Troy

by Stephen Fry

  They found Echeon in a crumpled heap, neck broken. He had died instantly.

  ‘A bad omen?’ said Diomedes. ‘A sign?’

  ‘A sign that fools fall heavily,’ said Odysseus. ‘Now, let’s look at you all.’

  They lined up, stretching their cramped, tortured legs and backs, the twenty-eight survivors of the thirty.

  Menelaus, Idomeneus, Diomedes, Neoptolemus and Aias stepped forward to join Odysseus, the senior commanders separating themselves from the others. Nestor had pleaded to be allowed in the horse too, but they had laughingly told him that his wheezing and the loud creaking of his old bones would alert the Trojans from the beginning. The youngest and fittest had been chosen to make up the bulk of the incursion force.

  ‘You all know what to do,’ Odysseus said to them, drawing his sword. ‘To work.’

  The End

  Sinon had lurked around the dunes and marshes doing nothing much more than gathering firewood and washing his wounds with seawater. He watched Selene ride her moon-chariot across the night sky, and waited until she was precisely aligned with Orion the Hunter overhead, before – as arranged – climbing up to the hillock on which the grave of Achilles stood. Here he lit a beacon for the approaching Achaean fleet. ‘The horse is safely inside the walls,’ was the meaning of the fire. ‘All is ready.’ Troy lay open, a hive whose honey was there for the taking. All because of him. He laughed out loud. History would call him Sinon the Conqueror.fn1

  ‘More than you ever managed, son of Peleus,’ he said, spitting on the great stone jar that held Achilles’ ashes. ‘You may have been swifter and better looking than me, but you’re dead and I’m alive. Hah!’

  Agamemnon’s ship was the first to beach, followed swiftly by the others. Sinon joined the warriors streaking across the plain. He could see flames already leaping from the windows of one of the high towers of the city. He hoped that all the important killing hadn’t been done. He wanted a royal head for himself. And maybe a captive princess. Some fine lady at least. Something better than a menial slave girl. He deserved everything he could get for taking such a beating in the cause.

  There is little one can say to mitigate the horror of what happened that night in Troy, or to excuse the bestial savagery with which the storming Achaeans torched the city and slaughtered its inhabitants.

  Odysseus and the men from the horse had already stolen quietly through the streets, cutting the throats of the few sentries who had stayed awake and on duty. One group broke apart the crude makeshift boards that barred the Scaean Gate, another opened the city’s other gates. Then, without waiting for Agamemnon’s army, they turned inwards and went to work.

  The Trojans were caught completely by surprise. No compassion was shown. We are used to stories of atrocities perpetrated by victors drunk with violence in time of war. No matter how much you side with the Greeks and cheer for Odysseus, Menelaus and the rest, you cannot but be moved to deep sorrowing pity by the plight of Troy and its citizens. We know how brutal soldiers can be. Years of homesickness, hardship and the loss of comrades while under the constant danger of life-threatening injury harden the heart and stifle the small voice of mercy. We know how the Red Army, for example, raped, looted and murdered their way into Berlin in 1945. How cruelly British troops tortured and mutilated rebels rounded up after the Indian Mutiny. What the American army did at My Lai in Vietnam. Whatever country we are from, and however proud we may be of our national claims to tolerance, honour and decency, we cannot dare assume that armies fighting under our flag have not been guilty of atrocities quite as obscene as those perpetrated by the ravening Greeks that night.

  The fate of the Trojan royal family was pitiful. As soon as Priam was awoken by the shouts, screams and clashes in the streets, he knew that Troy was falling. He struggled to put on his old armour, tight around his old man’s belly but loose on his shrunken limbs. Sword in hand he stumbled helplessly to the great central hallway of his palace. Hecuba was in one of the open rooms at the side, crouching by the altar of Zeus with her daughters. She called out to her husband.

  ‘Priam, no! Are you mad? You are an old man. You cannot fight. Come here and pray; it’s all we can do.’

  As Priam turned towards her the ancient, perished leather straps holding up his armour gave way and his breastplate fell to the floor. He looked down and groaned at the wretched sight he knew he made.

  Just then his young son POLITES ran in, yelling with fright. Behind him strode Neoptolemus, spear in hand, resplendent in his father Achilles’ armour.

