iliad

• The war lasted for ten years and ended with the Greeks' victory by using the Trojan Horse strategy.
• helenus - priest of apollo who advises priam on how to deal with the greeks
• priam - king of troy, father of hector
• thetis - mother of achilles
• Aphrodite is the goddess of love and beauty, and she supports the Trojans in the war.
• Hephaestus is the god of fire and metalworking, known for his skill in crafting weapons and armor.
• Athena is the goddess of wisdom and warfare, and she fights alongside the Greeks.
• agamemnon - brother of menelaus, leader of the greek army
• patroclus - close friend of achilles
• achilles - son of thetis and peleus, greatest warrior among the greeks
• menelaus - husband of helen, brother of agamemnon
• paris - prince of troy, lover of helen
• helen - wife of menelaus, abducted by paris
• the iliad
• agamemnon - king of mycenae, leader of the greek army
• diomedes - brave warrior from argos
• odysseus - cunning hero who leads the trojan horse into troy
• odysseus - king of icaria, cunning hero who outwits his enemies
• trojan war - ten year long conflict between the greeks and the trojans over helen's abduction
• The Trojan War, as described in Homer's The Iliad, begins after the Greeks have reached Troy, when Apollo sends the pestilence upon them.
• The Iliad does not mention the sacrifice of Iphigenia and makes only a dubious allusion to the Judgment of Paris.
• The Judgment of Paris, the cause of the Trojan War, was a dispute between three jealous goddesses: Aphrodite, Hera and Pallas Athena, over a golden apple marked "For the Fairest".
• Zeus, refusing to judge the dispute, advised the goddesses to go to Mount Ida, near Troy, where the young prince Paris, also called Alexander, was keeping his father's sheep.
• Paris, a weakling and something of a coward, as later events showed, chose Aphrodite's bribe, which promised the fairest woman in the world as his wife.
• The fairest woman in the world was Helen, the daughter of Zeus and Leda and the sister of Castor and Pollux.
• Helen's beauty was so renowned that not a young prince in Greece but wanted to marry her.
• There below, the Greek ships wait.
• Farewell, dear city, farewell, my country, where my children lived.
• When Helen's suitors assembled in her home to make a formal proposal for her hand, her reputed father, King Tyndareus, her mother's husband, was afraid to select one among them, fearing that the others would unite against him.
• Zeus looked at him sternly and told him he was as intolerable as his mother, and bade him cease his whining.
• Ares, unable to bear what he brought upon unnumbered multitudes of men, fled up to Zeus in Olympus and complained bitterly of Athena's violence.
• A brother of Hector's, wise in discerning the will of the gods, urged Hector to go with all speed to the city and tell the Queen, his mother, to offer to Athena the most beautiful robe she owned and pray her to have mercy.
• Zeus had by now remembered his promise to Thetis to avenge Achilles' wrong.
• Hector left Andromache and her handmaid, carrying the little boy, and went back to the battlefield.
• Achilles sat alone in his tent, brooding over his wrongs.
• With Ares gone, the Trojans were forced to fall back.
• Athena drove Ares' spear into his body.
• Hera urged her horses to Olympus and asked Zeus if she might drive Ares from the battlefield.
• Ares, the bloodstained murderous god of war, was fighting for Hector.
• The War-god bellowed as loud as ten thousand cry in battle, and at the awful sound trembling seized the whole host, Greeks and Trojans alike.