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WAR GODS 71.16%

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Greek. See ARES and ENYO (1).
 
WAR GODS 71.16%

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Roman.See MARS and BELLONA (1).
 
TROJAN WAR 57.68%

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The story of the Trojan War, like the story of the Argonauts, underwent, in the course of time, many changes and amplifications. The kernel of the story is contained in the two epic poems of Homer: the Iliad and the Odyssey. The incidents, either narrated or briefly touched upon in these, were elaborated or developed by the post-Homeric poets, partly by connecting them with other popular traditions, and partly by the addition of further details of their own in ation. While in Homer it is simply the rape of Helen which is the occasion of the war, a later legend traced its origin to the marriage of Pelous and Thetis, when Eris threw down among the assembled gods the golden apple inscribed For the fairest. The quarrel that ensued between Hera, Athene, and Aphrodite for the prize of beauty was decided by Paris in favour of Aphrodite, who in return secured him the possession of Helen, while Hera and Athene became, from that time onward, the implacable enemies of the whole Trojan race. According to Homer, after Helen had been carried off by Paris, Menelaus and Agamemnon visited all the Greek chieftains in turn, and prevailed on them to take part in the expedition which they were preparing to avenge the wrong. According to the later account, the majority of the chieftains were already bound to follow the expedition by an oath, which they had sworn to Tyndareos. Agamemnon was chosen commander-in-chief; next to him the most prominent Greek heroes are his brother Menelaus, Achilles and Patroclus, the two Ajaxes, Teucer, Nestor and his son Antilochus, Odysseus, Diomedes,Idomeneus, and Philoctetes, who, however, at the very outset of the expedition had to be left behind, and does not appear on the scene of action until just before the fall of Troy. Later epics add the name of Palamedes. The entire host of 100,000 men and 1,186 ships assembled in the harbour of Aulis. Here, while they were sacrificing under a plane tree, a snake darted out from under the altar and ascended the tree, and there, after devouring a brood of eight young sparrows and the mother-bird himself, was turned into stone. This omen Calchas, the seer of the host, interpreted to mean that the war would last nine years, and terminate in the tenth with the destruction of Troy [Iliad ii 299-332]. Agamemnon had already received an oracle from the Delphian god that Troy would fall when the best of the Greeks quarrelled. In Homer the crossing to Troy follows immediately; but in the later story the Greeks at first land by mistake in Mysia, in the country of Telephus (q.v.), and being dispersed by a storm and driven back to Greece, assemble afresh at Aulis, whence they are only permitted to set out after the sacrifice of Iphigenia (an incident entirely unknown to Homer). On the Greek side the first to fall is Protesilaiis, who is the first to land. The disembarkation cannot take place until Achilles has slain the mighty Cycnus (q.v., 2). After pitching their camp, Odysseus and Menelaus proceed as ambassadors to Troy, to demand the surrender of Helen. But this proposal, in spite of the inclination of Helen herself and the admonition of the Trojan Antenor, falls to the ground, owing to the opposition of Paris, and war is declared. The number of the Trojans, whose chief hero is Hector, scarcely amounts to the tenth part of that of the besiegers; and although they possess the aid of countless brave allies, such as Aeneas, Sarpedon, and Glaucus, in their fear of Achilles they dare not risk a general engagement. On the other hand, the Achaeans can do nothing against the well-fortified and defended town, and see themselves confined to laying ambuscades and devastating the surrounding country, and compelled by lack of provisions to have resource to foraging expeditions in the neighbourhood, undertaken by sea and by land under the generalship, of Achilles. At length the decisive tenth year arrives. The Homeric Iliad narrates the events of this year, confining itself to the space