trojan war

a battle between the greeks and the trojans which probably never happened, but remains one of the most famous battles not in history.

the war allegedly began (sometime in the 12th century BC) over helen of troy, a queen who jilted her greek husband, king menelaus, for a trojan prince named paris. menelaus, incensed, declared war on the trojans and summoned his fellow greeks (including his brother agamemnon, who sacrificed his own daughter to the gods to get them some favorable sailing winds) to lay siege to the shining city of troy.

what follows is a long complicated story involving guys with long greek names, and is most notably summed up in homer's "iliad." the famous conclusion of the war, which actually isn't in said story, involved greeks sneaking themselves into troy inside a big wooden horse and massacring the populace. some of the participants got their own little self-contained sequels; for example, the tale of odysseus' return home in homer's "odyssey," and agamemnon getting iced by his wife in a play by aeschylus