Hello guys it's been a while, so let's get into our daily routine and continue with The Trojan War.

During the previous episode we have seen how the Trojan war started, who were involved and the whole mythology behind it. When we talk about Ancient Greek history and in general Ancient history everything has to do with gods so if you read my previous post you will see why this whole war started, what Zeus did as well as Aphrodite!

Aulis Port 

So because of a storm that scatter all the forces a fleet of more than one thousand ships gathered once more in Aulis. Then the wind ceased and the prophet Calchas said that it was because the goddess Artemis was mad at Agamemnon as he had hunted and killed a sacred deer of her's. So what they had to do for the wind to blow again was to make a sacrifice to Artemis but that sacrifice had to be Agamemnon's daughter Iphigenia. Agamemnon refused but the other commanders made him do it but then the mythology behind it isn't clear enough. Some say he did it, other say he didn't and he placed an animal in her spot and there are even some ''rumors'' that Artemis took a pity of her and took her into one of her temples. 

Force

There isn't so much known about the exact number as everyone has different opinions in this but the Greeks considered to have around 70.000-130.000 soldiers and had allies across all Greece including Crete,Boeotia, Ithaca (land of Odysseus), Peloponnese,Macedonia, the islands and Achilles with his myrmidons. On the other hand Troy had it's allies too like lycians,Dardanians, Thracians, Ciconians and a lot more. In a way this battle can be described for that era as a world war as those 2 countries were superpowers at that time and as you saw many smaller countries and nation involved in it.

War & Fights

Before the whole thing started for good they landed on Tenedos which was ruled by Tenes son of Apollo. Achilles killed him even though according to his mom he shouldn't have done that and a party consisting of Odysseus and some others went to king Priam to ask for a final time Helen without and bloodshed. The answers was no and battle started.

The battles that took place were so fierce and many people died. Hector a prince of troy and one of the most skilled warriors they had ( something like Achilles for Greeks) managed to kill a lot of people as well as some commanders and kings like Protesilaus. During the fighting Achaeans proved to be stronger and lead the troy soldiers to run back and hide behind their amazing walls that according to the mythology Poseidon and Apollo built them and the war continued there.

So the next years what happened was that Achilles had besieged Troy but that was only from the outside part and the sea. This is an important mention as Troy could maintain their relationships with their allies and trading that were living in the inner land. At the same time Achilles and Ajax (not the team :P ) manage to conquer a lot of lands and Troy allies that weren't in the inner land and made Troy weaker. In the meantime more and more soldier came from Greece to increase the force in troy. Still they didn't manage to get inside the walls even with that power.

Achilles Fury   

So because of some things Agamemnon did that caused a plague to the Achaean army, he gave back a woman he had steal and then stole Achilles concubine. That made Achilles so mad that he said we didn't wanted to take part in the war anymore and even told his mother to ask zeus to help Troy win the battles over Achaeans. Once again after furious battles Troy seems to be in control and even managed to burn all the Greek ships down.  They asked Achilles to help but he declined and then his close friend Patroclus asked him to take his armor and wear it in order to go and fight and lift the spirit of the army.

That what's happened and the Achaeans took the control again but not for long. Hector appeared. challenged Patroclus and killed him taking Achilles armor with him as a trophy. As you can guessed Achilles was really mad and furious as his close friend died. He then killed a lot of Trojans and almost everyone stood in his way including demigods and even he hurt gods and challenge Hector to a battle. Of course he won over and dragged the dead body of Hector with his chariot along the way.

Because Achilles killed a lot of people and many of them were children of gods, they decided that it was his time. So with their guidance and more particularly Apollo's, Paris shoot a poisonous arrow in his heel ( the only spot that can damage him) and ended up killing him.

The End Of The 10 Years War

Philoctetes with the bow and arrow of Heracles killed Paris and Odysseus had a clever plan to go inside the walls of Troy. The plan was to create a giant wooden hollow horse in which they can hide inside it and give them to Trojan as a gift and a dedication to goddess Athena for safe journey back home. In the meantime the rest of the soldiers ''left'' and went back to Tenedos. While Trojans saw that the armies had left they took the horse inside and decided to keep and made celebrations.

Little did the Trojans know, Achaeans made a signal at midnight for the army to come back and the rest of the soldier that were inside the horse came out and start killing everyone. The scenery and what happened was levels above game of thrones, with a lot of blood,rapes and even throwing children through the walls.

After all that each commander and it's troop had to come back to his city and country were a new journey to some and a demise to other has just started. To this point i should say that Helen was supposed to be a ''fake statue'' made by the gods and the real Helen was in Egypt were Menelaus informed and went there to take her back.

The Truth

In the ancient times everyone believed that this war happened but they weren't that sure about the quantities of the soldiers and ships but later on the though it was just a myth. Heinrich Schliemann believing these myths found out Troy and some Mycenaean cities and in general many of the things that were written like cities, ports etc etc were found in the exact locations. If we wanna go a step further and seek the reality in why the war started i would say not because of Helen and the Gods but because Greeks wanted more fields to conquer and make their kingdom grow bigger and richer.

Thanks for reading it and next time i am gonna write about the adventures of Odysseus 

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sources
https://www.livescience.com/38191-ancient-troy.html
http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396584/obo-9780195396584-0212.xml
https://luwianstudies.org/the-trojan-war-as-a-mycenaean-counterattack/
https://books.google.gr/books?id=N5HDjtGwYjsC&pg=PA272&lpg=PA272&dq=trojan+war+studies&source=bl&ots=u0ZbWImOoh&sig=ybOxxq7rQVxFyD8-tOFO9S3VmzM&hl=el&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi5w9zxtarZAhXFxqQKHQz5BD8Q6AEIPDAB#v=onepage&q=trojan%20war%20studies&f=false
https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/The_Myths/Trojan_War/trojan_war.html