The mythical circle of Troy

[Faceman]

After posting in the Achilles topic I suddenly felt an immediate urge to retell the Troyan myth and the connection to other myths.
This is gonna be long so if you are bored just stop reading and leave the thread.

[img]graemlins/givingspeech.gif[/img]

It all starts out with a quarrel between three godesses about who is the most beautiful.
They are Athene, the goddes of wisdom, Hera, the wife of Zeus, and Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty.
They are incited to that quarrel by Eris, goddess of jealousy and quarrel, who throws an apple with the inscription: "To the most beautiful" onto the table at the wedding of Thetis and Peleus because she was not invited.

Thetis, goddess of sea, and Peleus , a human, get married because Zeus, who had an affair with Thetis, is afraid of her conceiving his child as the oracle tells that: "The son of Thetis will be more powerful than his father"
The child from this marriage is Achill who being a semi-god is of course more powerful than his human father. Achill was also foreseen to die young and on glory which is why Thetis bathes him in the Styx (underworld river) to make him invulnerable holding him on his heel however which thus gets not covered by the Styx and remains his only vulnerable spot.

Now back to our quarreling goddesses.
The goddesses now have Paris son of Priamos, king of Troy, decide who is indeed the most beautiful promising him power (Hera), wisdom (Athene) or the most beautiful human woman (Aphrodite). Paris of course decides to take the girl and thus is off to rob Helena the most beautiful woman of the time from her husband Menelaos, king of Sparta, and take her back to Troy with him.

Menelaos now gathers an army of Greeks under the command of his brother Agamemmnon (husband of Klytaimnestra who was the sister of Helena) to get back his wife.

The army gathers at Aulis to set sail for Troy but there is no wind for the ships to sail. This is because Agammemnon had killed a holy golden hind of Artemis, goddess of hunting and sister of Apoll, in his younger years. To reconcile the goddess he sacrifices his oldest daughter Iphigenie (which is not killed but taken away by the goddess however without the knowledge of the men).

Now they all set sail for Troy and arriving there they stay for a 10 year siege. It's the last year of the siege in which Homer's famous Illias takes place.

The problems start when Agammemnon (like all others in the Greek army) robs the girl Chryseis from her father and takes her for his entertainmaint. Her father being a priest of Apoll curses the Greeks which are then struck with a plague. Agamemmnon has to return Chryseis and takes Briseis, Achilles' girl, as a substitute. Achill has to give her because Agamemmnon is higher in rank but he's very upset and goes on strike not fighting anymore.
Now follows a lot of fighting and fighting (without Achill) with advantages for Troy and the Greeks changing. There is a try to decide the war in a duel between Paris and Menelaos but when Paris loses he is rescued by Aphrodite and the war continues.
To raise the morale of the Greeks Patroklos, Achilles' best friend, puts on Achilles' armor and pretends to be the great hero (who would lead the Greeks to victory as the oracle promised). He get killed by Hektor rather quickly. [img]graemlins/tombstone.gif[/img]
Achilles' comes now back to the fight to avenge his friend and kills Hektor and drags his dead body around the city behind his war chariot.
This is where Homer's Illias ends.
Achill now gets killed by Paris with a poisoned arrow that Apoll himself conveniently guides to hit his heel (vulnerable spot remember) [img]graemlins/tombstone.gif[/img]
The Greeks are now rather devastated but Odysseus has an idea to take the city by deceit. They craft the infamous huge wooden Trojan horse as a gift to the Trojans and pretend to return to Greece.
The Trojans do not immediately fall for that trick as they are warned by their high priest Laokoon. Poseidon, god of sea, however wants Troy destroyed and has Laokoon and his sons killed by some Loch-Ness-Monster-Seasnake. [img]graemlins/snake.gif[/img]
The Trojans consider this a godly sign and take the horse into the city. At night the Greeks hidden in the horse exit and raze Troy thus winning the war [img]graemlins/shine.gif[/img]

Now everybody goes home and is happy [img]graemlins/cheers.gif[/img] (especially Menelaos and Helena) except for two guys.

1.) Agamemmnon comes home to a [img]graemlins/queen.gif[/img] wife that hates him for killing her daughter (in Aulis) and has already found a new lover his cousin Aegist. They decide to kill him while he's in the bathtub but Aegist is too weak so Klytemnaestra has to finish the job by herself.

2.) Odysseus who boasts about his idea winning the war when Poseidon comes to him and says: Ey lad, admit you couldn't have done it without me help!
Odysseus keeps bragging: I don't need nobody's help
and thus has to travel 40 years to get home tossed around the seas by Mr. Mighty Seagod.

Now back to Agamemmnon. He is a descendant of Tantalus, son of Zeus, who thought he was so smart he coud kill his own son Pelops and offer him as a meal to the gods [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img] (why anybody would consider this smart escapes me). Zeus of course notices, raises Pelops and curses Tantalus and his family (including Pelops). Agamemmnon still chews on that curse as we can see in Aulis and after his return from the war. But Aegist, his wife's lover, is no better off because Agamemmnon's second daughter Elektra hates him a lot and only waits for the return of her brother Orest (who was hidden to escape Aegist as a baby). When he does return Elektra hisses him into killing Aegist and Klytemnaestra becoming crazy afterwards (can't quite see what she was before).
Orest also loses his mind for killing his mother and is now pursued by the Eumenids, goddesses of motherly revenge. There are now two ends to this story

a.) Orest runs from the Eumenids and comes to Athens where the Areopag (the court) is going to settle that matter once and for all. When the decision of the jury is tied Athene arrives and votes in favour of Orest.

b.) Orest get to the oracle of Delphi and it tells him to "Seek out the sister". He thinks this is about Artemis, sister of Apollo who is the god of the oracle, and sets for Tauris to steal a valuable statue of Artemis. There he finds that HIS sister Iphigenie has been priestess here since she was sacrificed in Aulis takes her back and everybody is happy again.

Phew - long that one. Congratulations if you stayed with me until the end.

[Xen]

Overload!Overlaod! Too much info for my brains.

[Faceman]

Originally posted by Xen: Overload!Overlaod!

Are you meaning "overloud" or "overload"

[ 06-26-2003, 09:57 AM: Message edited by: Faceman ]

[Xen]

Both. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[harleyquinn]

LOL, It sounds like a Klingon story with all the "son of this" "daughter of that" [img]graemlins/biglaugh.gif[/img]

Thanks for the storytelling, though!

[Faceman]

Originally posted by harleyquinn: LOL, It sounds like a Klingon story with all the "son of this" "daughter of that" [img]graemlins/biglaugh.gif[/img]

I know! It's almost like the Ancient Greeks had a time machine and traveled to the future to copy Gene Roddenberry's ideas

Wait, am I missing something here ?

[Xen]

Hmm. I don`t know. A pie maybe?

[harleyquinn]

OOOOOOOO!!!! Is it apple pie??? I love apple pie. Pumpkin pie and sweet potato pie is good too!!!

[Xen]

Yes,i bet that is it Pie...apple pie that is.
Goes eating Apple Pie

[Melusine]

Just one note: your native language is German right? Because some of the names you use are germanised... Orest = Orestes, Aegist = Aegisthos and Iphigenie = Iphigenia. Now the English themselves are notorious for ugly abbreviations themselves (Homer for (H)omeros, Virgil for Vergillius), but that's no reason why us mainlanders (whose latin and greek is a closer approximation of the original) should do the same
Oh and Agamemnon is spelled thus. [img]smile.gif[/img]
It's a great myth to be sure, I can understand why this stuff fascinates you!