The Trojan War: A New History

Though the city is completely destroyed, Aeneas is heir to the Trojan throne. In the Iliad, Poseidon predicts Aeneas’s succession. The Greeks return to the ships with booty, slaves, and bodies. The Greek army soon sets upon each other. At first, Ajax instigates dispute. He is stoned for incurring Athena’s wrath when he seized Cassandra. The brothers Agamemnon and Menelaus dispute publicly about whether to appease Athena immediately or set off for home.

Nestor travels to Pylos, Diomedes to Argos and Neoptolemus to Phthia, but Locrian Ajax is drowned by Poseidon for blasphemy. Menelaus loses most of his ships on the journey home and returns to Sparta in time to hear that his brother has been murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus. Menelaus and Helen continue to rule Lacedaemon, marrying their daughter to Neoptolemus. Odysseus takes ten years to make it home to Ithaca, a course that is charted in Homer’s Odyssey.