  ‘Scared, little boy? This will calm you down.’

  Slowly, almost lazily, Neoptolemus threw the spear. It flew straight into Polites’ chest. The boy grabbed the shaft and looked down in puzzled surprise.

  ‘I think you’ve killed me,’ he said, and slipped dead to the ground.

  Priam faced Neoptolemus with a wild cry. ‘You animal! Your father would never have killed an unarmed child in such a manner. I came to him for the body of my son Hector and we wept together. He knew the meaning of honour. Have you none?’

  ‘Honour is for the dead,’ said Neoptolemus.

  ‘Then let me join them,’ said Priam raising his spear. ‘I have no wish to live in a world ruled by men like you …’

  He threw the spear with all the strength he could muster, but it clattered harmlessly on the floor halfway between them.

  ‘You run along, old man,’ said Neoptolemus, striding up, sword aloft. ‘Run to my father in the kingdom of the dead and tell him terrible tales of his wicked degenerate son.’

  With the bored indifference of a herdsman readying an ox for slaughter, he grabbed Priam by the hair and pulled him along the ground. The flagstones were slippery with the blood of Polites and Priam’s heels skidded on the wet surface. Neoptolemus stabbed Priam once in the side before slicing through his neck with a swift sweep of the sword. The old king’s head fell to the floor and rolled to Hecuba’s feet. Neoptolemus turned on her and the young princesses cowering behind her, when his attention was taken by the sight of Aeneas crossing in the background, an old man on his shoulders.

  ‘Oh, this is too good to be true,’ said Neoptolemus, chasing after them with a gleeful shout.

  Aeneas had his whole household with him, his father Anchises, his wife Creusa – a daughter of Priam’s – his son Ascanius and his loyal companion Achates. Old Anchises was now too frail and lame to walk, so Aeneas was carrying him on his back. As they hurried out of the main gates of the palace they heard Calchas’s voice cry out behind them.

  ‘Neoptolemus! Leave Aeneas. The gods have marked him out. You must not touch him or you will be cursed for all eternity.’

  Aeneas looked behind him and saw Neoptolemus shrug disappointedly and turn away. The Trojan prince and his small group made it out of the city and on to Mount Ida, where they found temporary refuge in the small shrine to Athena that the Greeks were using to house the Palladium. Aeneas took the sacred object from the altar and kept it with him until his journeying ended many years later on the banks of the River Tiber in Italy.fn2

  Menelaus, meanwhile, had also made his way through the royal palace, roaring and killing as he went. He dragged Deiphobus from his bed and ran him through with his sword, swearing and spitting out his rage as he turned from the body.

  ‘Now, where’s that bitch? Where are you hiding, Helen? I’m coming for you …’

  He kicked down doors and threw slave girls aside as he thrust his way through to Helen’s bedchamber. He would spit her like a goat. She deserved no better. There she was, cowering in the corner. No, not even with the grace to cower – sitting serenely, awaiting her fate like some chaste votary of Artemis. How dare she not throw herself at his feet and beg forgiveness?

  ‘You … you …’ He choked the words out.

  His son by Helen, the child Nicostratus, was crouching beside her. She lifted her face and the eruption of her beauty caused everything to come flooding back. The love he felt for her. The pain of separation
. That face still had the power to make his body tremble. Out of sight for so many years, and impossible to recall in all that time except as a lure and a false contrivance. Then one second in the presence of that measureless beauty and he was lost. He dropped the sword and fell to his knees.

  ‘My love, my darling, my queen, my Helen.’

  Cassandra had rushed to take refuge in the temple of Athena. Most of the wooden houses were already in flames as she tore through the streets, but the temple was built of marble and stone. She passed the wooden horse. The trapdoor swung down, the belly empty. The horse had served its purpose and stood patiently by the temple’s steps like any unattended mount.

  Inside the temple Cassandra clung to the altar where once the Palladium had stood and prayed to the goddess for protection.

  No protection came, only horror.

  Aias, Ajax the Lesser, saw her running up the steps. He followed her in and raped her. She screamed, she protested, she warned that Athena would punish him, but he only laughed. When he was done, Cassandra ran out of the temple and down the streets, straight into the arms of Agamemnon. The King of Men could not have been more delighted with so beautiful and noteworthy a captive.

