The legend of the Trojan War comes from a number of sources besides Homer. The Iliad deals with the central part of the tale, from the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles to Hector's funeral. This is the heart of the story, but the legend as a whole has a unity of its own. Schliemann's excavations at Troy and subsequent investigations make it somewhat likely that a siege may have taken place in the Mycenaean period. But regardless of actual historical fact and despite discrepancies in various treatments of the legend this story has a reality and a coherence that seem remarkable.
The unity lies in the interweaving of the divine and the human. On a purely human level the tale makes sense. Thus, Paris, a lecherous prince, abducts Helen. The Greeks are bound by honor to seek revenge on both Paris and the city that harbors him. The war lasts ten years, and the same honor that brought the Greeks occasions internecine fights of great bitterness. Both sides fight valiantly, but fighting fails to bring Troy low. The Greeks turn to oracles, which produce nothing. Finally, they turn to their own wits and work out a stratagem that wins the war.
On the divine level the story makes equal sense. Hera and Athena hate Paris for preferring Aphrodite, and they hate the city that bred him. Being goddesses of power and bravery, they aid the Greeks in every possible way, even in giving them the plan that brings Troy down. But everything that happened was known beforehand. The war was fated before Paris was born. Some principle of Necessity wrote the whole scenario.
The human and the divine interact through dreams, oracles, and inspiration in battle. And often the gods themselves put in a personal appearance to aid their favorites. Dreams and oracles reveal the will of the gods, but inspired fighting shows the gods' favor. Of course that favor is rather precarious, yet by means of it a hero wins the only thing in life worth winning—fame, glory in posterity. The Greeks looked back wistfully to the period of the Trojan War and earlier as an age of true greatness.
One might think that a race which values courage in battle to the degree the Greeks did would be blind to the squalor of war. But this legend shows nothing of the kind. Ruthless slaughter, meanness and trickery, the degradation of death—these are set forth without mitigation in a realistic light. Hector and Achilles are basically tragic figures, for they know the terrible doom that must fall on them, but they act out their destinies in battle with valor.
An outstanding incident in this tale comes as Hector faces Achilles. Achilles has nothing to lose, while Hector bears the weight of Troy on his shoulders. Seeing that Achilles is full of divine power, Hector weakens and runs even though he is a man of great courage. Athena has to trick him into making a stand, and Achilles slays him. Dying, Hector begs his killer to allow his parents to ransom his body, and the last thing he hears is Achilles' gloating refusal. But Achilles has set his own doom in motion. This episode prefigures the fall of Troy in a heart-rending way. The foremost hero of Troy has been slain by the foremost hero of Greece, who must shortly die in turn. Human choice and divine inevitability are interwoven here in tragic terms. But the entire legend of the Trojan War bears that same tragic stamp.
