Troy Read online

  Stephen Fry

  * * *

  TROY

  Contents

  Introductory Note

  It Fell from Heaven

  Salvation and Destruction

  Ilium

  Beware of Greeks …

  The End

  Picture Section

  Appendix

  List of Characters

  Acknowledgements

  Index

  About the Author

  Stephen Fry is an award-winning comedian, actor, presenter and director. He rose to fame alongside Hugh Laurie in A Bit of Fry and Laurie (which he co-wrote with Laurie) and Jeeves and Wooster, and was unforgettable as General Melchett in Blackadder. He has hosted over 180 episodes of QI, and has narrated all seven of the Harry Potter novels for the audiobook recordings. He is the bestselling author of four novels – The Stars’ Tennis Balls, Making History, The Hippopotamus and The Liar – as well as three volumes of autobiography – Moab is My Washpot, The Fry Chronicles and More Fool Me. Mythos and Heroes, his retelling of the Greek myths, are both Sunday Times bestsellers.

  Picture Credits

  1. Artist’s Reconstruction of Troy; © by Christoph Haußner, München

  2. Attic red-figure stemless cup, depicting Diomedes stealing the magic Palladium, a statue of Pallas Athena, from Apulia, late 5th century BC (pottery); Bridgeman Images.

  3. Hercules Rescuing Hesione, Charles Le Brun, Etching, 1713–19; Artokoloro / Alamy Stock Photo.

  4. ‘We to those beasts, that rapid strode along, drew near, when Chiron took an arrow forth’, Gustave Doré, c.1890; The Print Collector / Alamy Stock Photo.

  5. Procession of Thetis, accompanied by two cupids and preceded by a Fortune, whose sail billows with favourable winds, Bartolomeo di Giovanni, 1490; Lanmas / Alamy.

  6. The Marriage of Thetis and Peleus with Apollo and the Concert of the Muses, or The Feast of the Gods, Hendrick van Balen, ca. 1618; ACTIVE MUSEUM / Alamy.

  7. The Judgement of Paris, Peter Paul Rubens, 1638; Prado Museum / Alamy.

  8. Helen of Troy, Antonio Canova; Tades Yee / Alamy Stock Photo.

  9. Bust of Menelaus, King of Ancient Sparta, Husband of Helen; Vatican Museum, Alinari / Bridgeman Images.

  10. Leda and Swan, Cesare Mussini; De Agostini Picture Library / Bridgeman Images.

  11. Thetis dipping Achilles into the Styx, Antoine Borel Rogat; © A. Dagli Orti / De Agostini Picture Library / Bridgeman Images.

  12. The Education of Achilles, James Barry, c.1772; Paul Mellon Fund / Bridgeman Images.

  13. Cassandra, Daughter of Priam, Prophetess of Fall of Troy; Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys; © The Maas Gallery, London / Bridgeman Images.

  14. The Abduction of Helen, Guido Reni, c.1626–31; Louvre / Bridgeman Images.

  15. Ulysses (Odysseus) Feigning Madness, c.19th C, gravure; © Look and Learn / Bridgeman Images.

  16. The Sacrifice of Iphigenia, François Perrier, 1632–33; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon, France / Alamy.

  17. Marble bust of Homer, Hellenistic period (330–20 BC); Musei Capitolini, Rome / Bridgeman.

  18. Greek Armada Lands On Trojan Beach in Troy, directed By Wolfgang Petersen, Film Company Warner Bros; © Warner Bros / AF archive / Alamy.

  19. Attic black-figure amphora depicting Achilles and Ajax playing dice, c.540–530 BC; Vatican / Bridgeman.

  20. Troilus and Cressida, from the Kelmscott Chaucer, designed by William Morris; Lebrecht Authors / Bridgeman Images.

  21. The Farewell of Achilles and of Briseis, detail of fresco from Casa del Poeta Tragico, Pompeii, 1st century AD; Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples / Luisa Ricciarini / Bridgeman.

  22. The Combat of Diomedes, Jacques Louis David, 1776; Albertina, Vienna / Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy.

  23. Ajax attacks Hector, detail from the outside of an Attic red-figure cup (The Douris Cup), made by Kalliades, c.490 BC; Louvre / Bridgeman.

  24. Menelaus holding the body of Patroclus, Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence; History / David Henley / Bridgeman.