  ‘I will enjoy having a Trojan princess as a slave. And so will my wife Clytemnestra.’

  Shaking, Cassandra howled into Agamemnon’s face. ‘Your wife Clytemnestra? Your wife Clytemnestra? She will stab you with knives. She and your cousin, her lover. They will kill you. Then they will kill me. That is how I will die, and how you will die, poor, foolish, betrayed Agamemnon – Agamemnon, King of Fools.’

  ‘Take her to my ship,’ said Agamemnon, turning away.

  Achaean warriors stormed into Andromache’s chambers high up in the eastern tower of the royal palace. One of them saw Astyanax in her arms and yelled in triumph. ‘That’s Hector’s whore and that is Hector’s bastard!’ The soldier rushed forward and snatched the baby from Andromache. ‘Hector killed my brother!’

  ‘Give me back my child!’

  The crazed Achaean went to the open window that looked down over the ramparts. ‘A worthless Trojan brat for a noble Greek warrior!’

  He held the baby up in his arms and then, with a manic screech of laughter, tossed it out over the battlements.

  Andromache screamed and fell to her knees. ‘Kill me now,’ she cried, weeping and weeping. ‘Throw me down with him. Kill me, kill me, kill me now.’

  ‘A valuable prize like you?’ said the soldier, grabbing her by the hair. ‘I don’t think so. Someone will pay a fortune for you. Maybe Prince Neoptolemus. You’d like to slave for the son of the man who speared your husband, wouldn’t you?’

  Scenes like this were played out in every room in every house in Troy over the course of that dreadful night. Rape, murder, torture, plunder and acts of bestial cruelty that would stand as an eternal stain on the reputation of those responsible. The highest born took the greatest treasure, of course – human and material – but there was enough for all, down to the lowliest spearman, mess-cook, page and groom. Every villa, cottage, shop and shack was ransacked and its inhabitants raped, beaten, killed or captured. Those judged old and useless were stoned, stabbed or cudgelled to death, thrown into burning buildings or hurled over the walls.

  Amid all the slaughter, two less horrific incidents are worth noting.

  Acamas and DEMOPHON, sons of Theseus, joined the war late but had fought valiantly on the Greek side.fn3 When Troy fell, their one concern was not killing or treasure but finding and rescuing their grandmother Aethra, the mother of Theseus.fn4 As offspring of the founder king of Athens, the slayer of the Minotaur himself, one of the most venerated and admired of all the heroes who ever was, they might have been forgiven for some show of pride and self-importance. But two more modest and undemanding characters could not have been found in all the Achaean ranks. They asked no special favours, drew no attention to themselves, and lived and fought amongst their men bravely and dutifully.

  As others conducted their orgies of killing and cruelty all around them, they succeeded in tracking their grandmother down and taking her to the safety of their ships, neither seeking nor accepting any other treasure. They were later to apply for Aethra’s release from the bonds of servitude, which Helen was happy to grant.fn5

  Agamemnon had not forgotten the occasion ten years earlier when Menelaus, Odysseus and Palamedes had gone to Troy under the flag of embassy to see if an honourable peace could be negotiated. They had stayed as guests at the house of Antenor, who discovered Paris’s plan to have them all murdered and conducted them safely out of Troy.

  ‘The household and treasure of Antenor are not to be touched,’ Agamemnon commanded. ‘He and his family are to be allowed the same safe passage out of Troy that he accorded my brother.’

  Those two episodes – the rescue of Aethra and the sparing of Antenor – can be registered as the only lights of clemency and honour that shone during that night of unnameable atrocities.

  When Eos next threw open the gates of dawn, her heart burst with sorrow. The flush of light fell on a new and terrible world. The city she had loved was no more. The people were no more. So many members of Troy’s great royal house were either slaughtered or in chains. Already the vultures, crows and jackals were moving into the smoking rubble to feast on the thousands of Trojan dead. The last of the wagon trains of treasure had crossed the Scamander. The Greeks were packing their ships, fighting amongst themselves, tugging slaves back and forth like wild dogs, claiming and counterclaiming their shares of the spoils.

