Trojan War: Beginning of the End

OK recap:

Gods are back: Zeus allow the gods to intervention again.

Famous matchup: Achilles vs. Hector

MVPs’ death: Hector, Achilles, Ajax, Memnon, and  Penthesileia

To War:

The Greeks were dismayed by the deaths of two of their greatest fighters. The city seemed as invulnerable as ever. The Greek seer, named Calchas, told them Troy won't fall until the Greeks do two things:

• Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, joins the war
• The bow and arrows of Heracles must be brought to Troy

Odysseus easily persuaded young Neoptolemus to join the Greeks. Neoptolemus was his father's son and a better warrior.  The bow of Heracles, however, belonged to one of the Greek leaders named Philoctetes, whom the Greeks had abandoned on the island of Lemnos due to the vile odor from snakebite.

Philoctetes was bitter of the Greeks deserting him on the uninhabited island, and he refused to join the Greeks, when they arrived. Philoctetes want to kill Odysseus, Agamemnon and Menelaus, because they were responsible for leaving him behind. Philoctetes would have killed Odysseus, until the appearance and intervention of the God Heracles (Roman name: Hercules) himself. Philoctetes’s father had lit the hero's funeral pyre; in return, Heracles had given his mighty bow to him had lit his pyre. Heracles, now a god, persuaded his friend to return with Odysseus to Troy. Heracles assured his old friend that he would finally be healed. At Troy, Philoctetes was healed by one of the Greek healers, named Machaon, the son of Asclepius.

In the fighting, the first person Philoctetes mortally wounded with his arrow was Paris. Paris remembering his first lover's words, whom he had abandoned for Helen. Oenone had told Paris before he left for Sparta that she would heal him if he was ever wounded. Helen had pleaded for his life. Of course, she had – without him she would be at the mercy of what was left of the Trojan court – but Oenone had refused to heal him. Helen had returned to what she assumed was the safety of city, but it was too late for both of them. Odysseus secretly follows the dying Paris. Odysseus used antidote on Paris and kept in mountains away Greek for his personal use.

With Paris “dead”: his two younger brothers, Helenus and Deiphobus, quarreled over who would have Helen. The people of Troy decided in favor of Deiphobus, and forced Helen to marry him. Helenus felt insult left the city but was captured by Odysseus. Helenus was the son of Priam and Hecuba, but he was also a seer, like his twin sister, Cassandra. The Greeks tortured the seer to reveal the weakness of Troy. The Greeks learnt from Helenus, that Troy would not fall, while the Palladium, divine statue of Athena, remained within Troy's walls. One night, Odysseus and Diomedes slipped into Troy and stole the Palladium. Troy was still strong but now can be conquer.