helen

The Greeks are plotting to invade Troy to steal the treasures of the Trojans.
Meanwhile Prince Paris is assigned by his wise father and King of Troy to travel to
Sparta and shows the peaceful intentions of his people. Along his journey, he falls
into the sea during a storm and is rescued on the shore by the Queen of Sparta,
Helen. When he recovers, he believes that she is a slave and they fall in love with
each other. When he arrives at the Spartan palace, he is arrested by King Menelaus
but Helen helps him to escape. They travel together to Troy and give the excuse the
Greeks need to start the war and put Troy under siege for years. The Greeks are
unsuccessful in their intents, until they listen to the cunning Ulysses. The Greeks
then withdraw their one thousand ships from the Trojan waters and offer a wooden
Horse of Troy as a gift to the winners.

The Odyssey Summary

Ten years after the fall of Troy, the victorious Greek hero Odysseus has still not returned to his
native Ithaca. A band of rowdy suitors, believing Odysseus to be dead, has overrun his palace,
courting his faithful -- though weakening -- wife, Penelope, and going through his stock of food.
With permission from Zeus, the goddess Athena, Odysseus' greatest immortal ally, appears in
disguise and urges Odysseus' son Telemachus to seek news of his father at Pylos and Sparta.
However, the suitors, led by Antinous, plan to ambush him upon his return.

As Telemachus tracks Odysseus' trail through stories from his old comrades-in-arms, Athena
arranges for the release of Odysseus from the island of the beautiful goddess Calypso, whose
prisoner and lover he has been for the last eight years. Odysseus sets sail on a makeshift raft, but
the sea god Poseidon, whose wrath Odysseus incurred earlier in his adventures by blinding
Poseidon's son, the Cyclops Polyphemus, conjures up a storm. With Athena's help, Odysseus
reaches the Phaeacians. Their princess, Nausicaa, who has a crush on the handsome warrior,
opens the palace to the stranger. Odysseus withholds his identity for as long as he can until
finally, at the Phaeacians' request, he tells the story of his adventures.

Odysseus relates how, following the Trojan War, his men suffered more losses at the hands of the
Kikones, then were nearly tempted to stay on the island of the drug-addled Lotus Eaters. Next,
the Cyclops Polyphemus devoured many of Odysseus' men before an ingenious plan of
Odysseus' allowed the rest to escape -- but not before Odysseus revealed his name to
Polyphemus and thus started his personal war with Poseidon. The wind god Ailos then provided
Odysseus with a bag of winds to aid his return home, but the crew greedily opened the bag and
sent the ship to the land of the giant, man-eating Laistrygonians, where they again barely
escaped.

On their next stop, the goddess Circe tricked Odysseus' men and turned them into pigs. With the
help of the god Hermes, Odysseus defied her spell and metamorphosed the pigs back into men.
They stayed on her island for a year in the lap of luxury, with Odysseus as her lover, before
moving on and resisting the temptations of the seductive and dangerous Sirens, navigating
between the sea monster Scylla and the whirlpools of Charybdis, and plumbing the depths of
Hades to receive a prophecy from the blind seer Tiresias. Resting on the island of Helios,
Odysseus' men disobeyed his orders not to touch the oxen. At sea, Zeus punished them and all
but Odysseus died in a storm. It was then that Odysseus reached Calypso's island.

Odysseus finishes his story, and the Phaeacians hospitably give him gifts and ferry him home on
a ship. Athena disguises Odysseus as a beggar and instructs him to seek out his old swineherd,
Eumaeus; she will recall Telemachus from his own travels. With Athena's help, Telemachus
avoids the suitors' ambush and reunites with his father, who reveals his identity only to his son
and swineherd. He devises a plan to overthrow the suitors with their help.

In disguise as a beggar, Odysseus investigates his palace. The suitors and a few of his old
servants generally treat him rudely as Odysseus sizes up the loyalty of Penelope and his other
servants. Penelope, who notes the resemblance between the beggar and her presumably dead
husband, proposes a contest: she will, at last, marry the suitor who can string Odysseus' great
bow and shoot an arrow through a dozen axe heads.

