Heroes and Troy

Troy and the Odyssey

The war over Helen, and Odysseus’s long voyage home

The Trojan War began with a wedding, a golden apple and a beauty contest, and ended ten years later with a wooden horse. Homer’s Iliad tells one episode of the war; his Odyssey follows the hero Odysseus on his ten-year journey home.

• Greek vase painters told the Trojan stories in close, labelled detail.
• Later painters chose the moments of grief and fate: Hector’s death, Laocoön, the Cyclops.
• Odysseus’s wit, not strength, carries him through monsters and enchantresses.

Epic

A long narrative poem about heroes and gods, such as the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Works in this part

• The François Vase
• Achilles and Ajax Playing a Game
• The Judgement of Paris
• Andromache Mourning Hector
• Laocoön
• Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus
• Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain