In the dim light of the eastern horizon, on what tradition holds as April 24, 1183 BCE, the city of Troy, proud and impregnable for a decade, finally succumbed to the cleverest of tricks and the fiercest of wrath. Flames licked the sky. Statues crumbled. The gods, once patrons of heroes and city alike, now watched in silence as the once-glorious citadel groaned under the weight of Greek vengeance. This is not a tale of gentle endings, but one of blood, deception, and divine manipulation. If you believe the poets, and today, we shall, then the fall of Troy was less a collapse and more a cursed symphony played out beneath the stars.
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It all began with a wedding invitation. Or more precisely, a lack thereof. Eris, goddess of discord, tossed a golden apple into the banquet of the gods, marked “to the fairest.” Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite all laid claim to it. Rather than settle the matter himself, Zeus appointed Paris, a Trojan prince disguised as a shepherd, to judge. Offered gifts by each goddess—power by Hera, wisdom and victory by Athena, and the love of the most beautiful woman in the world by Aphrodite—Paris chose love. He chose Helen. The problem was, she was already married to Menelaus, king of Sparta.
Paris did not ask. He took. Helen went with him to Troy, whether by love or spell or both. Menelaus called upon the oath sworn by all of Helen’s former suitors, binding the kings and heroes of Greece to retrieve her. His brother Agamemnon assembled a massive coalition. The Greeks sailed to Troy, and the war began.
Ten years. That is how long Troy held out. Ten years of siege, raids, duels, and divine sabotage. At the center of the Greek war effort was Achilles, son of the sea nymph Thetis and the mortal Peleus. Nearly invincible, save for the heel his mother failed to dip in the Styx, Achilles was a force of nature. He sacked twelve cities, slew the Amazon queen Penthesilea, and brought ruin to countless Trojan warriors. Yet pride and rage made him as dangerous to his own as to his enemies.
When Agamemnon took Achilles’ war prize, Briseis, the hero withdrew from battle. With Achilles absent, the Trojans surged. His companion, possibly kinsman or lover, Patroclus donned Achilles’ armor to rally the Greeks, only to be slain by Hector, Troy’s greatest defender. Grief-stricken and furious, Achilles rejoined the fight, killed Hector, and dragged his body around the city walls. He gave it back only after Priam, king of Troy, entered the Greek camp and begged for his son’s body. Homer ends The Iliad here, before the actual fall of the city.
Other poets fill the gap. Achilles is later killed by an arrow to the heel, loosed by Paris and guided by Apollo. His death does not end the war. It simply passes the torch to cunning Odysseus and ruthless Neoptolemus, Achilles’ son. Troy’s walls still stood. Its people still fought. But hope was thinning. The Greeks had a plan. And it involved a horse.
It was Odysseus who proposed the ruse. A great wooden horse, hollow inside, would be left at Troy’s gates. The Greek army would pretend to sail away, leaving Sinon behind to spin a tale. He told the Trojans the horse was a gift to Athena, meant to ensure Greek safety as they fled. It was too large to fit inside the gates by accident; that was the point. If the Trojans could bring it into the city, it would make them invincible, he claimed. Cassandra, cursed prophetess of Apollo, and Laocoön, a priest, warned against it. But Cassandra was fated never to be believed. And when sea serpents devoured Laocoön and his sons, the people took it as a sign. The gates opened. The horse entered. That night, Troy fell.
The warriors hidden inside crept out and opened the gates. The Greek fleet, hidden at Tenedos, returned. Chaos erupted. Blood slicked the streets. Temples burned. Priam was butchered at an altar. Neoptolemus killed Hector’s young son, Astyanax, and hurled him from the walls. Ajax the Lesser violated Cassandra in Athena’s temple, earning divine wrath. Helen was found and reclaimed by Menelaus, her beauty still intact, her allegiance unclear.
Few escaped. Aeneas, son of Aphrodite, carried his elderly father on his back and led his son and a small band of survivors away. His wife perished in the escape. In time, Aeneas would wander to Italy, where, according to Virgil, his descendants would found Lavinium, precursor to Alba Longa and Rome. Thus, the destruction of one city planted the seed of another.
The gods, though victorious, were not pleased. Sacrilege in Troy brought down storms on the returning Greeks. Many, like Agamemnon, met grim fates at home. Odysseus wandered for ten years, tormented by gods, monsters, and fate before reclaiming his kingdom. Troy’s destruction was not a triumph. It was a turning of the page.
What of history? Beneath the dust of myth lies the real Hisarlık, in modern-day Turkey. Archaeologists found layers upon layers of ancient cities, built one atop the other. Troy VIIa, burned and battered around 1180 BCE, fits the poetic timeline. It was a coastal power, trading with the Mycenaeans and boasting imposing walls. Whether it fell to Greeks or internal strife remains unclear. But something happened. The Late Bronze Age collapsed soon after. Empires fell. Trade routes vanished. Writing systems disappeared. It was not just Troy that burned. It was the world.
And yet, from that world’s funeral pyre rose stories. Endlessly retold. Embroidered, reshaped, and immortalized. Homer gave voice to rage and grief. Virgil spun survival into destiny. For the Greeks, Troy was a reminder of divine will and human folly. For the Romans, it was the womb of empire.
The fall of Troy was more than an ending. It was a legend draped in firelight, flickering on the walls of every generation since. And in that reflection, we see our own obsessions: with glory, with revenge, with love that destroys. It is a warning. And it is a myth too powerful to die.
When Troy burned, it lit a torch passed from bard to bard, from scroll to book, from whisper to screen. We still speak of Achilles’ wrath. We still marvel at Helen’s face. We still trust clever men with wooden gifts. And somewhere in the smoldering ruins, Aeneas is still running westward, carrying hope on his shoulders.
Troy fell. But it never vanished.
DAVE DOES HISTORY 
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