Iliad

In Greek and Roman mythology, Anchises (/ænˈkaɪsiːz/; Ancient Greek: Ἀγχίσης, romanized: Ankhísēs) was a member of the royal family of Troy. He was said to have been the son of King Capys of Dardania and Themiste, daughter of Ilus, who was son of Tros. He is most famous as the father of Aeneas and for his treatment in Virgil's Aeneid. Anchises' brother was Acoetes, father of the priest Laocoön.

He was a mortal lover of the goddess Aphrodite (equivalent to the Roman goddess Venus). Zeus made her fall in love with Anchises while he was herding sheep at the foot of Mount Ida. One version is that Aphrodite pretended to be a Phrygian princess and seduced him, only to later reveal herself and inform him that they would have a son named Aeneas; Aphrodite had warned Anchises that if he told anyone about her being the mother of his child, Zeus would strike him down with his thunderbolt. He did not heed her warning and was struck with a thunderbolt, which in different versions either blinds him or kills him. The principal early narrative of Aphrodite's seduction of Anchises and the birth of Aeneas is the Homeric Hymn (5) to Aphrodite. According to the Bibliotheca, Anchises and Aphrodite had another son, Lyrus, who died childless. He later had a mortal wife named Eriopis, according to the scholiasts, and he is credited with other children beside Aeneas and Lyrus. Homer, in the Iliad, mentions a daughter named Hippodamia, their eldest ("the darling of her father and mother"), who married her cousin Alcathous.

In Greek mythology, Priam, the mythical king of Troy during the Trojan War, supposedly had 18 daughters and 68 sons. Priam had several wives, the primary one Hecuba, daughter of Dymas or Cisseus, and several concubines, who bore his children. There is no exhaustive list, but many of them are mentioned in various Greek myths. Almost all of Priam's children were slain by the Greeks in the course of the war, or shortly after.

The three main sources for the names of the children of Priam are: Homer's Iliad, where a number of his sons are briefly mentioned among the defenders of Troy; and two lists in the Bibliotheca and Hyginus' Fabulae. Virgil also mentions some of Priam's sons and daughters in the Aeneid. Some of the daughters taken captive at the end of the war are mentioned by Pausanias, who in his turn refers to paintings by Polygnotus in the Lesche of Delphi.

In Greek mythology, two sacred mountains are called Mount Ida, the "Mountain of the Goddess": Mount Ida in Crete, and Mount Ida in the ancient Troad region of western Anatolia (in modern-day Turkey), which was also known as the Phrygian Ida in classical antiquity and is mentioned in the Iliad of Homer and the Aeneid of Virgil. Both are associated with the mother goddess in the deepest layers of pre-Greek myth, in that Mount Ida in Anatolia was sacred to Cybele, who is sometimes called Mater Idaea ("Idaean Mother"), while Rhea, often identified with Cybele, put the infant Zeus to nurse with Amaltheia at Mount Ida in Crete. Thereafter, his birthplace was sacred to Zeus, the king and father of Greek gods and goddesses.

The Odyssey (/ˈɒdɪsi/; Ancient Greek: Ὀδύσσεια, romanized: Odýsseia) is one of two major epics of ancient Greek literature attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest surviving works of literature and remains popular with modern audiences. Like the Iliad, the Odyssey is divided into 24 books. It follows the heroic king of Ithaca, Odysseus, also known by the Latin variant Ulysses, and his homecoming journey after the ten-year long Trojan War. His journey from Troy to Ithaca lasts an additional ten years, during which time he encounters many perils and all of his crewmates are killed. In Odysseus's long absence, he is presumed dead, leaving his wife Penelope and son Telemachus to contend with a group of unruly suitors competing for Penelope's hand in marriage.

The Odyssey was first composed in Homeric Greek around the 8th or 7th century BC; by the mid-6th century BC, it had become part of the Greek literary canon. In antiquity, Homer's authorship was taken as true, but contemporary scholarship predominantly assumes that the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed independently, as part of long oral traditions. Given widespread illiteracy, the poem was performed for an audience by an aoidos or rhapsode.

