Many portions of the Trojan War epics are difficult to read historically. Virgil’s aim was in part to give Rome’s first imperial dynasty an origin story as impressive as that of the Greeks. It follows a group of Trojans led by the hero Aeneas who leave their destroyed city to travel to Carthage before founding the city of Rome. the Roman poet Virgil composed the “Aeneid,” the third great classical epic inspired by the Trojan War. They crossed the Aegean Sea to Asia Minor to lay siege to Troy and demand Helen’s return by Priam, the Trojan king. Agamemnon was joined by the Greek heroes Achilles, Odysseus, Nestor and Ajax, and accompanied by a fleet of more than a thousand ships from throughout the Hellenic world. Helen’s jilted husband Menelaus convinced his brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, to lead an expedition to retrieve her.
Since the 19th-century rediscovery of the site of Troy in what is now western Turkey, archaeologists have uncovered increasing evidence of a kingdom that peaked and may have been destroyed around 1,180 B.C.-perhaps forming the basis for the tales recounted by Homer some 400 years later in the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey.” The Narrative of the Trojan WarĪccording to classical sources, the war began after the abduction (or elopement) of Queen Helen of Sparta by the Trojan prince Paris. The story of the Trojan War-the Bronze Age conflict between the kingdoms of Troy and Mycenaean Greece–straddles the history and mythology of ancient Greece and inspired the greatest writers of antiquity, from Homer, Herodotus and Sophocles to Virgil.