of fifty-one days. Chryses, of Apollo, comes in priestly garb into camp of the Greeks to ransom his daughter Chryseis from Agamemnon. He is rudely repulsed, and Apollo consequently visits the Greeks with a plague. In an assembly of the Greeks summoned by Achilles, Calchas declares the only means of appeasing the god to be the surrender of girl without ransom. Agamemnon assents to the general wish; but, by way of compensation, takes from Achilles, whom he considers to be the instigator of the whole plot, his favourite, slave Briseis. Achilles withdraws in a rage to his tent, and implores his mother Thetis to obtain from Zeus a promise that the Greeks should meet with disaster in fighting the Trojans until Agamemnon should give her son complete satisfaction [Il. i]. The Trojans immediately take the open field, and Agamemnon is induced by a promise of victory, conveyed in a dream from Zeus, to appoint the following day for a battle [ii]. The hosts are already standing opposed to one another, prepared for fight, when they agree to a treaty that the conflict for Helen and the plundered treasures be decided by a duel between Paris and Menelaus. Paris is overcome in the duel, and is only rescued from death by the intervention of Aphrodite [iii]. When Agamemnon presses for the fulfilment of the treaty, the Trojan Pandarus breaks the peace by shooting an arrow at Menelaus, and the first open engagement in the war begins [iv], in which, under the protection of Athene, Diomede performs miracles of bravery and wounds even Aphrodite and Ares [v]. Diomede and the Lycian Glaucus are on the point of fighting, when they recognise one another as hereditary guest-friends. Hector goes from the battle to Troy, and the day ends with an indecisive duel between Hector and Ajax son of Telamon. In the armistice ensuing both sides bury their dead, and the Greeks, acting on the advice of Nestor, surround the camp with a wall and trench [vii]. When the fighting begins afresh, Zeus forbids the gods to take part in it, and ordains that the battle shall terminate with the discomfiture of the Greeks [viii]. On the following night Agamemnon already begins to meditate flight, but Nestor advises reconciliation with Achilles. The efforts of the ambassadors are, however, fruitless [ix]. Here-upon Odysseus and Diomede go out to reconnoitre, capture Dolon, a Trojan spy, and surprise Rhesus (q.v.), king of the Thracians, the newly arrived ally of the enemy [x]. On the succeeding day Agamemnon's bravery drives the Trojans back to the walls of the town; but he himself, Diomede, Odysseus, and other heroes leave the battle wounded, the Greeks retire behind the camp walls [xi], to attack which the Trojans set out in five detachments. The opposition of the Greeks is brave; but Hector breaks the rough gate with a rock, and the stream of enemies pours itself unimpeded into the camp [xii]. Once more the Greek heroes who are still capable of taking part in the fight, especially the two Ajaxes and Idomeneus, succeed with the help of Poseidon in repelling the Trojans, while Telamonian Ajax dashes Hector to the ground with a stone; but the latter soon reappears on the battlefield with fresh strength granted him by Apollo at the command of Zeus [xiii]. Poseidon is obliged to leave the Greeks to their fate; they retire again to the ships, which Ajax in vain defends [xv]. The foremost ship is already burning, when Achilles gives way to the entreaties of his friend Patroclus, and sends him, clad in his own armour, with the Myrmidons to the help of the distressed Greeks. Supposing it to be Achilles himself, the Trojans in terror flee from the camp before Patroclus, who pursues them to the town, and lays low vast numbers of the enemy, including the brave Sarpedon, whose corpse is only rescued from the Greeks after a severe fight. At last Patroclus himself is slain by Hector with the help of Apollo [xvi]; Achilles' arms are lost, and even the corpse is with difficulty saved [xvii]. And now Achilles repents of his anger, reconciles himself to Agamemnon, and on the following day, furnished with new and splendid armour by Hephaestus at the request of Thetis [xviii], avenges the death of his friend on countless Trojans and finally on Hector himself [xxii]. With the burial of Patroclus and the funeral games