The Trojan War

This is a very old story. An ancient Greek poet called Homer wrote it down about 2,800 years ago. Some of it is true history, and some of it is myth — a story with gods and heroes. People love it after almost 3,000 years.

The story starts with a woman called Helen. People said she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Helen was the wife of Menelaus, a king in Greece. One day a young prince named Paris came from the great city of Troy. Troy was on the coast of what is now Turkey. Paris took Helen back to Troy with him.

Menelaus was very angry. He asked his brother Agamemnon and all the kings of Greece for help. They built a huge army — a thousand ships! — and sailed across the sea to Troy. They wanted Helen back. The Greek ships landed on the beach below the high walls of Troy, and the war began. The Greeks thought it would be quick. They were wrong. The war lasted ten years.

For ten years the Greeks could not get into the city. Troy's walls were too high and too strong. The two armies fought outside the walls, again and again. Many brave heroes fought for glory — to win a great name.

The best Greek fighter was Achilles. He was very strong, but he was also very proud. He had a big argument with Agamemnon, so he was angry and stopped fighting. Without Achilles, the Greeks started to lose.

Troy had a great hero too: Hector, the king's son. Hector did not fight for glory. He fought to protect his city and his family. In the fighting, Hector killed Achilles' best friend, Patroclus. Now Achilles was full of grief and anger, and he came back to fight. Achilles and Hector met in front of the walls, and Achilles killed Hector. Then the old king of Troy, Priam, came alone and asked Achilles to give back his son's body. Achilles let him take it.

After ten years, the city of Troy was still standing. Then the cleverest Greek, a man called Odysseus, had a clever idea — a trick.

The Greeks built an enormous wooden horse. They hid their best soldiers inside it. Then they burned their camp and sailed away — but it was only a trick. To the people of Troy, it looked like the Greeks had given up, and the horse looked like a gift. One Greek, Sinon, stayed behind to tell lies and to bring the city into the trap.

Not everyone believed it. A priest called Laocoön warned the people. A woman called Cassandra warned them too. But the people of Troy were tired of war, and they were proud and happy. They did not listen. They pulled the horse into the city. That night, while the city slept, Sinon let the soldiers out. They opened the gates, and the Greek army came back. In one night they destroyed Troy. The city that stood for ten years fell because of a trick. Helen went home to Greece.

For a long time, people thought it was only a story. Then, in the 1870s, a rich German man called Heinrich Schliemann wanted to prove that Troy was real. A local man, Frank Calvert, helped him choose the right place to dig — a hill called Hisarlik, in north-west Turkey.

Schliemann dug, and he found a real city. In fact he found many cities, one on top of another, very old. But he dug too fast and broke a lot of it. He even used dynamite! He found gold and called it "Priam's Treasure", but he was wrong — the gold was about a thousand years too old. He wanted glory so much that he said more than the ground really showed.

But there really was a city there. One old layer, from about 1180 BC, was destroyed by fire — at about the right time for the war. So today, historians say this: there probably was a real Troy, and maybe a real war. But Helen, Achilles and the wooden horse stay in the world of story, where people have loved them for almost 3,000 years.