The Trojan War

Question 1

Who is Laomedon’s son?

Answer 1

Priam

Question 2

What was Hecuba’s dream about?

Answer 2

she would give birth to a fire-brand which would ignite the city

Question 3

Who is Priam’s wife?

Answer 3

Hecuba

Question 4

What did Priam do after Hecuba had the dream about their baby?

Answer 4

send the new born baby boy to exposed to die on Mount Ida

Question 5

What does Paris mean?

Answer 5

wander-off of men

Question 6

Who raised Paris?

Answer 6

suckled by a she bear and raised by the servant in charge of killing him

Question 7

Who was Paris visited by and what did they demand? What did they bribe him with?

Answer 7

Hera, Athene, & Aphrodite. They demanded that he make judgement about their relative beauty. Power by Hera, Victory in war by Athene, & the hand of Helen the world’s most loveliest woman by Aphrodite.

Question 8

Who is the father and mother of Helen?

Answer 8

Zeus & Leda

Question 9

Who is Helen married to already before Paris?

Answer 9

Menelaos, King of Sparta

Question 10

What is the Greek laws about a man and woman commit adultery?

Answer 10

The man to be blind and the woman barred from participation in public sacrifice

Question 11

What was the basic moral rule that Paris broke?

Answer 11

He had been a guest in Menelaos’ house and repaid this hospitality with gross betrayal

Question 12

Who was Helen’s moral father?

Answer 12

Tynadareos

Question 13

After Paris and Helen eloped what did Menelaos do?

Answer 13

turned to his more powerful brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and many Greek warriors who took an oath and went out to Troy

Question 14

What was Achilles prophecy?

Answer 14

he has been told prophetically that he is fated never to return from Troy

Question 15

Who was Achilles’ comrade and close friend?

Answer 15

Patroclus [Patroklos]

Question 16

What was Odysseus prophecy?

Answer 16

had been told prophetically that the war will keep him from home for 20 years.
The 20 = (i) 10 years of fighting and (ii) another 10 to get home.

Question 17

Who were the major heroes on the Greek side?

Answer 17

• Ajax [Aias], son of Telamon. Huge in size and strength. Utterly dependable.
• Diomedes, son of Tydeus. King of Argos
• Nestor is the most elderly of the Greek warriors, imagined as being in his
  60s. Kind of Pylos
• Philoctetes [Philoktetes]

Question 18

Who were the Trojan heroes?

Answer 18

1) Hector [Hektor], son of Priam and Hecuba
2) Aeneas [Aineias], son of Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite
3) The Trojan women: Cassandra, Polyxena, Andromache
4) Helen at Troy pg 205

Question 19

Who were some of the God’s among the Trojan War?

Answer 19

• Apollo and Aphrodite support the Trojans
• Hera, Athena, and Poseidon support the Greeks
• Zeus, Ares, and Hermes tend to be neutral

[The gods watch the war from heaven, or from atop Mt. Ida near Troy, sometimes they descend (not Zeus) to join in the human fighting.]

By the war’s end, page 138, Apollo has turned against the Trojans—perhaps
because by now they are fated to lose

Question 20

Agamemnon is portrayed as what kind of leader? why ?

Answer 20

a terrible leader: arrogant, selfish,
divisive.
In his foolish hubris, Agamemnon (i) disrespects a priest of Apollo and
then (ii) acts high-handedly toward his own top-champion warrior (in confiscating
Achilles’ concubine for himself.

Question 21

The Greek hero Ajax (son of Telamon) heroically saves the Greeks ships from being what?

Answer 21

saves the beached Greeks ships from being burned up by the advancing Trojans

Question 22

Which son of Zeus’ dies because its his fate to die in the Trojan war?

Answer 22

Sarpedon

Question 23

What Patroclus do with Achilles permission? What happens to him next?

Answer 23

To aid the Greeks,
Patroclus with Achilles’ permission enters the battle in Achilles’
armour and kills the Trojan hero Sarpedon. Patroclus routs the Trojans and in pursuit climbs halfway up Troy’s wall, but then the Trojan champion Hector slays Patroclus outside the walls.

Question 24

Achilles re-enters the fight, equipped in wondrous new armour supplied by which God?

Answer 24

Hepheatus

Question 25

Who kills Priam and how does it die?

Answer 25

Priam is killed by Achilles’ son, Neoptolemus, at an altar of Zeus

Question 26

Who is Astyanax? & What happens to him?

Answer 26

Hector’s toddler son, Astyanax, is deliberately thrown to his death from the wall.

Question 27

Who is Polyxena and how does she die?

Answer 27

She is the youngest daughter of Priam and Neoptolemos (Achilles’ son) drives his sword into her throat. Her death being demanded by the ghost of Achilles.

Question 28

Who is Cassandra violated by and where?

Answer 28

Ajax at the alter of Athena

Question 29

With the capture of Troy, how do the God’s feel?

Answer 29

The gods in disgust now turn against the Greeks. Many Greeks on their journeys home will encounter the
gods’ anger, beginning the end of the Age of Heroes.
From now on, the gods withdraw from humankind: They will no longer socialize with or sleep with human beings. There’ll be no more impregnation of human women by Zeus

Question 30

what does “nostalgia” mean?

Answer 30

“aching to go home”.

Question 31

what does the Greek work ‘nostoi’?

Answer 31

going home

Question 32

Who, how and when is Agamemnon killed?

Answer 32

on his return back to Mycenae, he is murdered in his bath with a ax or sword or dagger by his wife (Cytrmnestra) and her lover (Aeistus)

Question 33

What does Orestes (Agamemnon’s son) do once he finds out his mother killed his father?

Answer 33

avenge his death and kills his own mother, later to haunted by the furies (their job is to punish violence against blood-relatives)