  There was a sickness, a nausea too. Bloated by killing, all they wanted now was to go home. Most of them kept their backs to the ruins, unable to gaze on what they had done.

  The gods had watched in helpless horror while the scenes of violence and devastation had unfolded. Zeus had forbidden interference, but he feared he had been wrong to do so.

  ‘What did we see last night?’ he asked. ‘It wasn’t warfare. It was madness. Deception, savagery, dishonour and disgrace. What have the mortals become?’

  ‘Terrible, isn’t it? Who do they think they are – gods?’

  ‘There’s a time for humour, Hermes, and this isn’t it,’ said Apollo.

  ‘Are you satisfied?’ Zeus said, turning to Athena. ‘Your beloved Greeks have won. Total victory is theirs.’

  ‘No, father,’ said Athena. ‘I am not satisfied. There have been violations of the sacred. Abominable crimes have been committed.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Apollo. ‘We cannot let them just sail serenely back to domestic life.’

  ‘They must pay in full for their profanities,’ said Artemis.

  Zeus sighed heavily. ‘I wish, all those years ago, Prometheus hadn’t persuaded me to make mankind,’ he said. ‘I knew it was a mistake.’

  1. The City of Troy.

  2. The Palladium.

  3. Heracles rescues Hesione.

  4. Chiron and the Centaurs.

  5. The Procession of Thetis.

  6. The Marriage of Thetis and Peleus.

  7. The Judgement of Paris.

  8. Helen.

  9. Menelaus, King of Ancient Sparta.

  10. Leda and Zeus.

  11. Thetis dips Ligyron (Achilles) into the River Styx.

  12. The Education of Achilles.

  13. Cassandra.

  14. The Abduction of Helen.

  15. Odysseus feigns madness.

  16. Iphigenia’s Sacrifice.

  17. Homer.

  18. Greek Armada landing at Troy, as depicted in Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 film.

  19. Achilles and Ajax playing dice during the siege.

  20. Troilus and Cressida.

  21. Briseis leaves Achilles.

  22. The Combat of Diomedes.

  23. The Duel of Ajax and Hector.

  24. The body of Patroclus.

  25. Achilles dragging Hector’s body around the walls of Troy.

  26. King Priam appeals to Achilles.

  27. The Wounded Achill
es.

  28. The Shield of Achilles.

  29. Laocoön and his sons attacked by serpents

  30. The Sacking of Troy.

  31. The women of Troy weep at the killing of Priam.

  Appendix

  MYTH AND REALITY 1

  The events told here took place – if ever they really did take place – in a period that historians and others refer to as the Bronze Age. The most significant source for our knowledge of the Trojan War is the poet Homer, who lived – if ever he really did live – in the succeeding Iron Age, the better part of five centuries later. I look at Homer and his period in more detail in the second part of this Appendix. Homer wrote about a time long in his past, when the gods still appeared before mortals – befriended them, persecuted them, favoured them, cursed them, blessed them, harried them and sometimes even married them.

  Those who are familiar with my two preceding books on Greek mythology, Mythos and Heroes, may have noticed plenty of discrepancies and chronological inconsistencies. In Heroes, for example, I favour the idea that the Olympic Games were established by Heracles. In Troy, I have followed another source that identifies Pelops as their founder. These variations are of minor significance, coming down to little more than a matter of choice. The major timelines, however – wring, wrench and wrestle them as you may – will not straighten out into clean historical paths. How old Achilles was by the time of the last year of the siege of Troy, for example, or what length of time elapsed between the abduction of Helen and the sailing of Agamemnon’s fleet – these and many other questions are impossible to resolve. Indeed, when you do settle on one timeline, it invariably ruins another. It is all rather like some kind of nightmarish Jacques Tati art gallery: straighten a painting on the wall and another one immediately drops out of true. To change metaphors, there is a boxing match that any chronicler of these stories is forced to engage in: in the red corner, the need to present a detailed dynastic chronology, filled with consistent relationships, backgrounds and genealogies – and in the blue corner, the need to present the mysteries of a poetical world of myth and miracle whose characters and histories should never be expected to travel obediently along the rails of cause and effect. Over the years, I have come to the view that it is not really a fight, but more a kind of narrative dance in which the deep but complementary pleasures of the real and the unreal can be partnered.