With Hector
alive again, the Trojans were out to war again. Achilles, seeing
this from his tent, had his friend Patroklos wear his armour
and push back the Trojans. Patroklos rode out into the battlefield,
and everyone mistook him for Achilles and rallied around him
and the Trojans fled. The Greeks pursued them closely, and the
Trojans retreated into their city and closed the gates.
The Greeks
now set up ladders against the high city walls and started scaling
it. Patroklos was the first to reach the top, and when Hector
saw him he was terrified, as he thought he was Achilles. Hector
knew that if Achilles jumped into the city, Troy would fall.
He prayed for intervention from the gods, and Apollo answered
his prayer. Apollo tipped Patroklos from his position on the
wall, with him falling backwards outside of the city. The impact
of the fall threw the helmet off his head, and everyone then
realized that he was not Achilles after all. The Trojans pushed
forward again, and killed Patroklos, now without his helmet.
Patroklos'
death spurred Achilles to fight again. His goddess mother, Thetis,
made him a new set of armour, which he wore and strode onto
the battlefield in. He called Hector out for a duel. Any god
would have easily settled the duel, but Zeus forbade all interference,
and realizing this, Hector knew that the first to tire would
be the first to lose. He tried to tire Achilles, weighed down
by his armour, by running around the city. Eventually, on the
third round, Achilles caught up with Hector and killed him.
He fastened Hector's body to a chariot and drove around the
city three times. All the soldiers stopped in their steps and
grew afraid of the savagery of the hero.
Every morning
thereafter, Achilles would drag Hector's body around Patroklos'
grave three times,
until
finally when the Trojans could take it no more, Hector's father
approached Achilles and demanded the body. Achilles would only
give up the corpse for its equal weight in treasures, and so
the exchange was made, and Hector was brought into Troy, and
buried.
The prophecy
of Achilles death was soon to be fulfilled, when Prince Memnon
from Ethiopia arrived. Memnon was on the side of the Trojans,
and he killed many Greek heroes. When he finally killed another
of Achilles' friend, Achilles was enraged, and went out to do
what he had done to Hector. However, after his savage slaughter
of Memnon, he bent down to strip the body, and the gods took
the opportunity to exploit Achilles' only vulnerability- his
heel. When his mother Thetis had rendered him immortal by dipping
him into the River Styx, she had held him by his heel, which
was not put into the river, thus leaving his heel mortal. Apollo
guided Paris' hand to shooting a poisoned arrow towards his
heel. The arrow hit and poison filled Achilles' body. Achilles
had finally died, and Thetis and the sea nymphs mourned, as
the Greeks did. His funeral was held for eighteen days and he
was finally burned and his ashes kept in a golden urn made by
the god Hephaistos.
Even Achilles,
the immortal son of Thetis had fallen. The Greeks were disillusioned
and weary after ten years of fighting. Many had left home for
many years, and yearned to return home. The Prophet Kalchas
beckoned them to hold on, for Troy was fated to fall soon enough.
There were a few conditions that had to be in place first: another
Greek hero Philoketes had to fire an arrow from the unerring
bow of Herakles, which would spark the start of the Trojan defeat.
Philoketes had been exiled to a faraway island, and troops were
immediately sent to fetch him.
Philoketes
soon arrived outside Troy where the Greeks attended to him quickly.
When he was told what had happened, Philoketes was furious.
He took Herakles bow and went to the gates of Troy and challenged
Paris to a duel of bows, to which Paris agreed. Paris took the
first shot, and missed. Philoketes took his turn and shot a
poisoned arrow, which hit Paris in the ankle. The poison filled
his body as Paris screamed in pain. The Trojans hastily dragged
their prince into the city and shut the gates. Inside Troy,
the soldiers tried to persuade the mountain nymph Oinone,who
had been Paris' wife before he left for Helen, for herbs to
cure the poison. In spite, she refused, asking him to get
help
from Helen instead, since he had left her for Helen. So Paris
died, and Oinone later was overcome with grief and threw herself
onto the funeral pyre and died together with Paris.
Once Paris
was dead, his brothers started quarreling about who should have
Helen. Helen wanted neither of them, and she tried to escape,
but was discovered by one of the brothers and was eventually
threatened into marriage. The other brothers were insanely jealous,
and they started trying to find ways to betray the Trojans to
the Greeks.
Next:
The
Fall of Troy >>