ilium.today
Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles…↑click to begin
I
The Fall
The morning Troy stopped existing.
The Achaean fleet left the coast during the night. Smoke is rising from the city. The Scaean Gates have been found torn from their hinges. Sources inside the royal palace are not responding. Casualty figures unavailable.
The Achaean
special edition
After ten years, the justice of the Achaeans.
Commander Agamemnon: “We have honored our dead.” Operation Equus concluded successfully. Military objectives achieved. Civilian casualties, according to early estimates, are said to be contained. The fleet has already left the Anatolian coast.
→ Editorial by Calchas: “The patience of the gods is not infinite.” p. 3
The Achaean
the commander’s full statement
“This morning I give thanks to Zeus. We fought for ten years so that the law of hospitality would be honored, and so that a wrong would not go unanswered. Today we go home. Honor to our dead. The rest, the gods will judge.”
— Agamemnon, king of Mycenae.
Aegean Daily
deep dive · 7 min read
by Irus Antiphus
1. It stood forty feet tall.
2. It took three weeks to build.
3. The wood came from the sacred groves of Mount Ida — yes, those ones.
4. The Achaean code name was Equus, from an old word…
[continues]
Notifications · last night
Explosions in the upper quarter of Troy. Causes to be confirmed.
Night operations underway. Updates to follow shortly.
EVERYTHING UNDER CONTROL. BELIEVE NO ONE.
Fire reported at the royal palace. Achaean sources do not confirm an operation in progress.
Tactical repositioning of Achaean forces. Rumors of an attack are false.
[post removed]
[F1] · broadcast interrupted · 03:23
@ilia_aix — livestream of 12 minutes and 34 seconds, interrupted
@cassandra_ilium · end of thread · 02:58
Okay.
I’m not writing this for you. I know you don’t read me.
I’m writing it because one day someone will pull this thread out of the archives and say: one of them called it.
Fine. One of them called it.
Good luck to those who stay.
Good luck to those who leave, too.
King Priam
@rexpriamus · 22:47
WE WON. Do you hear me? WE WON. Ten years. For ten years they tried to break us and today we are here, and they are gone. They gave up.
My sons are GIANTS. Hector is watching from wherever he is and he is PROUD of us.
To everyone who doubted all these years: today it isn’t me speaking. It’s history.
Aegean Daily
reportage · 21:30
A report from the streets of the city.
Wine flowed through the streets again after ten years. The gates stand wide open. Children run alongside the horse as if it were a new monument in the neighborhood.
A woman points it out to her small son. “You’ll tell your grandchildren about this,” she says.
[F3] · photo: Aegean Daily
The Scaean Gates, early afternoon. The children escort the monument.
142K reactions · 18K reposts
The wooden object found on the beach this morning has been brought inside the walls. The operation took about three hours. A priest of Apollo, Laocoön, had requested the operation be suspended. He died under unclear circumstances shortly afterward. Trojan authorities are calling it an accident. Witnesses describe two serpents.
Aegean Daily
exclusive · early afternoon
The Achaean soldier found bound on the beach speaks for the first time.
“They had chosen me to be sacrificed to the gods before the departure. I managed to escape in the night. Please, do not send me back.”
The video, posted two hours ago, has already gone around Troy. The young man, named Sinon, was received at the palace by the king himself.
The Achaean ships are no longer visible from the coast. A large wooden object in the shape of a horse, estimated at forty feet tall, has been found on the beach. Origin unknown. Trojan authorities will examine it in the coming hours.
[F2] · photo: Anatolia Wire
Troy, west beach, 06:38.
King Priam
@rexpriamus · 07:22
THEY’RE GONE.
Do you understand? THEY’RE GONE. I told you it would end like this. I told you all we had to do was hold. Today is a day you will remember your whole lives.
And they left a gift. A GIFT. We will bring it inside the walls. It is our victory, and no one can ever take it from us again.
II
Days of the Horse
The week something big was going up on the beach.
Night movements reported in the Achaean camp. Several ships are said to have been sighted off the island of Tenedos. The Achaean military spokesman describes the movements as “routine repositioning ahead of the final season.” Sources at the palace of Troy decline to comment.
King Priam
@rexpriamus · evening
THE ACHAEAN SHIPS ARE MOVING. Our men on the walls confirm it. They are GETTING READY to leave. After ten years of threats, of grief, of their newspapers’ propaganda, HERE IT IS.
Remember this day. I told you they would be the first to tire.
@anon_ilium_341
This morning from the walls I counted fewer Achaean ships than usual. Three, four fewer. It’s not much. But it’s something.
Tonight I’m going out. I haven’t gone to buy food in eight years.
