PART ONE: THE ORIGINS OF THE TROJAN WAR The city of Troy had several mythical founders and kings, including Teucer, Dardanus, Tros, Ilus and Assaracus. The most widely accepted story makes Ilus the actual founder, and from him the city took the name it was best-known by in ancient times, Ilium. In an episode similar to the founding of Thebes, Ilus was given a cow and told to found a city where it first lay down. As instructed, he followed the animal, and on the land where it rested drew up the boundaries of his city. He then received an additional sign from the gods, a legless wooden statue called the Palladium, which dropped from the heavens with the message that it should be carefully guarded as it 'brought empire'. Some say it was a statue of Athene's friend Pallas, but most believe it was of Athene herself and that this statue was to make Troy a great city. Laomedon's Troy Ilus was succeeded by his son Laomedon, who built great walls around his city with the help of a mortal, Aeacus, and the two gods Poseidon and Apollo. These two were forced by Zeus to do a year's hard labour for their part in the Great Conspirac y and were understandably angry when the king would not give them the wages he had promised. When Heracles rescued Laomedon's daughter, the princess Hesione who had, like Andromeda, been chained to a rock as a sacrifice to a sea monster, this time sent by Poseidon, Laomedon again retreated behind his marvellous walls and refused to honour his promise to reward the hero (see Chapter 6, the account of the ninth labour of Heracles). Heracles then led an expedition against the city, breaching the western wall which had been built by the mortal Aeacus. He killed Laomedon and all his sons except the infant Podarces, whom he renamed Priam. Modern excavations have actually revealed weaker stonework on the western walls of Troy, suggesting that a genuine difference in construction led to the myth that the two gods built the other walls. Mythical reasons behind the Trojan War During Priam's lifetime Troy reached its greatest prosperity, but when he was a very old man it was totally destroyed after a ten-year siege by warriors from Greece. Some say Zeus himselfcaused the Trojan War to thin out the human race, which was threatening to overpopula te the earth. Others think he caused it to make the whole world aware of the beauty of his daughter Helen, or to give her immortal fame as the cause of a war between West and East. Or was it to give the second generation of heroes a chance to achieve fame, since all the monsters on earth had been slain by the first generation? The Romans were to ascribe the fall of Troy to Fate, which had decided the survivors from Troy should make their way to Italy and begin the long process of creating the great empire ofRome. THE TROJAN WAR
