Roger Lancelyn Green's telling of The Tale of Troy was a favourite book of mine when I was a boy. My copy was lost long ago, but after reading Stephen Fry's modern re-telling, I bought a second-hand copy online. Green's text still appeals to me. Both books are written for a young audience, but Green's has an old fashioned no-nonsense style and, especially useful for an illustrator, is much shorter. These illustrations, done with a dip pen, walnut ink, and a brush, are based on Green's version of the tale. There's a long backstory: the marriage of Peleus and Thetis; the golden apple; the birth of Achilles; the judgement of Paris; Paris' abduction of Helen, Queen of Sparta; the huge army assembled by Menelaus and Agamemnon to win her back. The drawings start with the Greek ships arriving at Troy. |
The Greek ships arrive
Hesitation
Achilles and Cyncnus
Achilles appealing to Thetis
After Cyncnus was killed, the Trojans retreated into their city, and there was stalemate for nine years. The Greeks survived by ransacking neighbouring towns and villages, and on one of these raiding trips Achilles captured a young woman, Breseis. He kept her as his slave girl-friend, but Agamemnon demanded that Achilles hand her over to him. This put Achilles in a rage. He retreated to his tent and refused to fight. Worse, he said the men he'd brought with him, the Myrmidons, would not fight unless his own ships were at risk of being burnt. That night, Achilles appealed to his mother, Thetis. She promised to arrange with Zeus for the Trojans to come out fighting and push the Greeks to the point of defeat, when Agamemnon would be forced to plead with Achilles for help. Short version: Achilles complained to his mum about his lost girlfriend. She agreed to sort it out with the top man. |
Paris and Menelaus
Agamemnon, in a dream sent by Zeus, dreamt that now was the time to strike against Troy and win. For their part, the Trojans knew about Achilles withdrawing from the fight, and reckoned the Greeks would be demoralised. Both armies assembled for battle, but in a rare display of courage, Paris offered to settle the matter in single combat with Menelaus. Sickened by the long war, both sides readily agreed. Menelaus wounded Paris and would have killed him outright, but Aphrodite helped Paris escape and spirited him back to his Chambers in the city.
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Hector and Andromache
Hector was a son of King Priam, and a great warrior. His wife Andromache, holding their infant son Astyanax, begged him not to go into battle, fearing that Achilles would kill him. The little boy was frightened by the great swaying plume on Hector's helmet, so Hector took it off to show him there was nothing to fear. |
Patroclus rides out in Achilles' armour
Led by Hector, the Trojans pushed the Greeks back as far as their boats, setting some of them on fire. Still Achilles would not fight. At this point Patroclus, his cousin, lost patience and told Achilles to lend him his armour so he could go to battle, and the Trojans would think he was Achilles. And so, Patroclus rode out in Achilles' armour. |
Achilles' war cry over the battlefield
Patroclus fought hard all day, but towards the end, tired, and having lost his helmet, Hector slew him. When the news reached Achilles, he was grief-stricken and filled with remorse for his foolishness. He stood on the top of the Greek camp's defences overlooking the battlefield and issued a loud, terrible, cry that filled the Trojans with dread. |
Achilles drags Hector's corpse around the city walls
The next day, wearing armour newly forged for him by the gods' armourer, Hephaestus, Achilles rode out on an orgy of slaughter, cutting down so many Trojans the river Scamander was blocked with corpses. The Trojans fled back behind the city walls leaving Hector alone to confront Achilles, but he too was slain, run through with a spear. Achilles stripped the body, pierced the heels, and dragged the corpse behind his chariot. For twelve days, he dragged Hector back and forth before the city walls, a crime so terrible even the gods were disgusted, and sent Thetis to order him to stop. |
Achilles killed by Paris
It was Paris who did for Achilles. Vain, treacherous, cowardly Paris. He fired an arrow that hit Achilles in his heel, the one vulnerable part of his body. The arrow was poisoned, and Achilles quickly died. It was only a matter of days until Paris too died, shot by Philoctetes. His arrow had been dipped in the blood of the Hydra, and Paris died a slow, agonising death, his blood burning with the flames of hell. |
The Greek encampment abandoned: The Horse
The wooden horse was Odysseus' idea. With so many heroes dead on both sides, there was still deadlock. The Greeks built a wall to hide what they were doing, and constructed the horse, big enough to hold 30 men in its body. One morning, the Trojans awoke to find the Greek camp burnt, and all their ships gone. All that remained was the huge wooden horse standing on the shore. |
Sinon spins a story
Sinon was left behind by the Greeks, to act as a kind of double agent. The Trojans knew about his hatred for Odysseus, so finding him abandoned and badly beaten they believed his story about being beaten up by Odysseus' men and left for the Trojans to finish off. But in return for his life, he told them about the horse, that it was dedicated to Athena to give the Greeks safe passage home, and that Troy would never fall if the horse was inside the city walls. To prevent that, the Greeks had made it too large to fit through any of the city gates. |
Laocoon and his sons killed by serpents
Laocoon was a Trojan priest who didn't believe Sidon's story about the horse. He warned it was a trick, and told the Trojans it should be burned. Even as he spoke, two serpents emerged from the sea and coiled themselves round Laocoon and his two sons, dragging them back under the waves. That was enough to convince the Trojans. They dragged the horse - which the Greeks had thoughtfully provided with wheels - to the city, and cheerfully pulled down part of the walls to make an entrance large enough for the horse to pass through. Laocoon and his sons is one of the greatest sculptures to have come down to us from ancient times. The original is in the Vatican museum, but there is a plaster cast in the Royal Academy, in London, which I used for this drawing, the only one in the series not drawn from imagination. |
The death of Priam and the sack of Troy
The war was over, the Greeks had left, and with the horse safely inside the city walls the Trojans knew Troy would never fall. The celebrations lasted late into the night, so that when Odysseus and his men eventually crept down ladders lowered from the horse's belly, the city guards were asleep in a drunken stupor and quickly killed. Meanwhile, the Greek fleet that had been waiting just over the horizon returned and Odysseus opened the gates to let the army in.
The destruction and slaughter was terrible. Everything that wasn't burned was looted. The men were brutally killed, the women and children taken into slavery. King Priam, who was old and unable to defend himself, was dragged across the floor by his hair and mercilessly killed by Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, and just as much a murderous thug as his father. One of the few to escape was Aeneas, carrying his father on his back. He wandered the Mediterranean for long afterwards until he arrived in Italy, and founded Rome. Unless you believe the alternative myth, that it was founded by Romulus and Remus. Either way, that was the end of Troy. |