8 replies
The Achaean
morning edition
Commander Agamemnon: “We have honored the gods. Now a chapter closes.”
The Achaean high command ordered overnight the movement of part of the fleet toward the waters of Tenedos. These are, the spokesman says, preparatory operations. “The mission is accomplished. The rest is logistical detail.”
→ Editorial by Calchas: “We go home with our heads held high.” p. 2
nihilcontrarex.blog
“The mission is accomplished.” Oh, really? And what, exactly, have we accomplished?
They tell me about a “strategic reconfiguration.” Nice phrase. They used it eight years ago too, after we’d lost six thousand men in three days. That was a “reconfiguration” as well.
I have a simple question. If the mission is accomplished, why are we still building something on the beach? And why won’t anyone tell us what it is?
I await answers. I won’t get them.
Diplomatic sources report indirect communications between the Achaean command and the palace of Troy over the past forty-eight hours. Both Agamemnon’s military spokesman and the office of King Priam categorically deny this. A third source, contacted by the agency, speaks of “exploratory contacts.” No official confirmation.
King Priam
@rexpriamus
Categorical denial. THERE ARE NO SECRET COMMUNICATIONS with the enemy. Never. Never existed. Never will.
Whoever spreads these rumors knows exactly what they’re working toward. Let us always, always ask, WHO BENEFITS from sowing doubt at the very moment Troy is about to close this story WITH ITS HEAD HELD HIGH.
My sons died for this city. I will never betray them.
Aegean Daily
reportage · three days before
Four Achaean soldiers tell their stories. The wives they never saw again, the children who don’t recognize them.
Caleus was thirty-two when he shipped out. Today he’s forty-two. “My son was two. His mother writes that he looks like me now. I have no idea what that means.”
Antilochus had left Pylos with a brother. The brother is gone. “When I get back, I’ll go to our mother. I’ll tell her only the good things.”
A woman from Ithaca, interviewed on the island, says she hasn’t stopped weaving. “When I finish my father-in-law’s shroud, he’ll be back. I finish it by day and undo it by night.”
[continues]
@cassandra_ilium · single post
A city falls the moment it stops believing what it sees and starts believing what it wants.
The Achaean
four days before
The Achaean camp builds a monument to Athena before departure.
Work has gone on for days, on the beach, on a votive structure in cedar from the sacred groves. The chief military priest has authorized the work. “It is right to thank the goddess who protected us,” Commander Agamemnon stated. “We will leave behind something that speaks for us.”
The dimensions of the work, undisclosed at this time, are said to be “considerable.” Delivery is expected within a few days.
Aegean Daily
profile · five days before
Meet Epeius, the carpenter of the Achaean expedition. Among hammers, cedar, and a smile that gives nothing away.
Epeius’s hands are covered in calluses. “Twenty years working wood,” he laughs. “But I’ve never made anything like this.”
Like what, exactly, no one knows. “It’s a surprise. Surprises are meant to be waited for.”
They say it’s an offering to the gods. They say it’s a monument to the fallen. They say — but these are only rumors — that it’s Odysseus’s idea, and that the commander wasn’t entirely convinced at first.
“I carry out orders,” says Epeius. “What others do with what I make is none of my business.”
[F4] · photo: Aegean Daily
Epeius, carpenter of the Achaean expedition.
The burial mound raised in memory of Achilles, on the shore, is a site of daily pilgrimage for the Achaean soldiers. Commander Agamemnon visited the site at dawn yesterday, accompanied by Odysseus and a few others. The ceremony lasted about an hour. No statements were issued.
[F5] · photo: Anatolia Wire
The ceremony at dawn, yesterday.
Notifications · a week before
Persistent rumors of a secret summit between Achaean and Trojan representatives on neutral ground.
All reports of negotiations categorically denied. The mission continues.
FAKE NEWS. ABSURD. Whoever invents these things will be remembered.
This morning’s source now says it can no longer confirm its own information.
So: are there negotiations or aren’t there? I await tomorrow’s version.
III
The Wrath
The sixty days one man wouldn’t leave his tent.
The operational commander of the Achaean expedition, Achilles, son of Peleus, died this morning of wounds sustained in an action near the Scaean Gates. Confirmation came from Achaean command sources in the afternoon. The exact circumstances and the identity of the person responsible for the action are under review. The military spokesman did not respond to requests for clarification.
King Priam
@rexpriamus
ACHILLES HAS FALLEN.
The scourge of Troy. The one who dragged Hector through the dust. FALLEN.
Honor to the warrior who struck him down. Honor to the Trojans who waited ten years for this moment.