established in his honour [xxiii], the restoration of Hector's corpse to Priam, and the burial of Hector, for which Archilles allows an armistice of eleven days [xxiv], the Iliad concludes. Immediately after the death of Hector the later legends bring the Amazons to the help of the Trojans, and their queen Penthesilea is slain by Achilles. Then appears Memnon, who is also mentioned by Homer; at the head of his Aethiopians he slays Antilochus son of Nestor, and is himself slain by Achilles. And now comes the fulfilment of the oracle given to Agamemnon at Delphi; for at a sacrificial banquet a violent quarrel arises between Achilles and Odysseus, the latter declaring craft and not valour to be the only means of capturing Troy. Soon after, in an attempt to force a way into the hostile town through the Scaean gate, or, according to later legend, at the marriage of Priam's daughter Polyxena in the temple of Thymbraean Apollo, Achilles falls slain by the arrow of Paris, directed by the god. After his burial, Thetis offers the arms of her son as a prize for the bravest of the Greek heroes, and they are adjudged to Odysseus. Thereupon his competitor, the Telamonian Ajax, slays himself. For these losses, however, the Greeks find some compensation. Acting on the admonition of Helenus, son of Priam, who had been captured by Odysseus, that Troy could not be conquered without the arrows of Heracles and the presence of a descendant of Aeacus, they fetch to the camp Philoctetes, the heir of Heracles, who had been abandoned on Lemnos, and Neoptolemus, the young son of Achilles, who had been brought up on Seyros. The latter, a worthy son of his father, slays the last ally of the Trojans, Eurypylus, the brave son of Telephus; and Philoctetes, with one of the arrows of Heracles, kills Paris. Even when the last condition of the capture of Troy, viz. the removal of the Palladium from the temple of Athene on the citadel, lias been successfully fulfilled by Diomede and Odysseus, the town can only be taken by treachery. On the advice of Athene, Epeius, son of Panopeus, builds a gigantic wooden horse, in the belly of which the bravest Greek warriorsconceal themselves under the direction of Odysseus, while the rest of the Greeks burn the camp and embark on board ship, only, however, to anchor behind Tenedos. The Trojans, streaming out of the town, find the horse, and are in doubt what to do with it. According to the later legend, they are deceived by the treacherous Sinon, a kinsman of Odysseus, who has of his own free will remained behind. He pretends that he has escaped from the death by sacrifice to which he had been doomed by the malice of Odysseus, and that the horse has been erected to expiate the robbery of the Palladium; to destroy it would be fatal to Troy, but should it be set on the citadel, Asia would conquer Europe. The fate of Laocoon (q.v.) removes the last doubt from the minds of the Trojans; the city gate being too small, they break down a portion of the wall, and draw the horse up to the citadel as a dedicatory offering for Athene. While they are giving themselves up to transports of joy, Sinon in the night opens the door of the horse. The heroes descend, and light the flames that give to the Greek fleet the preconcerted signal for its return. Thus Troy is captured; all the inhabitants are either slain or carried into slavery, and the city is destroyed. The only survivors of the royal house are Helenus, Cassandra, and Hector's wife Andromache, besides Aeneas (q.v.; for the fate of the rest see DEIPHOBUS, HECUBA, POLYDORUS, 2, POLYXENA, PRIAM, TROILUS). After Troy has been destroyed and plundered, Agamemnon and Menelaus, contrary to custom, call the drunken Greeks to an assembly in the evening. A division ensues, half siding with Menelaus in a desire to return home at once; while Agamemnon and the other half wish first to appease by sacrifice the deity of Athene, who has been offended by the outrage of the Locrian Ajax (see AIAS, 1). The army consequently sets out on its journey in two parts. Only Nestor, Diomede, Neoptolemus, Philoctetes, and Idomeneus reach home in safety; while Menelaus and Odysseus have first to undergo wanderings for many a long year. Death overtakes the Locrian Ajax on the sea, and Agamemnon immediately after his arrival home.
 
