The Trojan War or The World War pre-the First

The seeds of the Trojan War lay in an incident at the wedding of the mortal Peleus and the immortal sea-nymph Thetis. All the gods and goddesses were invited to the wedding feast with the exception of Eris, the goddess of discord. Angered at her exclusion, Eris threw a golden apple inscribed with the words 'for the fairest' at the feet of the wedding guests, causing disagreement between three goddesses, Hera, Athene, and Aphrodite, who each claimed the prize for herself. When Zeus appointed the Trojan prince Paris, the son of King Priam, to judge them, each goddess in turn tried to bribe him. Athene promised him wisdom and victory in war; Hera promised him dominion over mankind; Aphrodite promised him the most beautiful woman on earth as his wife. Paris chose Aphrodite as the winner of the contest and in so doing earned Troy the hostility of Hera and Athene. Helen was the daughter of Zeus and Leda and grew into the most beautiful woman in the world. She had numerous suitors, but eventually married Menelaus, the king of Sparta. As one of her former suitors, Odysseus proposed that she and her husband would always be defended by the other suitors, and they all pledged to do so if occasion arose. Paris visited Sparta and abducted Helen, taking her back to Troy. Menelaus enlisted the help of his brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, to recover his wife. Under the command of Agamemnon, the Greeks, including Helen's former suitors, raised a fleet and mounted an expedition to rescue Helen from Troy. Warriors on the Greek side included such heroes as Achilles, Ajax, Diomedes, Odysseus, and Nestor. The first nine years of the war were taken up by a siege of the city of Troy. Homer's Iliad recounts an episode in the tenth year of the siege during which Achilles quarrelled with his commander, Agamemnon. Furious that he had to return a captive Trojan girl to her father appease the god Apollo, Agamemnon agreed to do so, but demanded to that Achilles hand over to him his concubine Briseis to take her place. Achilles retired in anger to his tent, refusing to fight any longer. This enabled the Trojans to drive the Greeks back to the shore. Achilles' great friend, Patroclus, persuaded Achilles to let him borrow his armour but was killed by the Trojan hero Hector. Filled with grief and rage, Achilles finally emerged and returned to the battle. In revenge, he killed Hector in single combat and dragged his body behind the wheels of his chariot round the walls of Troy. Achilles himself was wounded in the heel by a poisoned arrow shot by Paris, Hector's brother, and died of this wound. After the death of Achilles the Greeks devised a ruse to capture the city of Troy. They constructed a large wooden horse, built by a craftsman called Epeius, and left it outside the walls of the city. They then sailed out of sight, leaving behind just one man, Sinon, who pretended to be a Greek deserter and reported to the Trojans that the horse was an offering to Athene, which, if brought within the city walls, would render Troy impregnable. Cassandra warned that the horse was a trick, but was not believed. Laocoôn, a Trojan priest, also warned the Trojans not to let the horse into the city but was ignored. The horse was in fact full of Greek warriors, and once it had been brought into Troy and night had fallen, these warriors came out and took the city. Troy was sacked and razed by fire. Priam and his remaining sons were killed.


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chilles
Achilles was one of the greatest Greek heroes of the Trojan War. According to legend, he was the son of the mortal Peleus and the sea-nymph Thetis. During his infancy his mother dipped him in the waters of the River Styx, thus making his body invulnerable except for the heel by which she held him. This vulnerable spot would later prove fatal. The young Achilles received his education from the wise centaur Chiron, who taught him the arts of war and fed him on the entrails of wild animals in order to instill courage in him. Chiron also made Achilles practice running, and he subsequently became the swiftest of all men. When Achilles was young the Fates offered him the choice between a long life of ease and obscurity, or a young death and fame and glory. He chose the latter. Thetis knew from a prophecy that if Achilles joined the Greek campaign to fight against the Trojans he would not come back alive and, in an attempt to save his life, she disguised him as a girl on the island of Scyros. He was discovered by Odysseus, Nestor, and Ajax, who had been sent to find him. They arranged for a war trumpet to sound, at which Achilles revealed himself by reaching for a shield and spear. The Iliad relates how Achilles quarrelled with his commander, Agamemnon, because of Agamemnon's slight in taking from him his war-prize, the concubine Briseis. Achilles retired in anger to his tent, refusing to fight any longer. Later, after the death of his friend Patroclus, clad in Achilles' own armour, at the hand of the Trojan hero Hector, he did emerge, filled with grief and rage. In revenge, Achilles killed Hector and dragged his body behind the wheels of his chariot round the walls of Troy. Achilles himself was wounded in the heel by a poisoned arrow shot by Paris, Hector's brother, and died of this wound. Ajax and Odysseus vied for the armour of the dead Achilles. When Agamemnon awarded the armour to Odysseus, Ajax went mad with rage, slaughtered a flock of sheep, and then committed suicide in shame. Various aspects of the Achilles story are dealt with throughout the book.