The Achaean
special edition · black border
The Achaean expedition loses its operational commander. Funeral within the next forty-eight hours.
Command confirmed the news in late morning. Commander-in-chief Agamemnon: “He was our brother. Now the gods receive him.” Religious rites by the college of military priests.
→ Editorial by Calchas: “A void no man will fill. He will live in our memory to the last of our children.”
@anon_phthia_007 · Myrmidon
We were fifty when we left Phthia.
Now we are seven.
Our commander was the eighth.
4 replies · 1 repost
A twelve-day suspension of hostilities has been agreed between the Achaean command and the palace of Troy. The truce is to allow for the funeral rites of Prince Hector. It is the first formal suspension of fighting since the war began.
Aegean Daily
live · from the funeral
The streets are full. Women on the balconies throw flowers. The funeral procession crosses the city at a slow pace.
Andromache, the prince’s widow, has made no statement. She was seen entering the temple with the child. Astyanax is three years old, dressed in a white tunic.
King Priam will speak shortly from the walls.
[F10] · photo: Aegean Daily
Troy, morning. Reporting by our correspondents.
King Priam
@rexpriamus · from the funeral
My son.
They told me that today I should speak of Troy, of the war, of our enemies.
Today I speak of my son.
Hector was the best of us. Not because he was the prince. Because he was Hector.
Notifications · third day of the truce
Reports of truce violations near the walls. Verification underway.
No anomalies reported by high command.
The earlier reports appear unfounded. These were exercises by the two armies on opposite sides of the perimeter.
PROVOCATIONS. They are looking for a fight. They will find us ready.
The truce continues without incident.
[F7] · source unverified
No original caption. No name.
2.8M reposts in six hours
The Achaean
hours later
Doctored photo. Greatness does not kneel.
The photo is authentic. Command sources confirm the nighttime meeting between King Priam and Commander Achilles.
Notifications · night, after the duel
A video shows the body of Prince Hector dragged around the walls of Troy behind Achilles’s chariot. Verification underway.
Unconfirmed reports. We will not amplify destabilizing material.
The video is authentic.
The video has been removed from major platforms following reports of “violation of the dignity of the dead.”
They take it down. They put it back. They take it down. They put it back. So this is how you’ve decided to hold a war together.
RETURN MY SON’S BODY. RETURN IT. It is a commandment of the gods and of men.
The Trojan prince Hector, fallen in battle, has been honored according to the customs of the Achaean expedition.
[F8] · content removed · violation of the dignity of the dead
12 million views before removal.
Aegean Daily
live · beneath the walls
15:12
The two warriors face each other beneath the walls. The walls are packed with people. King Priam can be seen. Hecuba can be seen.
15:14
Hector backs away. It’s said — unconfirmed — that he is trying to buy time.
15:17
Achilles advances.
15:19
Hector turns. He runs.
15:22
They’re going around the walls.
15:36
They’re on the third lap.
15:40
They stop. They speak to each other.
15:43
Achilles’s spear.
15:44
[we have interrupted the live coverage]
@anon_ilium_044 · days after the duel
My mom says I shouldn’t look when the carts go by. But I always look.
I counted fourteen this morning. My mom is crying in the kitchen.
She said they’d fought today. Yesterday they hadn’t fought. Today they did.
My mom is forty. When the war started I was six.
the thread continues for three more messages · the last: “When it’s over I’d like to sit in the sun on the walls without my mom calling me back.”
Notifications · the afternoon of Patroclus’s death
Intense fighting in the central sector of the front. Unconfirmed reports of a grave loss in the Achaean camp.
THE INVINCIBLE ONE HAS FALLEN. ACHILLES HAS FALLEN. WE HAVE WON. WE HAVE WON WE HAVE WON.
Reports being verified. We urge caution.
The images now circulating. A body in Achaean armor. What we know so far.
It’s not Achilles. It’s Patroclus in Achilles’s armor. I’m right next to him. [post later removed]
The slander of sore losers is already starting. PATROCLUS OR ACHILLES: THE ACHAEANS HAVE LOST. IT IS THE BEGINNING OF THE END.
Update: the body has been identified. It was wearing the armor of Commander Achilles. Its identity is now under verification.
Confirmation from Achaean command sources: the man fallen in Achaean armor is Patroclus, second in the expedition’s command and bound by personal ties to Commander Achilles. Earlier reports of the commander’s death are denied.
[post removed]
Strategic enemy loss. Indications regarding the identity of the fallen are still contradictory. Let us wait for confirmation before speaking.
Patroclus, unit commander, has fallen in battle. Funeral services according to established forms.
