Troy vs Homer and Apollodorus

"The Abduction of Helen" by Luca Giordano (1632-1705)

Prologue:

1. Hektor never went to Sparta
2. Menelaus was out of town when Helen ran off with Paris.  Apollodorus's, Epitome, Book E, Chapter 3 (in this text, written in the second century BCE, Paris is called "Alexander")

The Siege:

1. The war lasted ten years, not seventeen days (Iliad, Book 12).
2. Briseis was from Lyrnessos, not Troy, and was neither a priestess of any kind nor the cousin of Hektor. Achilles killed her husband (Iliad, Book 19).

"The Abduction of Briseis from the Tent of Achilles"  (1773) by Johann Tischbein

"Andromache Mourning Hector" (1793) by Jacques-Louis David 

Hektor, Paris, and Achilles:

1. Hektor did not kill Menelaus.  At the end of Homer's Iliad, Menelaus is still alive.
2. Hektor did not kill Ajax.  In Apollodorus's Epitome, Book E, Chapter 5, Ajax committed suicide when not given the armor of Achilles after Achilles’ death
3. Paris died at Troy
4. Patroklos was older, not younger, than Achilles and was not his cousin
5. Achilles killed twelve Trojans at Patroklos’s funeral to burn along with his corpse (Book 23, lines 191)
6. Hektor lost his nerve and ran from Achilles (all the way round the city three times), before facing him for their climactic duel.  (Book 22: lines 150-280)

"Clytemnestra hesitates . . ." (1817) by Pierre-Narcisse Guerin

The Trojan Horse
1. Achilles was dead by the time the Horse was built and deployed. Apollodorus's Epitome, Book E, Chapter 5
2. Achilles predeceased his father, Peleus, whom Priam refers to as dead.
3. Achilles’ son, Neoptolemos, not Achilles himself, participated in the final sack of Troy.
4. Agamemnon was killed by his wife, Clytemnestra, back in Greece, immediately after the war (see image at left).

5. Andromache, Hektor’s wife, was captured and enslaved Apollodorus's Epitome, Book E, Chapter 5.
6. Baby Astyanax, Hektor’s son, was tossed off the walls after having his brains bashed out by Odysseus. Apollodorus's Epitome, Book E, Chapter 5,
7. Menelaus got Helen in the end (Telemachus, Odysseus’ son, visits them in Sparta in Book 4 of the Odyssey, ten years after the war) Apollodorus's Epitome, Book E, Chapter 5,

Troy today

Visual and Historical Anachronisms and Inaccuracies

1. Neither Agamemnon nor anyone else, till Alexander the Great, unified all of Greece.
2. The style of helmet of Achilles and others is anachronistic by five centuries or so
3. The style of ships in the film is anachronistic by six or seven centuries
4. The statuary throughout Troy is anachronistic by five centuries or complete fantasy (like the giant seated figure in Priam’s throne room)
5. The columns tapering downward are Minoan (Cretan), not Trojan
6. Both population and physical size of Troy are off by a factor of ten in the film
7. The lower city of Troy was protected by a deep trench, not a fifty-foot high wall
8. Coins could not have been placed on corpses’ eyes, because coins didn’t get invented till five or six centuries later

*The original version of this list was developed by  Dr. James Holoka, Professor of Foreign Languages and History at Eastern Michigan University