I’ve no idea when I learned this, but somehow, I knew a fair amount about the Trojan War. It probably doesn’t need an introduction, but I should do a quick rundown anyway.
Troy was said to lie east of the Aegean Sea, on the coast of Asia Minor. Most famously, it was the subject of an attack by the Greeks in the Iliad, a famous story crafted by the Greek poet Homer approximately eight centuries before the birth of Christ. For a long while, there was doubt as to whether the legendary city actually existed, but ruins were eventually found in a famously dramatic manner.
The Trojan War itself took placing during Mycenaean era Greece, approximately 1300 BCE. The fighting went on for a whole decade and only ended with the destruction of the city.
The mythological war began with the Judgment of Paris and ended with the Trojan Horse, the ultimate ancient jack-in-the-box. This latter was so famous it even got a computer virus named after it, but Homer’s Iliad actually doesn’t mention either. It seems they were both common knowledge among all Greeks at the time, and he didn’t need to cover those bits.
The war was hardly started for the best of reasons.
Eris, goddess of strife and discord, was incensed about not being invited to a wedding on Olympus and devised a scheme to pay them back. She furiously swiped a golden apple made by Hephaestus, wrote, To the fairest one on it, then tossed it onto a table at the wedding banquet. As she’d hoped, several goddesses in attendance insisted it belonged to them, kicking off an epic catfight.
Lord knows how the bride and groom must have felt. Peleus (the groom) must have found the sight especially horrifying. He was busy marrying the goddess Thetis, and their union would result in the birth of Achilles.
The apple argument eventually boiled down to Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena. But no resolution proved forthcoming. Sensing that this could well go on forever, they turned to the king of gods, Zeus, hoping he would decide who deserved the apple.
Hera was Zeus’s wife, Aphrodite the goddess of love and beauty, and Athena the goddess of wisdom, an eternal virgin.
No matter who Zeus picked, it would cause problems, so he passed the buck to a young prince of Troy—Paris.
Really, bro, you gotta give to Hera, truth be damned.
Paris was probably stuck going, “Why me, tho?” but if the king of gods asks you to do a thing, you do it. While he wrestled with the decision, all the goddesses tried to bribe him, each offering a reward if he chose them. Hera offered to make him super rich and the king of Asia, Athena offered technological knowledge and the power to win any battle, and Aphrodite promised to hand him the world’s most beautiful woman.
Perhaps knowing his limits, Paris ultimately went with Aphrodite, and the goddess of beauty did her thing, giving the prince the hottest lady of the day—Helen.
If that had been the end of it, this would have been another cute story about how the gods are just like us—but there was one big problem. Helen was already married. And her husband was Menelaus, little brother to Agamemnon, the king of Sparta. Even if a goddess said so, having your girl NTRed by some foreign prince and hauled off to Troy must have been pretty dang infuriating. His bro got hopping mad, too.
Agamemnon demanded all of Greece team up to go after Paris and take Helen back, and all the other kings and heroes were on board. This was basically a collection of dudes who had tried to woo Helen themselves and got brushed aside.
Anywho they marshaled forces, put a fleet together, and sailed across the Aegean to Troy where the fighting began.
For this one woman, two armies were locked in a long tug-of-war, a chaotic mess going nowhere fast. Plus, for totally selfish reasons, their gods were taking sides and making things a whole lot worse. The stalemate left both sides sick of the constant fighting, but nine long years went by. Finally—
That’s what got them to the end of the Trojan War. It’s all legendary, so the truth may be pretty different, but you get the gist. The Odyssey is actually about the fifty days that happened after the conclusion of all that.
Naturally, the above is all simply the account passed down to us, and nobody knows what the real history was, or even if there was a war at all.
And here we stood, in a place of half myth, half history—but I’m afraid we had no time to revel in that.
This was a virtual space where someone had hocked up a slapdash version of the myth. A hollow replica.
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Apparently, we’d been met by the Trojans.
Ripped ancient soldiers led us into the fortified city.
Inside the sturdy walls, and along stone-paved streets. To my surprise, our final destination was outdoors.
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I’d assumed we were going to the palace to see King Priam. But apparently we weren’t here to join the battle—the structure they took us to made that obvious.
It was an amphitheater made of white stone.
A semicircle of descending seats looked down on the stage at the bottom. The stage itself was a long rectangle with a wall behind it; you see a lot of these in Greek and Roman ruins.
Here, we changed guides, the armored Trojan soldiers replaced with some unnervingly beautiful women, each dressed much like our party’s girls.
A lady smiling like the marble bust in the art room escorted Haruhi to the VIP seats. Asahina and Nagato received guides of their own, each attended by women who looked like they’d stepped out of a Mucha painting.
The VIP seats were at the top of the amphitheater; three lavishly decorated thrones. The ladies gestured, and Haruhi planted herself on the center throne, gazing down at the stage like she was granting an audience.
Asahina sat to her right, and Nagato to her left.
The relief carvings on their seats each bore a distinct style. Haruhi’s throne must have been a custom job—it was all covered in gold, framed in lilies, and depicted the twelve labors of Hercules. Asahina’s seat had white winged doves and anemones, while Nagato’s had olive trees and owls. Clearly significant.
The upshot was that I now had a fair idea which goddess each of them was playing. The roles fit them flawlessly—I was actually amazed they’d managed to find good matches for each of them within Greek mythology.
While Koizumi and I were entranced by the sight of our three goddesses—well, gazing at them with purely academic curiosity—the leader of the beautiful servants turned, gracefully beckoning to us. She then pointed at a low table next to Nagato’s seat.
We were men, not gods, and did not need thrones.
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No use arguing the point; we obediently sat down together, eyes on the stage. A man in a toga stepped out from the wings, stopped in the center, and bowed to the thrones with a flourish. A tenor voice was soon raised in song.
“I believe that’s Latin,” Koizumi whispered, inexplicably fascinated.
I couldn’t have told you the language; it was all Greek to me. Yet somehow I could understand it.
It was like watching a movie with the original audio and no subtitles, but it felt like I had an invisible subtitle track being beamed into my head. This was not surprising. We’d had no trouble communicating in any country we’d visited, even fantasy or far future settings. Auto-translating Latin in our heads was no big deal at this point. Though if we could make this work in the real world, I’d have much better grades in English.
The man’s song basically said the following:
“Today we are honored by the presence of the divine goddesses. The people are overcome with joy and can barely remain standing. We have no way of expressing our pleasure and awe in words, so we shall do so with the arts. Please enjoy our profound and boundless adoration and respect. Oh, queen of the goddesses, love born of foam, and the eternal virgin, may you bring everlasting prosperity! The pyres of glory to Acacia! Eternal light illuminate the world of the divine. All hail ye!”
Dramatic but empty. All I really got was that they were about to do a play.
Would this Trojan theater show us comedy or tragedy? As I watched, actors streamed in from both wings, hitting their marks.
It seemed our tale began with a wedding. Somehow I got that much despite the lack of narration.
The groom, Peleus, and the bride, Thetis. Chiron the centaur kicked off a procession of divine arrivals. These famous gods and goddesses were all wearing those ancient Greek clothes that looked like over-embroidered curtains. Zeus and Hera, Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Aphrodite, Poseidon…even Prometheus and Ganymedes. Quite the guest list.
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