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lice in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll's children's story Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) is an account of a young girl's experiences in a surreal, illogical, dreamlike world. At the beginning of the story Alice follows a white rabbit down a rabbit-hole and finds herself apparently tumbling down a very deep well. At the bottom she finds a little door that is too small for her to fit through until she drinks from a bottle labelled 'Drink me' and immediately starts to shrink, becoming ten inches high. Not long after this she is required to eat a cake labelled 'Eat me', to make her grow taller. Further strange incidents occur, with Alice greeting each development with the words 'Curiouser and curiouser!'. In addition to the White Rabbit, who looks at his watch as he hurries along, muttering to himself about how late he is, Alice encounters a succession of other outlandish creatures. A huge Caterpillar sits on a leaf, smoking a hookah. The Duchess nurses a pig-baby and has a Cheshire Cat, a large cat with a broad fixed grin. Alice watches as the Cheshire Cat's body gradually disappears 'beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone'. Alice attends a bizarre tea party in the company of the Hatter, the March Hare and the Dormouse. The Hatter and the March Hare engage in nonsensical conversation, full of non sequiturs and strange riddles. The dormouse snoozes all through the tea party, despite attempts to wake it by pinching it. Later the Queen of Hearts, who is given to shouting 'Off with her head!', plays croquet with hedgehogs for balls and flamingos for mallets. Many of the characters, including Alice herself, give evidence at the trial to establish who stole the Queen's tarts. Finally Alice wakes from what has apparently been a dream.
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pollo
In Greek mythology, Apollo was the son of Zeus and Leto and the twin brother of Artemis. He was born on the island of Delos, the site of his most important cult festival. The other main shrine for the worship of Apollo was the oracle at Delphi. While a boy he had travelled to Delphi, killed a huge snake called Python, and taken control of the oracle there. He came to be associated with the sun and was sometimes given the epithet Phoebus ('the bright one'). Apollo later usurped Helios' place as the god of the sun who drove the sun's chariot across the sky each day. He had a wide range of other attributes such as music (his instrument was a seven-stringed lyre), medicine (he was the father of Aesculapius, or Asclepius, the god of medicine and healing), poetic inspiration, archery, prophecy, and pastoral life (he protected herdsmen). Apollo, representing order, reason, and self-discipline, is often contrasted with
Dionysus, representing creativity, sensuality, and lack of inhibition. In art Apollo is represented as a beautiful young male. Apollo had numerous affairs with nymphs, mortal women, and also young men. Among his unsuccessful encounters were those with Daphne, who chose to be transformed into a laurel tree rather than submit to his advances, and Cassandra, whose rejection of Apollo he punished by causing her prophecies thereafter to be disbelieved.


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ain
In the Book of Genesis, Cain was the first-born son of Adam and Eve who murdered his younger brother Abel. Cain was a tiller of the ground and Abel a keeper of sheep. When they brought their offerings to God, Abel's lamb was accepted but Cain's offering from his harvest was not. In jealous anger Cain killed his brother. God demanded an explanation for Abel's absence, to which Cain responded 'Am I my brother's keeper?' Once his crime was revealed, Cain was cursed by God for ever. He was cast out from his homeland and forced to live a life of vagrancy as an outcast for the rest of his life. God branded him with a mark, to indicate that no one should kill him and shorten his nomadic punishment.


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inderella
In the fairy story, Cinderella's life is made miserable after her father's remarriage by her stepmother and stepsisters. She is kept in poverty, dressed in rags, and forced to do menial tasks. When her stepsisters go off to a royal ball leaving Cinderella behind, she is found weeping by her fairy godmother, who waves her wand, turning a pumpkin into a coach, six mice into horses to pull it, and a rat into a coachman. Cinderella's rags are turned into beautiful clothes and glass slippers appear on her feet. She is instructed by her fairy godmother to leave the ball by midnight, because on the stroke of midnight her beautiful clothes and coach and horses will revert to their normal forms. At the ball she meets the prince. Rushing away from the ball at the stroke of midnight, she leaves behind a glass slipper. The prince announces that he will marry whoever can wear the slipper, and he eventually discovers that it fits only Cinderella.

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on Quixote
Don Quixote is the ageing hero of a romance Don Quixote de la Mancha(1605-15) by Miguel de Cervantes. He is devoted to tales of chivalry and romance, becoming so obsessed with these stories that 'the moisture of his brain was exhausted to that degree, that at last he lost the use of his reason'. Unable to distinguish the fanciful from the real, he determines to turn knight errant himself and sets out in search of adventures. Tall, lean, and thin-faced, he dons rusty armour and is accompanied by his scrawny old horse, Rosinante, and a squire, Sancho Panza. In a famous episode he attacks a group of windmills in the belief that they are giants. In Don Quixote's confused mind, a good-looking village girl, whom he names Dulcinea del Toboso, is elevated to the ideal of womanly beauty and virtue. His determination to keep to what he perceives to be a life of chivalry only ends when one of his friends disguises himself as another knight, defeats Don Quixote, and makes him end his exploits.

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