The Sakarya (Turkish: Sakarya Nehri; Hittite: 𒀀𒇉𒊭𒄭𒊑𒅀, romanized: Šaḫiriya; Greek: Σαγγάριος, romanized: Sangarios; Latin: Sangarius) is the third longest river in Turkey. It runs through the region known in ancient times as Phrygia. It was considered one of the principal rivers of Asia Minor (Anatolia) in Greek classical antiquity, and is mentioned in the Iliad and in Theogony. Its name appears in different forms as Sagraphos, Sangaris, or Sagaris.

In Geographica, Strabo wrote during classical antiquity that the river had its sources on Mount Adoreus, near the town of Sangia in Phrygia, not far from the border with Galatia, and flowed in a very tortuous course: first in an eastern direction, then toward the north, then in a northwesterly direction and finally to the north through Bithynia into the Euxine (Black Sea).

The Mask of Agamemnon is a gold funerary mask which was discovered at the Bronze Age site of Mycenae in southern Greece. The mask, displayed in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, has been described by the historian Cathy Gere as the "Mona Lisa of prehistory".

German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, who discovered the artifact in 1876, believed that he had found the body of the Mycenaean king Agamemnon, leader of the Achaeans in the ancient Greek epic of the Trojan War, the Iliad. Modern archaeological research suggests that the mask dates to about the 16th century BC, pre-dating the period of the mythical Trojan War by 300–400 years.

Homer (/ˈhoʊmər/; Ancient Greek: Ὅμηρος [hómɛːros], Hómēros; possibly born c. the 8th century BC) was an ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Despite uncertainties about his authorship, Homer is considered one of the most influential authors in history.

The Iliad centers on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles during the last year of the Trojan War. The Odyssey chronicles the ten-year journey of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, back to his home after the fall of Troy. The epics depict man's struggle, the Odyssey especially so, as Odysseus perseveres through the punishment of the gods. The poems are in Homeric Greek, also known as Epic Greek, a literary language that shows a mixture of features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic. Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally. Despite being predominantly known for their tragic and serious themes, the Homeric poems also contain instances of comedy and laughter.

The Magnetes (Greek: Μάγνητες) were an ancient Greek tribe. In book 2 of the Iliad, Homer includes them in the Greek Army that is besieging Troy, and identifies their homeland in Thessaly, in a part that is still known as Magnesia. Later, they participated in the Greek colonisation of Western Anatolia by founding two prosperous cities: Magnesia on the Maeander and Magnesia ad Sipylum.

Ajax (Ancient Greek: Αἴας, romanized: Aíās) was a Greek mythological hero, son of Oileus, the king of Locris. He was called the "Ajax the Less", the "lesser" or "Locrian" Ajax, to distinguish him from Ajax the Great, son of Telamon. He was the leader of the Locrian contingent during the Trojan War. He is a significant figure in Homer's Iliad and is also mentioned in the Odyssey, in Virgil's Aeneid and in Euripides' The Trojan Women. In Etruscan legend, he was known as Aivas Vilates.

Karamenderes is a river located entirely within the Çanakkale Province of Turkey. It flows west from Mount Ida and empties into the Aegean Sea near the Troy Historical National Park. According to the Iliad, the battles of the Trojan War were fought in the lower courses of Karamenderes.

Known in antiquity as Scamander, Scamandrus or Skamandros (Ancient Greek: Σκάμανδρος), it was according to Homer called Xanthus or Xanthos (Ξάνθος) by the gods and Scamander by men; though it probably owed the name Xanthus to the yellow or brownish colour of its water. Notwithstanding this distinct declaration of the poet that the two names belonged to the same river, Pliny the Elder mentions the Xanthus and Scamander as two distinct rivers, and describes the former as flowing into the Portus Achaeorum, after having joined the Simoeis.