  25. Achilles dragging Hector’s body around the walls of Troy, Donato Creti; Musee Massey, Tarbes, France / Bridgeman.

  26. Roman silver-gilt drinking cup depicting King Priam of Troy appealing to Achilles for the return of his son Hector’s body, found in a chieftain’s grave at Hoby, Denmark, 1st century BC; Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen / Bridgeman.

  27. The Wounded Achilles, Filippo Albacini, 1825; © The Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth / Reproduced by permission of Chatsworth Settlement Trustees / Bridgeman Images.

  28. Shield of Achilles, Philip Rundell, 1821–22; Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020.

  29. Laocoön and His Sons Attacked by the Serpents, Roman marble, 2nd Century BC; Vatican Museums / Agefotostock / Alamy.

  30. The Sack of Troy, Jean Maublanc; Besançon, Musée Des Beaux-Art Et D’Archéologie / G. Dagli Orti /De Agostini Picture Library / Bridgeman.

  31. The Killing of Priam, Antonio Canova, 1787–90; Fondazione Cariplo, Milan / © Mauro Ranzani / Bridgeman Images.

  Introductory Note

  The birth and rise of gods and humans is the subject of my book Mythos, whose successor Heroes covers the great feats, quests and adventures of mortal heroes such as Perseus, Heracles, Jason and Theseus. You do not have to know those books to enjoy this one; when I have judged it useful, I provide footnote references pointing to where fuller details of incidents and characters can be found in the previous two volumes, but no pre-existing knowledge of the Greek mythological world is presumed or required for you to embark on Troy. As I remind you from time to time, especially early on in the book, do not think for a minute that you have to remember all those names, places and familial interrelationships. To give background, I do describe the founding of many different dynasties and kingdoms; but I assure you that, when it comes to the main action, the different threads turn from a tangle into a tapestry. A two-part Appendix at the back of the book addresses the issue of how much of what follows is history and how much myth.

  It Fell from Heaven

  Troy. The most marvellous kingdom in all the world. The Jewel of the Aegean. Glittering Ilium, the city that rose and fell not once but twice. Gatekeeper of traffic in and out of the barbarous east. Kingdom of gold and horses. Fierce nurse of prophets, princes, heroes, warriors and poets. Under the protection of ARES, ARTEMIS, APOLLO and APHRODITE she stood for years as the paragon of all that can be achieved in the arts of war and peace, trade and treaty, love and art, statecraft, piety and civil harmony. When she fell, a hole opened in the human world that may never be filled, save in memory. Poets must sing the story over and over again, passing it from generation to generation, lest in losing Troy we lose a part of ourselves.

  To understand Troy’s end we must understand her beginning. The background to our story has many twists and turns. A host of place names, personalities and families enter and exit. It is not necessary to remember every name, every relationship of blood and marriage, every kingdom and province. The story emerges and the important names will, I promise, stick.

  All things, Troy included, begin and end with ZEUS, the King of the Gods, Ruler of Olympus, Lord of Thunder, Cloud-Gatherer and Bringer of Storms.

  Long, long ago, almost before the dawn of mortal history, Zeus consorted with Electra, a beautiful daughter of the Titan Atlas and the sea nymph Pleione. Electra bore Zeus a son, DARDANUS, who travelled throughout Greece and the islands of the Aegean searching for a place in which he could build and raise his own dynasty. He alighted at last on the Ionian coast. If you have never visited Ionia, you should know that it is the land east of the Aegean Sea which used to be called Asia Minor, but which we know as Turkish Anatolia. The great kingdoms of Phrygia and Lydia were there, but they were already occupied
and ruled over, so it was in the north that Dardanus settled, occupying the peninsula that lies below the Hellespont, the straits into which Helle fell from the back of the golden ram. Years later JASON would sail through the Hellespont on his way to find the fleece of that ram. The lovestruck Leander would swim nightly across the Hellespont to be with Hero, his beloved.fn1

  The city Dardanus established was called – with little imagination and less modesty – Dardanus, while the whole kingdom took on the name Dardania.fn2 Following the founder king’s death, Ilus, the eldest of his three sons, ruled – but he died childless, leaving the throne to his brother, the middle son, ERICHTHONIUS.fn3

  The reign of Erichthonius was peaceful and prosperous. In the lee of Mount Ida his lands were fed by the waters of the benign river gods Simoeis and Scamander, who blessed the land of Dardania with great fertility. Erichthonius grew to become the richest man in the known world, famous for his three thousand mares and their countless foals. Boreas, the North Wind, took the form of a wild stallion and fathered a remarkable race of horses by the filly foals of Erichthonius’s herd. These colts were so agile and light of foot they could gallop through fields of corn without bending a stalk. So they say.