SEPTIMIUS 43.38%
The translator into Latin of the spurious work of Dictys (q.v., 2) on the Trojan War.
 
SINON 37.47%
A kinsman of Odysseus, who, on the apparent departure of the Greeks from Troy, volunteered to stay behind, and persuaded the Trojans to place the wooden horse within their citadel. (Cp. TROJAN WAR.)
 
BRISEIS 33.11%

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The favourite slave of Achilles. Agamemnon took her from him, and thus kindled the wrath of the hero, to the ruin of the Greeks. (See TROJAN WAR.)
 
STHENELUS 24.83%
Son of Capaneus and Euadne (q.v.) He took part in the expedition of the Epigoni against Thebes and in the Trojan War, where he fought as the brave comrade and charioteer of Diomedes.
 
AMPHILOCHUS 23.56%
Son of Amphiaraus and Eriphyle, Alcmaeon's brother. He was a seer, and according to some took part in the war of the Epigoni and the murder of his mother. He was said to have founded the Amphilochian Argos (near Neokhori) in Acarnania. Later legend represents him as taking part in the Trojan War, and on the fall of Troy going to Cilicia with Mopsus (q.v.), and there founding a famous oracle at Mallus. At last the two killed each other while fighting for the possession of it.
 
ERIS 21.88%

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The goddess of discord, fighting, and quarrelling in the Greek mythology. In Homer she is sister and companion of Ares, and like him insatiate of blood; in Hesiod she is daughter of Night, and mother of trouble, oblivion, hunger, pain, murder and carnage, brawls, deceit, and lawlessness. She was the only one among the gods who was not bidden to the marriage of Peleus and Thetis. In revenge she threw a golden apple among the guests, and thus gave occasion for the Trojan War. (See TROJAN WAR.) Side by side with this destructive Eris was a beneficent Eris, the sister, according to Hesiod, of the other. She was the personification of noble rivalry, and is represented as stimulating even dullards to exertion.
 
DEIPHOBUS 21.74%
Son of Priam and Hecuba, and one of the chief Trojan heroes, next to, Hector, after whose death he was the leader of the Trojan army. It was he and Paris who were said to have slain Achilles. In the later story he is the husband of Helen, after Paris' death, and is betrayed by her to Menelaus n the taking of Troy. According to Homer's account he was surprised by Odysseus and Menelaus in his own house, and overcome only after a hard struggle.
 
BELLONA 20.61%
The Roman goddess of war. An old Italian divinity, probably of Sabine origin. She was supposed to be wife or sister of Mars, and was identified with the Greek Enyo. Her temple, which was situated in the Campus Martius, outside. the old pomerium, was used for meetings of the senate when it was dealing with the ambassadors of foreign nations, or Roman generals who claimed a triumph on their return from war. It must be remembered that under such circumstances a general might not enter the city. The pillar of war (Columna Bellica) stood hard by. It was from this, as representing the boundary of the enemy's territory, that the Fetialis threw his ance on declaring war.
 
CALCHAS 19.68%

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Son of Thestor of Mycenae. Calchas was the celebrated seer who accompanied the Greeks on their expedition against Troy. Homer calls him the best of soothsayers, who knew the past, the present, and the future. Before the fleet started from Aulis, Calchas predicted that the Trojan war would last ten years. His own death (so ran the prophecy) was to occur whenever he met a wiser seer than himself. After the Trojan war he came to the island of Claros, where, in the sacred precincts of Apollo, he fell in with the soothsayer Mopsus, who beat him in a match of guessing riddles. [See MOPSUS (2)]. Calchas died of grief, or, according to another story, took away his own life. A temple was erected to him in Apulia, where the votaries lay down to sleep on sheepskins, and received oracles in their sleep.
 
TORMENTA 17.40%

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The heavy Roman engines of war. (See ARTILLERY.)
 
CHRYSEIS 16.53%

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The daughter of Chryses, priest of Apollo at Chryse. She was carried away by the Greeks at the conquest of her native city, and allotted to Agamemnon. Agamemnon having refused the father's proffered ransom, Apollo visited the Greek camp with pestilence until Agamemnon gave her back without payment. (See TROJAN WAR.)
 
