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Period: Feb 13, 1199 to Jul 19, 1250
The Trojan War
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. 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. -
Period: Jan 6, 1203 to Jul 31, 1244
The Trojan War
In the traditional accounts, Paris, son of the Trojan king, ran off with Helen, wife of Menelaus of Sparta, whose brother Agamemnon then led a Greek expedition against Troy. The ensuing war lasted 10 years, finally ending when the Greeks pretended to withdraw, leaving behind them a large wooden horse with a raiding party concealed inside. -
Period: Nov 5, 1209 to Oct 11, 1253
The Trojan War
After the Trojan defeat, the Greeks heroes slowly made their way home. Odysseus took 10 years to make the arduous and often-interrupted journey home to Ithaca recounted in the “Odyssey.” Helen, whose two successive Trojan husbands were killed during the war, returned to Sparta to reign with Menelaus. After his death, some sources say she was exiled to the island of Rhodes, where a vengeful war widow had her hanged. -
Sep 19, 1246
The Trojan War
Trojan War, legendary conflict between the early Greeks and the people of Troy in western Anatolia, dated by later Greek authors to the 12th or 13th century bc. The war stirred the imagination of the ancient Greeks more than any other event in their history, and was celebrated in the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer, as well as a number of other early works now lost, and frequently provided material for the great dramatists of the Classical Age. -
Period: Apr 2, 1304 to Aug 13, 1347
The Trojan War
In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans (Greeks) after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology and has been narrated through many works of Greek literature, most notably through Homer's Iliad. The Iliad relates four days in the tenth year of the decade-long siege of Troy; the Odyssey describes the journey home of Odysseus, one of the war's heroes. -
Period: Oct 24, 1312 to Mar 8, 1391
The Trojan War
In exchange, Aphrodite made Helen, the most beautiful of all women and wife of Menelaus, fall in love with Paris, who took her to Troy. Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and the brother of Helen's husband Menelaus, led an expedition of Achaean troops to Troy and besieged the city for ten years because of Paris' insult. After the deaths of many heroes, including the Achaeans Achilles and Ajax, and the Trojans Hector and Paris, the city fell to the ruse of the Trojan Horse. -
Period: Apr 16, 1329 to Jun 4, 1401
The Trojan War
Few of the Achaeans returned safely to their homes and many founded colonies in distant shores. The Romans later traced their origin to Aeneas, one of the Trojans, who was said to have led the surviving Trojans to modern-day Italy. The ancient Greeks believed that Troy was located near the Dardanelles and that the Trojan War was a historical event of the 13th or 12th century BC, but by the mid-19th century, both the war and the city were widely seen as mythological. -
Period: Jun 30, 1358 to Dec 7, 1386
The Trojan War
Other parts of the war are described in a cycle of epic poems, which have survived through fragments. Episodes from the war provided material for Greek tragedy and other works of Greek literature, and for Roman poets including Virgil and The war originated from a quarrel between the goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, after Eris, the goddess of strife and discord, gave them a golden apple, sometimes known as the Apple of Discord, marked "for the fairest. -
Period: Nov 6, 1404 to Jul 20, 1437
The Trojan War
In 1868, however, the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann met Frank Calvert, who convinced Schliemann that Troy was a real city at what is now Hissarlik in Turkey. On the basis of excavations conducted by Schliemann and others, this claim is now accepted by most scholars.Whether there is any historical reality behind the Trojan War remains an open question. -
Period: Jun 14, 1439 to Oct 7, 1477
The Trojan War
Many scholars believe that there is a historical core to the tale, though this may simply mean that the Homeric stories are a fusion of various tales of sieges and expeditions by Mycenaean Greeks during the Bronze Age. Those who believe that the stories of the Trojan War are derived from a specific historical conflict usually date it to the 12th or 11th centuries BC, often preferring the dates given by Eratosthenes.