  Horses and riches: always, when we talk of Troy, we find ourselves talking of wondrous horses and uncountable riches.

  FOUNDATION

  After the death of Erichthonius, his son TROS succeeded to the throne. Tros had a daughter, Cleopatra, and three sons, ILUS (named in honour of his great-uncle), Assaracus and GANYMEDE. The story of Prince Ganymede is well known. His beauty was so great that Zeus himself was seized by an overmastering passion for him. Taking the form of an eagle, the god swooped down and bore the boy up to Olympus, where he served as Zeus’s beloved minion, companion and cupbearer. To compensate Tros for the loss of his son, Zeus sent HERMES to him, bearing the gift of two divine horses, so swift and light they could gallop over water. Tros was consoled by these magical animals and by Hermes’ assurance that Ganymede was now and – by definition always would be – immortal.fn4

  It was Ganymede’s brother Prince Ilus who founded the new city that would be named Troy in Tros’s honour. He won a wrestling match at the Phrygian Games, the prize consisting of fifty youths and fifty maidens, but – more importantly – a cow. A very special cow that an oracle directed Ilus to use for the founding of a city.

  ‘Wherever the cow lies down, there shall you build.’

  If Ilus had heard the story of CADMUS – and who had not? – he would have known that Cadmus and Harmonia, acting in accordance with instructions from an oracle, had followed a cow, and waited for the animal to lie down as an indication of where they were to build what would become Thebes, the first of the great city states of Greece. It may seem to us that the practice of allowing cows to choose where a city should be built is arbitrary and bizarre, but perhaps a little reflection should tell us that it is not so strange after all. Where there is to be a city, there must also be plentiful sources of meat, milk, leather and cheese for its citizens. Not to mention strong draught animals – oxen for ploughing fields and pulling carts. If a cow is taken enough by the amenities of a region to feel able to lie down, then it is worth paying attention. At any rate, Ilus was content to follow his prize heifer all the way north from Phrygia to the Troad,fn5 past the slopes of Mount Ida and onto the great plain of Dardania; and it was here, not far from where Ilus’s great-grandfather’s first city of Dardanus had been built, that the heifer lay down at last.

  Ilus looked about him. It was a fine place for a new city. To the south rose the massif of Mount Ida and at some distance to the north ran the straits of the Hellespont. To the east the blue of the Aegean could be glimpsed, and through the green and fertile plain itself threaded the rivers Simoeis and Scamander.

  Ilus knelt down and prayed to the gods for a sign that he had made no mistake. In immediate answer a wooden object fell from the sky and landed at his feet in a great cloud of dust. It was about the height of a ten-year-old childfn6 and carved into a likeness of PALLAS ATHENA, a spear in one upraised hand and a distaff and spindle in the other, representing the arts of war and the arts of peace, over which the grey-eyed goddess held dominion.

  The act of looking at so sacred an object struck Ilus instantly blind. He was wise enough in the ways of the Olympians not to panic. Falling to his knees he cast up prayers of thanks to the heavens. After a week of steadfast devotion he was rewarded with the restoration of his sight. Brimming with revived energy and zeal, he began at once to lay out the foundations for his new city. He planned the streets so that they radiated like the spokes of a wheel from a central temple which he would dedicate to Athena. In the innermost sanctum of the temple he placed the wooden carving of Pallas Athena that fell from the sky: the xoanon, the Luck of Troy, the symbol and assurance of the city’s divine status. So long as this sacred totem reposed there unmolested, so long would Troy prosper and endure. So Ilus believed and so the people who flocked to help him build and populate this new city believed too. They called the wooden carving the PALLADIUM, and after Ilus’s father Tros they gave their city and themselves the new names of Troy and Trojans.fn7

  There we have the founding line, from Dardanus to his sons Ilus the First and Erichthonius, whose son Tros fathered Ilus the Second, after whom Troy is also called Ilium or Ilion.fn8

