contest of Odysseus and Ajax, son of Telamon, for the armor of Achilles, the deaths of Ajax. Paris. and Eurypylus, the stealing of the Palladium, and the eonstruetion of the wooden horse. At this point the legend was taken up by the Mott Persis or Nock of Troy, by Aretinus, in two books, ending with the escape of Polyxena at the tomb of Achilles. The Nostoi (Returns), attributed to Agias of Tro2zen, in five books, told of the wanderings of Menelaus, Calchas, and Neoptolianns, end the murder of Agamemnon. The Tc/cgonia, by Eugammon of
Cyrene, related various adventures of Odysseus after the slaying of the suitors, his death at the hands of his son Telegouus, and the latter's marriage to Penelope.
The legendary history of Troy before the Tro jan War, like other Greek myths, varied much in details. It was said that the place owed its name to Iles, sou of Tros, son of Dant:inns. tts walls were built by Poseidon for Laomedon, who, however, cheated the god of his promised reward. Hercules rescued llesione, the daughter of Lao medon, from the sea-monster to which she had been exposed, but was likewise cheated by the King, whereupon he and Telamon attacked and captured the city.
The Trojan legend was very popular in the ,Biddle Ages, and formed, with the Charlemagne story and the Arthurian traditions, one of the three great divisions into which the work of the French romance-writers falls. Celtic legends tell of a certain Brutus who, driven from Troy, founded Brutannia or Britannia. Geoffrey of Monmouth calls him a great-grandson of Eneas. The spread of the legend is due mainly to Be noit de Sainte-More. The gist of the Iliad was used in the Latin of Dictys of Crete and by Dares the Phrygian. Benoit knew both Dictys and Dares, but preferred the drier account of the latter, in which the people of the West were re ported to descend from the Trojans. This was used about 1200 by Herbart von Fritzlar, and about 1250 by Konrad von Wiirzburg; before 1288 Guido della Colonna had recast it in Latin prose. Benoit's version may also be traced in Boeeaceio's Filostrato (1344). This is the main source of Chaucer's Troylus and Cryseyde (e. 1369). as that is of Shakespeare's play. Consult: Danger, Die Nape root trojanischen Kricge in den Bearbeitungen des llittelalters (Dresden, 1869) ; Saintsbury, The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory (London, 1897).