{"id":1930,"date":"2021-06-14T20:04:21","date_gmt":"2021-06-15T00:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/greekromanmyth\/?post_type=chapter&p=1930"},"modified":"2024-03-25T14:41:36","modified_gmt":"2024-03-25T18:41:36","slug":"origins-of-the-war","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/greekromanmyth\/chapter\/origins-of-the-war\/","title":{"raw":"Origins of the War","rendered":"Origins of the War"},"content":{"raw":"[caption id=\"attachment_2776\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"677\"]\"Eris, Eris, black-figure kylix, ca. 550 BCE[\/caption]\r\n\r\n
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Introduction<\/h1>\r\n

The Trojan War was a mythological war that may have been based on cultural memory of a war (or wars) that actually happened. Therefore, there are both mythological and \"historical\" explanations for its origins. I put \"historical\" in quotations because\u00a0 history writing did not work the same way in the ancient world as it does today. They did not have the same standards for citing sources and a good deal of speculation on the part of the author was generally allowed.<\/p>\r\n

The Trojan War might accurately be described as one of those events where myth meets history. The place where Troy was said to be, on the northwestern coast of modern day Turkey, was the site of a Mycenaean civilization, which flourished and declined at different points in archaic Greek history. For the Greeks of the Classical period and later, the Trojan War was probably *the* defining event of their mythology. It marked the end of the Age of Heroes. The last generation of mythological heroes are the children of the Trojan War heroes (Orestes, the son of Agamemnon; Neoptolemus, son of Achilles; Hermione, the daughter of Helen). After that, we do not get any more stories about mythological heroes.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Mythological Origins<\/h1>\r\n
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Sections & Primary Sources<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

\r\n\r\nThe Judgement of Paris<\/a>\r\n