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657
TRIUMVIRI——TROJAN WAR.
harbour. In Rome itself, between the site of the Velabrum and the Forum Boai-ium, there is a richly decorated, but coarsely sculptured, gateway with a flat lintel, bearing an inscription recording its erection (in a.d. 204) in honour of Septimius Severus and other members of the imperial house by the silversmiths or bankers (argentar’a) and other merchants of the Forum Boarium. The arch of the Sergii at Pola in Istria is a family memorial.
Triumviri. See tresviri.
Trogus. See pompeius trogus.
Troite Ludus. Cp. circus, p. 139.
Trollus. A younger son of Priam and Hecuba, who was slain by Achilles. According to the later legend, Achilles lay in wait for the boy when he was exercising his horse near a well in front of the city, and slew him as he fled to the temple of Thymbrsean Apollo, just by the altar of the god, at the very spot where he himself was destined afterwards to meet his fate. According to another account, Troilus ventured to meet Achilles in open conflict, but was dragged to death by his own horses. (See vases, fig. 10.)
Trojan War. The story of the Trojan War, like the story of the Argonauts, underwent, in the course of time, many changes and amplifications. The kernel of the story is contained in the two epic poems of Homer: the Iliad and the Odyssey. The incidents, either narrated or briefly touched upon in these, were elaborated or developed by the post-Homeric poets, partly by connecting them withother popular traditions, and partly by the addition of further details of their own in fition. While in Homer it is simply the rape of Helen which is the occasion of the war, a later legend traced its origin to^the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, when Erls threw down among the assembled gods the golden apple inscribed For the fairest. The quarrel that ensued between Hera, Athene, and Aphrodite for the prize of beauty was decided by Paris in favour of Aphrodite, who in return secured him the possession of Helen, while Hera and Athene became, from that time onward, the implacable enemies of the whole Trojan race.
According to Homer, after Helen had been carried off by Paris, Menelaus and Agamemnon visited all the Greek chief-
tains in turn, and prevailed on them to take part in the expedition which they were preparing to avenge the wrong. According to the later account, the majority of
TRIUMPHAL ARCH OF CONSTANTINE, ROME. (Adorned with reliefs from the Arch of Trajan.)
the chieftains were already bound to follow the expedition by an oath, which they had sworn to Tyndareos. Agamemnon was chosen commander-in-chief; next to him the most prominent Greek heroes are his brother Menelaus, Achilles and Patroclus, the two Ajaxes, Teucer, Nestflr and his son Anttloehus, Odysseus, Diomedes, Idfimeneus, and Philoctetes, who, however, at the very outset of the expedition had to be left behind, and does not appear on the scene of action until just before the fall of Troy. Later epics add the name of Palamedes.
The entire host of 100,000 men and 1,186 ships assembled in the harbour of Aulis. Here, while they were sacrificing under a plane tree, a snake darted out from under the altar and ascended the tree, and there, after devouring a brood of eight young sparrows and the mother-bird herself, was turned into stone. This omen Calchas, the seer of the host, interpreted to mean that the war would last nine years, and terminate in the tenth with the destruction of Troy [Iliad ii 299-332]. Agamemnon had already received an oracle from the Delphian god that Troy would fall when the best of the Greeks quarrelled. In Homer the crossing to Troy follows immediately; but in the later story the Greeks at first land by mistake in Mysia, in the country of TelSphus (q.v. and being dispersed by a
