Troja

, a city, the capital of Troas, or, according to others, a country of which Ilium was the capital. It was built on a small eminence near mount Ida, and the promontory of Sigæum, at the distance of about four miles from the sea-shore. Dardanus the first king of the country built it, and called it Dardania , and from Troas, one of his succe ors, it was called Troja , and from Ilus, Ilion . Neptune is also said to have built, or more properly repaired, its walls, in the age of king Laomedon. This city has been celebrated by the poems of Homer and Virgil, and of all the wars which have been carried on among the ancients, that of Troy is the most famous. The Trojan war was undertaken by the Greeks, to recover Helen, whom Paris the son of Priam king of Troy had carried away from the house of Menelaus. All Greece united to avenge the cause of Menelaus, and every prince furnished a certain number of ships and soldiers. According to Euripi des, Virgil, and Lycophron, the armament of the Greeks amounted to 1000 ships. Homer mentions them as being 1186, and Thucydides supposes that they were 1200 in number. The number of men which these ships carried is unknown; yet, as the largest contained about 120 men each, and the smallest 50, it may be supposed that no le than 100,000 men were engaged in this celebrated expedition. Agamemnon was chosen general of all these forces; but the princes and kings of Greece were admitted among his counsellors, and by them all the operations of the war were directed. The most celebrated of the Grecian princes that distinguished themselves in this war, were Achilles, Ajax, Menelaus, Uly es, Diomedes, Protesilaus, Patroclus, Agamemnon, Nestor, Neoptolemus, . The Grecian army was opposed by a more numerous force. The king of Troy received a istance from the neighbouring princes in Asia Minor, and reckoned among his most active generals, Rhesus king of Thrace, and Memnon, who entered the field with 20,000 A yrians and Æthiopians. Many of the adjacent cities were reduced and plundered before the Greeks approached their walls; but when the siege was begun, the enemies on both sides gave proofs of valour and intrepidity. The army of the Greeks, however, was visited by a plague, and the operations were not le retarded by the quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles. The lo was great on both sides; the most valiant of the Trojans, and particularly of the sons of Priam, were slain in the field; and, indeed, so great was the slaughter, that the rivers of the country are represented as filled with dead bodies and suits of armour. After the siege had been carried on for 10 years, some of the Trojans, among whom were Æneas and Antenor, betrayed the city into the hands of the enemy, and Troy was reduced to ashes. The poets, however, support that the Greeks made themselves masters of the place by artifice. They secretly filled a large wooden horse with armed men, and led away their army from the plains, as if to return home. The Trojans brought the wooden horse into their city, and in the night, the Greeks that were confined within the sides of the animal rushed out and opened the gates to their companions, who had returned from the place of their concealment. The greatest part of the inhabitants were put to the sword, and the others carried away by the conquerors. This happened, according to the A run deli an marbles, about 1184 years before the christian era, in the 3530th year of the Julian period, on the night between the 11th and 12th of June, 408 years before the first olympiad. Some time after, a new city was raised, about 30 stadia from the ruins of the old Troy; but though it bore the ancient name, and received ample donations from Alexander the Great, when he visited it in his Asiatic expedition, yet it continued to be small, and in the age of Strabo it was nearly in ruins. It is said that Julius Cæsar, who wished to pa for one of the descendants of Æneas, and consequently to be related to the Trojans, intended to make it the capital of the Roman empire, and to transport there the senate and the Roman people. The same apprehensions were entertained in the reign of August us, and according to some, an ode of Horace, Justum et tenacem propositi virum , was written purposely to di uade the emperor from putting into execution so wild a project. See: Paris , Æneas , Antenor , Agamemnon , Ilium , Laomedon , Menelaus , . Virgil , Æneid .— Homer. — Ovid. — Diodorus , .