VIRTUS 16.26%

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The Roman personification of bravery in war. (See HONOS.)
 
POLYMESTOR 15.61%
A Thracian king. He murdered Polydorus, the son of Priam, who had been entrusted to his protection, and was blinded by Hecuba and the captive Trojan women. (Cp.POLYDORUS.)
 
FETIALES 13.46%
A body of men whose business it was to maintain the forms of international relationship. The institution was universal in Italy. In Rome its introduction was ascribed to Numa or Ancus Martius. Here the fetiales formed a collegium of twenty members elected for life, and filled up vacancies in their body by co-optation. They were in early times exclusively patricians, but at all times it was necessary that they should belong to the highest classes. Their duties were, in case of conflicts arising with other nations, to give an opinion, based on the merits of the case, upon the question of war or peace; to give, or to demand in person, satisfaction by delivering up the guilty individual, to declare war or conclude peace, and to give the sanction of religion to both acts. On all these occasions they went out wearing their sacerdotal dress, and the insignia of their office. Before them one of the members of the collegium carried the sacred plants which they had gathered on the Capitol after asking permission of the magistrate on whose commission they were acting, king, consul, or praetor. If satisfaction was to be demanded from another nation, a number of fetiales was sent under the leadership of a speaker, the pater patratus, with the forms of a special ceremonial. Supposing satisfaction given, they took the offender with them, and parted in peace; if the other party asked for time to consider the matter, this was granted to ten days and extended to thirty. If, after this, satisfaction were not given, the speaker made a solemn protest, adding that the Roman people would now take the matter into its own hands. Supposing now that war were decided on, the speaker, in presence of at least three witnesses, uttered the solemn declaration, and threw a bloody lance into the enemy's territory. After the war with Pyrrhus this ceremony was performed at the Column of War near the temple of Bellona, and the declaration of war was carried to the general in command according to the form prescribed by the law of the fetiales. If it was in contemplation to bring the war to a close, and the enemy had not made an unconditional surrender, the fetiales, with the authority of a senatus consultum, and in the name of the State, either concluded a truce for a definite number of years, or a formal alliance. The general, if he made peace without the consent of the Roman people, did so on his own responsibility and without binding the State. If the people were dissatisfied with the terms, the fetiales delivered the general up, naked and handbound, to the enemy. In case of the alliance being concluded, the pater patratus took a flint stone, which was preserved in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, and slew a swine therewith, first reading out the terms of the alliance, and then appealing to Jupiter, in case the Roman people maliciously broke the treaty, to smite them as he would smite the animal. He then signed the document, which bound the collegium of fetiales to see that the treaty was observed. It was also usual for the civil magistrate to make oath by Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus, on a sceptre which was likewise taken from the temple of Jupiter Feretrius. Since the Second Punic War there is but little mention of the action of the fetiales, but its existence can be traced as late as the middle of the 4th century A.D.
 
STRATEGUS 13.24%
A general. Among the Lacedoemonians, it was a special designation of leaders of those armies which were not commanded by the kings. They were appointed by the public assembly, or by the ephors commissioned thereby. At Athens, there was annually elected, by show of hands (cheirotonia) in the public assembly, a board of Ten Generals, who had the superintendence of all military affairs. Only those were elected to this high and influential office who were lawfully married, and who possessed landed property in Attica. In earlier times they superintended operations both by land and sea, and assumed the actual command in turn on successive days, while they held a council of war in common. In later times no more were sent to the seat of war than were deemed sufficient for the purpose; and, from the time when the Athenians carried on their wars mainly by means of mercenaries, soldiers of experience, who did not belong to the board, were not unfrequently entrusted with the command, and were called strategi during the continuance of the war. Those strategi who remained at home, besides seeing that the country was protected against hostile invasion, had the control of the war-taxes and the trierarchia, the selection and equipment of the troops and the jurisdiction affecting all the law-suits connected with the war-taxes and trierarchy, as well as all the military offences which had not been punished by the general at the seat of war. Their chamber of office was called the strategion, and bore they dined together at the expense of the State. [The office of strategos was not created by Clisthenes, but was at least as old as the time of Dracon (Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 4). In the 4th century we find the strategi no longer elected from each of the ten phyloe, but from the whole body of citizens without distinction of phyle (ib. 61).] The highest officer of the Aetolian and the Achaean league, who was not only a commander of the federal army, but also president of the council and assemblies of the league, also bore the title of strategus.
 