  CURSES

  There was another royal line in Ionia which we should know about: its importance would be difficult to overstate. You may already know the story of King TANTALUS, who ruled in Lydia, a kingdom to the south of Troy. Tantalus served up his son PELOPS to the gods in a stew.fn9 Young Pelops was reassembled and resurrected by the gods and grew up to be a handsome and popular prince and a lover of POSEIDON, who gave him a chariot drawn by winged horses. This chariot led to a curse which led to … which led to almost everything …

  Ilus had been as outraged as anyone by Tantalus’s depravity, enough to expel him by force of arms from the region. You would imagine that Pelops would have no objection to his father’s expulsion – after all, Tantalus had slaughtered him, his own son, butchered him and presented him to the Olympians in a fricassee – but far from it. No sooner had Pelops attained manhood than he raised an army and attacked Ilus, but was easily bested in battle. Pelops left Ionia, settling at last in land far to the west, the peninsula off mainland Greece that is called the Peloponnese after him to this day. On this remarkable piece of land grew up such legendary kingdoms and cities as Sparta, Mycenae, Corinth, Epidaurus, Troezen, Argos and Pisa. This Pisa is not the Italian home of the Leaning Tower, of course, but a Greek city state ruled over at the time of Pelops’s arrival by King OENOMAUS,fn10 a son of the war god Ares.

  Oenomaus had a daughter, HIPPODAMIA, whose beauty and lineage attracted many suitors. The king was fearful of a prophecy foretelling his death at the hands of a son-in-law. There were no nunneries in which daughters could be shut up in those days, so he tried another way of ensuring her perpetual spinsterhood – he announced that Hippodamia could only be won by a man who could defeat him in a chariot race. There was a catch: the reward for victory might be Hippodamia’s hand in marriage, but the price of losing the race would be the suitor’s life. Oenomaus believed that no finer charioteer than he existed in the world; consequently he was confident that his daughter would never wed and provide him with the son-in-law that the prophecy had taught him to dread. Despite the drastic cost of losing the race and the unrivalled reputation of Oenomaus as a charioteer, eighteen brave men accepted the challenge. Hippodamia’s beauty was great and the prospect of winning her and the rich city state of Pisa was tempting. Eighteen had raced against Oenomaus and eighteen had been beaten; their heads, in varying stages of decomposition, adorned the poles that ringed the hippodrome.

  When Pelops, ejected from his home kingdom of Lydia, arrived in Pisa he was instantly struck by Hippodamia’s beauty. While he believed in his own skills as a horseman, he thought it wise to call upon his one-time lover Poseidon fo
r extra aid. The god of the sea and of horses was happy to send from the waves a chariot and two winged steeds of great power and speed. To make doubly sure, Pelops bribed Oenomaus’s charioteer MYRTILUS, a son of Hermes, to help him win. Motivated by the promise of half Oenomaus’s kingdom and a night in bed with Hippodamia (with whom he too was in love), Myrtilus crept into the stables the night before the race and replaced the bronze linchpins which fixed the axle of Oenomaus’s chariot with substitutes carved from beeswax.

  The next day, when the race began, young Pelops dashed into the lead, but so great was King Oenomaus’s skill that he soon began to catch up. He was almost upon Pelops, his javelin raised to strike a deathblow, when the waxen linchpins gave way, the wheels flew from the chariot and Oenomaus was dragged to a bloody death under the hoofs of his own horses.

  Myrtilus went to claim what he thought was his just reward – a night with Hippodamia – but she ran complaining to Pelops, who hurled Myrtilus off a cliff into the sea. As the drowning Myrtilus struggled in the water, he cursed Pelops and all his descendants.

  Myrtilus is not the best known of Greek heroes. Yet the part of the Aegean into which he fell is still called the Myrtoan Sea. For countless years the local people conducted annual sacrifices to Myrtilus in the temple of his father Hermes, where his corpse lay embalmed after his death. All this devotion for a weak, lustful man who had accepted a bribe and caused the death of his own king.

  But the curse on Pelops. This curse matters. For Pelops and Hippodamia had children. And those children had children. And the curse of Myrtilus was on them all. As we shall see.

  If this story, the story of Troy, has a meaning or a moral it is the old, simple lesson that actions have consequences. What Tantalus did, exacerbated by what Pelops did … the actions of these two caused a doom to be laid on what was to be the most important royal house of Greece.