Expert: Maria - 11/7/2004

Question
"The Iliad" ends at Book 24. Hectors's body has just been recovered by Priam at the end. My question is, where is the Trojan Horse? The death of Achilles? Am I missing something?
Thanks for any help you can give me.

Answer
Hello  Barbara,

You are right: both the Trojan Horse and the death of Achilles do not appear in Homer's Iliad.
It is in fact from other works that we gather information  about these events.
Here are these works:
-Virgil's Aeneid, Book II, for the Trojan horse
-Hyginus' Fabulae(Fables) and Homer's Odyssey, Book III ,for the death of Achilles.


TROJAN HORSE(see Virgil's Aeneid, book II).
Homer's Iliad ends in the tenth year of the war, when however  the war itself had not yet ended.
So, we know the end of the Trojan war as this story is   touched on in the book XI of the  Odyssey, while it is  told at length in Book II of the Aeneid where Virgil gives a very detailed account of what had happened to Greeks and Trojans.
It is in fact in the Aeneid that we come to know of a huge, hollow wooden horse conceived by clever Odysseus  and constructed by Epeius  to gain entrance into Troy. This was the stratagem.
The Greeks left the horse on the beach and, pretending to desert the war, sailed to the nearby island of Tenedos, leaving behind a soldier called  Sinon, who persuaded the Trojans that they should bring the horse inside their walls as it  was an offering to Athena that would  make Troy impregnable.
So, despite the warnings of Laocoon and Cassandra, the horse was taken inside, but that night warriors emerged from it and opened the city's gates to the returned Greek army.
This was the last night of Troy.

ACHILLES'DEATH.
[See  Homer's Odyssey, Book III ; Hyginus' Fabulae ]
After the death of Hector, Achilles himself was not destined to a long life, but the Iliad concludes with the funeral rites of Hector and  makes no mention of Achilles' death  which is  simply touched upon in the Odyssey (Book III, line 102) when Telemachus, Odysseus' son, visits  Nestor, a leader during the Trojan War, who says:"Our best men all of them fell there - Ajax, Achilles..."

But it was  the Greek poet Arctinus who in his lost epics "Aethiopis" and "Iliupersis" ("Sack of Troy") took up the story of the Iliad and related that Achilles, having slain the Ethiopian king Memnon and the Amazon Penthesilea, was himself slain by Priam's son Paris, whose arrow was guided by Apollo.
According to legend  we read  in Hyginus'Fabulae, (compiled from Arctinus),  Polyxena, one of the daughters of King Priam, perhaps on occasion of the truce which was allowed the Trojans for the burial of Hector, went with her brother Troilus to a fountain where he watered his horse.
Achilles appeared and slew Troilus. When Achilles caught sight of Polyxena, he fell in love with her and  to win her in marriage, it is said  (but not by Homer) that he agreed to influence the Greeks to make peace with Troy.
While the hero was in the temple of Apollo negotiating the marriage, Paris,  Polyxena' s brother,  discharged at him a poisoned arrow, which, guided by Apollo, fatally wounded him in the heel. This was in fact  his only vulnerable spot, for Thetis, having dipped him when an infant in the river Styx, had rendered every part of him invulnerable, except that by which she held him.

Hope this info can be helpful to you.
Have a nice day.
Maria
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NB.
VIRGIL(70-19 BC):One of the most important Roman poets, fluorished in the 1st.century BC.

HYGINUS((1st. century AD): Roman author of an extant handbook of mythology compiled from Greek sources  and embracing all the most important legends of antiquity. It is usually indentified by the title 'Fabulae',a collection of 277 fables.

ARCTINUS of Miletus(Asia Minor,modern Turkey): a Greek poet (7th century BC) who, according to tradition, is considered to be the author of the lost epics "Aethiopis"  and "Iliupersis" ("Sack of Troy"),which  related  the  events  of  the last days of Troy.His works were probably the sources  to which Hyginus got information