Only Odysseus can pull off the feat. Bow in hand, he shoots and kills the suitor Antinous and
reveals his identity. With Telemachus, Eumaeus, and his goatherd Philoitios at his side, Odysseus
leads the massacre of the suitors, aided only at the end by Athena. Odysseus lovingly reunites
with Penelope, his knowledge of their bed that he built the proof that overcomes her skepticism
that he is an impostor. Outside of town, Odysseus visits his ailing father, Laertes, but an army of
the suitors' relatives quickly finds them. With the encouragement of a disguised Athena, Laertes
strikes down the ringleader, Antinous' father. Before the battle can progress any further, Athena,
on command from Zeus, orders peace between the two sides.

Iliad Summary

In the tenth and final year of the Trojan War, Chryses, a priest of Apollo, attempts to ransom his
daughter from Agamemnon, commander-in-chief of the Achaeans, who has taken her captive
while on a raid. When Agamemnon treats him roughly and refuses the ransom, Apollo is angered
and brings plague on the Achaeans. The Achaean prophet Calchas correctly identifies the cause
of the problem, and he suggests giving the girl back with gifts to Apollo. Agamemnon demands
that he be compensated for the loss of the girl, and Achilles, the greatest Achaean warrior,
objects. The two men quarrel viciously. Agamemnon says he will take back Briseis, a captive
woman who was given to Achilles as a prize for valor. Horribly dishonored, Achilles returns to
his ships and refuses to fight. Agamemnon has Briseis taken from Achilles, and he returns
Chryses' daughter to him. Achilles asks his mother, the goddess Thetis, to prevail on Zeus, king
of the gods, to bring ruin on the Achaeans as long as Achilles does not fight for them. Zeus is
indebted to Thetis, and he grants her request.

With Achilles out of the way, Hector, champion of the Trojans, drives the Achaeans back to their
beached ships. The Achaeans build fortifications, but at the urging of the chieftains Agamemnon
sends and embassy to ask Achilles to return to battle. Agamemnon offers rich prizes, but Achilles
refuses the offer and remains withdrawn from battle.

The Achaean fortifications are breached, and many of the the greatest remaining Achaean
warriors are wounded. Achilles beloved companion, Patroclus, begs Achilles to do something to
help their fellow soldiers. He asks that he be allowed to put on Achilles' armor, so that the
Trojans will think that Achilles has returned. Achilles grants the request, but warns Patroclus to
return once he has driven the Trojans back from the ships. Patroclus drives the Trojans back all
the way to their own city walls, but there Hector kills him with the help of Apollo. Hector strips
his armor and puts it on himself, and the Achaeans barely manage to save Patroclus' body from
desecration.

Achilles goes berserk with grief and rage. Thetis warns him that if he kills Hector, he will die
soon afterward. Achilles accepts his own life as the price for revenge. He reconciles himself to
Agamemnon, receives new armor, via his mother, forged by the smith of the gods, Hephaestus.
He charges into battle, slaughtering Trojans left and right, routing the Trojan army almost single-
handedly. He meets Hector, chases him around the city, and kills him easily. He then drags the
body from the back of his chariot, running laps around the city of Troy so that the Trojans can
watch as their champion's body is horribly desecrated.

Achilles returns to the Achaean camp, where he holds magnificent funeral games for Patroclus.
He continues to abuse Hector's corpse. Zeus sends Thetis to tell Achilles that he must accept the
ransom that Priam, king of Troy and father of Hector, will offer in exchange for Hector's body.
Priam himself comes to see Achilles, the man who has slaughtered so many of his sons, and
Achilles suddenly is reminded of his own fatherwho, as Priam has, will outlive his most
beloved son. He understands what he has done, and his rage and grief give way to compassion.
He returns the body and offers a cease-fire so that the Trojans can bury Hector. With the word of
Achilles as their guarantee, the Trojans take eleven days to give Hector a proper mourning and
funeral. As the epic ends, the future is clear: Achilles will not live to see the fall of Troy, but the
city is doomed nonetheless. All but a handful of her people will be slaughtered, and the city will
be wiped off the face of the earth.

The Aeneid Summary

Virgil's seminal epic, the Aeneid, tells the story of Aeneas's journey in search of the land where
he is destined to build the city that will one day become the great Roman Empire. Largely
influenced by Homer's Odyssey and Iliad, the Aeneid begins halfway through Aeneas's journey,
as he nears the city of Carthage, ruled over by Dido, who built the city after fleeing from her
murderous brother. Over dinner one night, he tells Dido and her court about his travels thus far.