CAESAR 12.48%
Julius Caesar was born in 102 or 100 B.C., and was assassinated on March 15th, B.C. 44. He was famous no less as an orator and writer than as a general and statesman. Endowed with extraordinary natural gifts, he received a careful education under the superintendence of his mother Aurelia. In B.C. 77 he came forward as the public accuser of Dolabella, and entered the lists against the most celebrated advocates of the day, Cotta and Hortensius. From that time his fame was established as that of an advocate of the first rank. The faculties of which he bad given evidence he cultivated to their highest point under the tuition of the rhetorician Molo in Rhodes, and attained such success, that his contemporaries regarded him as an orator second only to Cicero. Indeed, Cicero himself fully recognizes his genius, awarding especial praise to the elegance and purity of his Latin. Caesar, however, left but few speeches in a finished state, and these have not come down to us. A number of writings give evidence of the many-sidedness of his genius and literary activity, but these are also lost. There were poems, which never attained much reputation, including, besides boyish effusions, some verses on his journey to Spain in B.C. 46. A treatise on Latin accidence, dedicated to Cicero, and entitled De Analogia, was written during his march across the Alps to his army in Gaul. The Anticatones, composed in his Spanish camp before the battle of Munda in B.C. 45, was a reply to Cicero's panegyric on Cato of Utica. A treatise on astronomy, De Astris, had probably some connection with the reform of the calendar introduced by him, as Pontifex Maximus, in B.C. 45. His two great works have, however, survived. These are his Commentarii de Bello Gallico, 58-52 B.C., in seven books, and his Commentarii de Bello Civili, 49-48 B.C., in three books. The former was written down rapidly, at the end of 52 and begining of 51, in his winter quarters before Bibracte. The latter was probably composed in Spain after the conquest of the Pompeians in 45. The history of the Gallic War was completed after Caesar's death by Aulus Hirtius. This writer added an eighth book, which included the last rising of the Gauls in 51, and the events of the year 50 which preceded the Civil War. The book, as we now have it, is unfinished. There are three other anonymous books which continue the history of the Civil War. The Bellum Alexandrinum (War in Alexandria) is perhaps from the hand of Hirtius. The Bellum Africum (War in Africa) is written in a pompous and affected style [and has recently been assigned, but without sufficient reason, to Asinius Polliol. The Bellum Hispanum (Spanish War), is to be attributed to two different authors. Its style is rough, and shows that the writer was not an educated man.
 
LYCOPHRON 12.38%
A Greek grammarian and poet, a native of Chalcis in Euboea, who lived in the first half of the 3rd century B.C. at Alexandria, where Ptolemy Philadelphus. entrusted him with arranging for the library the works of the Greek comic poets. As a result of this occupation, he produced a voluminous and learned work on Greek Comedy. He himself wrote tragedies, and was counted one of the Pleiad, the seven Alexandrine tragedians. Of his works there remains a poem in 1,474 iambic verses, entitled Alexandra or Cassandra, which is rendered almost unreadable by the obscurity of its language and by its pedantic display of learning. It consists of a long monologue, in which Cassandra prophesies the fall of Troy and the fates of the heroes of the Trojan War, with allusions to the universal empire of Alexander the Great.
 
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