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Greek Mythology
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The Trojan War
15-02-2013 19:46Menelaos was informed of his wife’s abduction of Trojan Prince Paris, by the goddess Iris and hurried back to Greece to raise an army to recover Helen from Troy. Since all the former suitors of Helen were bound by oath to support her husband in such circumstances, most of the leading rulers of Greece would be obliged to fight as his allies in the Trojan War.
After all the necessary arrangements had been made, the warriors assembled at Aulis, a coastal town of Boeotia so set off for Troy. During a sacrifice to Apollo, the Greeks saw a snake climbing onto a tree and devoured eight sparrow-chicks and their mother. As this incident was interpreted by seer Kalchas, meant that the Greeks would spend nine years fighting before they would finally siege it.
When the Greeks first set out for Troy, they were so ignorant of the geography of the area that they landed in the neighbouring territory of Mysia and ravaged it in the belief that it was Troy. Telephos, king of Mysia and son of Heracles, on discovering that his kingdom was under attack, pursued the Greeks back to their ships. Achilles wounded him severely in the thigh and the Greeks sailed off in search of Troy, but a violent storm forced their way back to their homelands.
Ten years passed and the Greeks gathered for the second time to Aulis, ready to sail off to Troy. The wounded king Telephos, who has decided to consult the Delphic oracle about the healing of his wound, was consulted that the inflictor of the wound should become its healer and he set off to find Achilles. The inflictor of the wound was Achilles’ spear and Telephos was cured from some rust of the spear applied to the wound. Telephos repaid the favour by guiding the Greeks across the Aegean to Troy.
As the Greek force was preparing to sail from Aulis for a second time, the fleet was prevented from sailing by a dead calm. The seer Kalchas revealed that goddess Artemis was asking from Agamemnon to offer her in sacrifice one of his unmarried daughters Iphigeneia. Although she was to be married to Achilles, she was brought to sacrifice but at the last time Artemis substituted her with a stag on the altar and transferred her to the land of the Taurians. Artemis, finally let the fleet to proceed on its way.
For the first nine years of the war, the Trojans avoided direct contact with the enemy, preferring to shelter behind their city walls in the hope that the Greeks would eventually become exhausted by the siege and give up. The main episodes of the Trojan War are narrated in the Homeric epic poem of Iliad.
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