Mr

Miles Parish Eng. 101.07

10/9/06

The Trojan War is one of the most well known stories in the history of mankind but happened such a long time ago that a discrepancy likely exists between the version provided and the original. Since the Trojan war is an actual historical event, storytellers Homer and Aeschylus wrote about the involvement of the supernatural as an explanation for many events that led to the outcome of the war.

According to the narratives of Homer and Aeschylus, the conflict started when the Goddess of discord, Eris, was not invited to the wedding of King Peleus and Thetis in an act of spite Eris threw a golden apple with the words "for the fairest" inscribed on it into the wedding. This act caused a dispute between the goddesses Aphrodite, Hera and Athena over who was the fairest, which lead them to the God Zeus to judge who was the fairest of the three. Zeus refused this request and told the three to ask Paris. The three descended on Paris and each one offered him bribes. This influences Paris's decision to give the golden apple to Aphrodite, for this he received the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen, who married King Menelaus. Paris manages to take Helen back to Troy with him and when Menelaus hears of this he decides to retaliate against the city of Troy. As the story goes on many of the larger figures in Greek mythology make appearances. Ultimately the Trojans lose the war.

This version of the Trojan War (in some accounts called the Iliad) by Homer and Aeschylus has been passed down from generation to generation as the most feasible account of that time. It is now my task to refute this tale, exposing how it is improbable, obscure, impossible to believe, and inconsistent with a more rational sense of history.

The narrative account of the Trojan War by Homer and Aeschylus is impossible on a number of levels because it is inconsistent with many of the laws of nature. For example, there is no such thing as a way to revive humans from the dead as we see in the story where Hermes brings Protesilaus back to life for a few hours to see his wife. This might have been possible if the Greeks had access to some of the more advanced medical technology that we have today but since they did not, this is one clear example of how this story is impossible.

The narrative account of the cause of Trojan War is very improbable because