Trojan War

In classical mythology, the great war fought between the Greeks and the Trojans. The Greeks sailed to Troy in order to recover Helen of Troy, the beautiful wife of a Greek king. She had been carried off to Troy by Paris, a prince of Troy. (Aphrodite had promised Helen to Paris following the Judgment of Paris.) The fighting continued for ten years, while Achilles, the greatest warrior of the Greeks, refused to fight because he had been offended by the commander, Agamemnon. Achilles finally took to the field and killed the greatest Trojan warrior, Hector. Having seriously weakened the Trojan defense, the Greeks achieved final victory through the ploy of the Trojan horse. They burned Troy to the ground and returned to Greece.

A war in ancient times between forces from the mainland of Greece and the defenders of the city of Troy, in what is now Turkey. The war seems to have begun about 1200 b.c. It is the basis of many classical legends, some of which appear in the ancient poems the Iliad and the Aeneid.