Greek TROIA, also called ILIOS, OR ILION, Latin TROIA, TROJA, OR ILIUM, was an ancient city in northwestern Anatolia that holds an enduring place in both literature and archaeology. The legend of the Trojan War is the most notable theme from ancient Greek literature and forms the basis of Homer's Iliad.
Ancient Troy commanded a strategic point at the southern entrance to the Dardanelles (Hellespont), a narrow strait linking the Black Sea with the Aegean Sea via the Sea of Marmara. The city also commanded a land route that ran north along the west Anatolian coast and crossed the narrowest point of the Dardanelles to the European shore. Troy probably used its site astride these two lines of communication to exact tolls from trading vessels and other travelers using them. This practice probably accounted for the wealth of ancient Troy; it may also have been the Greeks' actual motive in waging war against the city, which chronically interfered with their trade through the Dardanelles.
The Troad (Greek Troias; "Land of Troy") is the district formed by the northwestern projection of Asia Minor into the Aegean Sea. The present-day ruins of Troy itself occupy the western end of a low descending ridge in the extreme northwest corner of the Troad. Less than 4 miles (6 km) to the west, across the plain of the Scamander River, is the Aegean Sea, and toward the north are the narrows of the Dardanelles.
The Trojan War.
The classical legends of the Trojan War developed continuously throughout Greek and Latin literature. In Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the earliest literary evidence available, the chief stories have already taken shape, and individual themes were elaborated later, especially in Greek drama. The story of the Trojan origin, through Aeneas, of Rome helped to inspire Roman interest; book ii of Virgil's Aeneid contains the best-known account of the sack of Troy. Finally there are the pseudo-chronicles that go under the names of Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius.
The Trojan War fought between the Greeks and Troy originated in the following manner. King Priam of Troy was wealthy and powerful; by his wife Hecuba and by concubines he had 50 sons and 12 daughters. But his son Paris was invited to judge which of the goddesses Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena was entitled to receive the golden apple marked by the goddess Eris (Discord) "for the most beautiful." Aphrodite promised Paris the most beautiful woman in the world: he therefore awarded her the apple and went to Greece, where he won the love of, and eloped with, Helen, wife of Menelaus, the king of Sparta.
To recover Helen, the Greeks launched a great expedition under the overall command of Menelaus' brother, Agamemnon, king of Argos or Mycenae. The Trojans refused to return Helen. The Greeks sacked small towns in or near the Troad, but Troy, assisted by allies from Asia Minor and Thrace, withstood a Greek siege for 10 years. The gods also took sides, notably Hera, Athena, and Poseidon for the Greeks, and Aphrodite (who had a son, Aeneas, by the Trojan Anchises, grandson of Assaracus), Apollo, and Ares for the Trojans. The Iliad, which is set in the 10th year of the war, tells of the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles, who was the finest Greek warrior, and the consequent deaths in battle of (among others) Achilles' friend Patroclus and Priam's eldest son, Hector.
After Hector's death the Trojans were joined by two exotic allies, Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, and Memnon, king of the Ethiopians and son of the dawn-goddess Eos. Achilles killed both of these, but Paris then managed to kill Achilles with an arrow. Before they could take Troy, the Greeks had to steal from the citadel the wooden image of Pallas Athena (the Palladium) and fetch the arrows of Heracles and the sick archer Philoctetes from Lemnos and Achilles' son Neoptolemus (Pyrrhus) from Skyros; Odysseus and Diomedes achieved all these. Finally, with Athena's help, Epeius built a huge wooden horse. Several Greek warriors hid inside it; the rest of the Greek army sailed away to Tenedos, a nearby island, pretending to abandon the siege. Despite the warnings of Priam's daughter Cassandra, the Trojans were persuaded by Sinon, a Greek who feigned desertion, to take the horse inside the walls of Troy as an offering to Athena; the priest Laocoon, who tried to have the horse destroyed, was killed by sea serpents. At night the Greek fleet returned, and the Greeks from the horse opened the gates of Troy. In the total sack that followed, Priam and his remaining sons were slaughtered; the Trojan women passed into slavery in various cities of Greece. The adventurous homeward voyages of the Greek leaders were told in two epics, the Returns (Nostoi; lost) and Homer's Odyssey.
The few Trojan survivors included Aeneas, whose descendants continued to rule the Trojans; later tradition took Aeneas' Trojans to Italy as the ancestors of the Romans.
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