Aeneas recounts the story of the fall of Troy, and how he was forced to leave the city of his birth
with his father Anchises, his son Ascanius, and his wife Creusa. During the flight, he lost Creusa,
whose shade appeared to him, telling him to follow his destiny, which is to build a great city and
take a royal bride. Aeneas and the other Trojan refugees set out to sea, where they had a great
many adventures before arriving in Carthage: believing that their destined land was in Crete,
they founded a city there, only to be struck down by a plague that forced them to leave; they
fought against the Harpies and were cursed by their leader, Celeano; they fled the island of the
Cyclops to avoid being slaughtered by the one-eyed beasts; Anchises died on the island of
Drepanum.

When Aeneas finishes telling Dido his tale, she realizes that she has become inflamed with love
for him, and she pursues him relentlessly. Juno manipulates the situation so that the pair spends
the night in a cave, where they become lovers. Eventually, however, Aeneas realizes that he has
been abandoning his destiny by dallying in Carthage, so he readies his men to leave. Dido has
convinced herself that the two are in fact husband and wife, and she is so distraught by her
lover's abandonment that she builds a funeral pyre and slays herself on it using Aeneas's sword.
As Aeneas and his men sail away from Carthage, they see the city aflame, the residents in a
panic, but they do not know that the queen has died. The fleet sails to Drepanum, where they
engage in celebrations commemorating the one-year anniversary of Anchises's death, and Aeneas
receives a prophecy telling him to travel to the Underworld to meet with his father.

With the sibyl of Cumae, Deiphobe, as his guide, Aeneas travels through the Underworld in
search of Anchises. On the journey, Aeneas sees a great many terrible sights, including restless
souls who have not received proper burials, the ghosts of dead babies, and the terrifying fortress
Tartarus, where the most horrible sinners live in eternal torture. When he finally locates his father
in the beautiful Elysium, where only the most heroic souls go to rest, Anchises shows him the
shades that, once reincarnated, will become the heroes of the Roman Empire. Aeneas returns to
the land of the living, certain of the need to fulfill his destiny, and then sets sail for Laurentum,
where he will build his great city.

When Aeneas and his men arrive in Laurentum, they are greeted warmly by King Latinus, who
has heard a prophecy that his daughter, Lavinia, should be wed to a foreigner. Juno, however,
angered by the treaty, sends one of the Furies to stir up trouble. The Fury Allecto starts a war
between the Trojans and the Latins by striking anger into the heart of Turnus, Lavinia's other
suitor. She also inspires Latinus's wife, Queen Amata, to do all that she can to prevent the
Trojans from building their city in Laurentum. Turnus calls the Latin men to arms against the
foreigners, and a terrible, drawn-out battle ensues. Aeneas seeks the aid of King Evander, ruler of
a poor neighboring kingdom, and the Etruscans, who wish to avenge the wrong done to them by
Mezentius, one of Turnus's supporters. King Evander entrusts his son, Pallas, to fight at the great
warrior's side, but Pallas is brutally slain by Turnus - a move that Turnus will come to regret.

Eventually, even the Latins come to realize the inevitability of the Trojan victory, and they call
for a one-on-one duel between Turnus and Aeneas. Just as the duel is about to begin, however,
Turnus's sister Juturna inflames the Latin troops. A young Trojan is killed, and the battle begins
once again. Finally, even Turnus realizes that the only way to end the slaughter is through a duel,
so the two meet in a field. Aeneas clearly has the upper hand throughout the battle, even though
Turnus is aided by his sister, Juturna, until Jupiter intervenes and declares that the gods may no
longer meddle in mortal affairs. Finally, Aeneas strikes Turnus to the ground, and the fallen man
pleads for his life, or at least for his corpse to be sent back to his father for burial. Although
Aeneas is momentarily moved by his adversary's plea, he sees that Turnus has callously slung
Pallas's belt across his shoulders, and Aeneas decides not to be merciful. The epic ends with
Aeneas plunging his sword through Turnus's heart and then with Turnus's moaning shade fleeing
to the Underworld.