@achilles_phthia · 19:30
4.2M reactions
Patroclus · a story, the day before
patroclus_phthia
7 sec
borrowed drip
[F9] · post by @hector_ilium
“Back soon.”
@andromache_ilium · reply in the comments
I asked him to stay. He didn’t stay.
An Achaean delegation — Odysseus, the old tutor Phoenix, Ajax the Greater — visited the tents of Commander Achilles during the night. The meeting, lasting about six hours, ended without result. Sources close to command report that the commander rejected every request to return to combat. The Achaean expedition remains without its principal warrior for the thirty-second consecutive day.
Aegean Daily
behind the scenes
Thirty-two days that Achilles, son of Peleus, has not fought. What’s happening behind the canvas of the expedition’s most feared commander?
The military correspondents camped nearby describe an unnatural silence. The lyre that used to be heard every evening at sunset, they say, still plays. But no longer every evening. Sometimes it falls silent for days.
Briseis has not been seen. She is currently in the tent of Commander Agamemnon. Patroclus has been spotted coming and going with greater frequency over the past week.
@anon_ilium_716 · short thread
My brother was named Antiphus. He was twenty-one. He was a blacksmith, not a soldier. They’d called him up to the second line last month.
He died this morning. We didn’t even know he was at the front. They told us last night.
He won’t be in the papers. He was nobody to them.
To me he was everything. I wanted at least someone to know. His name was Antiphus.
23 reactions. It stops here.
@briseis_lyrnessos · single post, never followed by another
I am Briseis. I was born in Lyrnessus.
My father, my mother, my three brothers and my husband were killed by the Achaeans.
I was told that I now belong to Commander Achilles. Now I am told that I belong to Commander Agamemnon.
I have nothing further to add.
12 replies · 3 reposts
The Achaean
joint statement
The high command formalizes the transfer of prisoner of war Briseis from the tent of Commander Achilles to that of Commander Agamemnon.
“This is a redistribution of the captives according to the procedures established by command,” reads the military spokesman’s statement. “Reports of internal tensions within the high command are without foundation.”
Gossip section, p. 7: “Achilles done with Agamemnon? The 12 things we still don’t know.”
The epidemic that has struck the Achaean camp for nine days is, according to the court seer Calchas, a consequence of the wrath of the god Apollo. The cause: Commander Agamemnon’s refusal to return the girl Chryseis to her father, a priest of the sanctuary of Apollo. The war council has been convened urgently.
nihilcontrarex.blog
Men are dying. Everyone knows it. They die in their tents, they die on the beach, they die halfway through a sentence.
The doctors say: maybe the mules. They say: maybe the water.
I’ve been told in private — and I can’t name the source — that we all know the cause. The cause sits in the commander’s tent and is named Chryseis.
I sense that soon old Calchas will “discover” what he already knows.
King Priam
@rexpriamus
They say the Achaeans are dying like flies over an internal quarrel about a woman.
Good.
Apollo does not choose his people by chance.
IV
The Siege
The eight years when nothing happened, every day.
The kingdom of Ethiopia has officially deployed its forces alongside Troy. The expedition, led by Prince Memnon, numbers about two thousand men and arrived overland through Phrygia. It is the most significant expansion of the conflict since it began. Regional chancelleries on alert.
[F13] · photo: Anatolia Wire
The Ethiopian expedition, third day of marching through Phrygia.
Aegean Daily
deep dive
Five things to know about the Ethiopian prince who just changed the geography of the war.
1. He is twenty-eight.
2. He is the son of Eos, goddess of the dawn — according to the oral tradition of his people.
3. His father is a legendary warrior in the lands of the South.
4. He is said to have crossed deserts no one had crossed before.
5. Three days after his arrival at Troy, he was killed by the Achaean commander Achilles.
[Update, 22:00: point 5 was not anticipated at the time of the article’s initial publication. We leave it in for the record.]
Queen Penthesilea fell in battle beneath the walls of Troy late yesterday morning. The blow is said to have been dealt by the Achaean commander Achilles. Her surviving warriors left the city during the night. The body was returned to the Achaeans and subsequently handed back to the Amazons after negotiations lasting several hours.
[F6] · photo: Aegean Daily correspondent at the front
The moment immediately after the duel.
Aegean Daily
behind the scenes · at dusk
Achilles beside the body of Penthesilea. The rumors, the theories, and that silence in the middle of the field.
The comments are divided. Some speak of military respect for a worthy opponent. Some insinuate more. The phrases circulating online in the last few hours — “if he’d met her sooner,” “he wept, someone heard it” — find no official confirmation.
The Myrmidons aren’t commenting.
King Priam
@rexpriamus
Penthesilea ENTERED TROY as a sister. She died as a sister. Honor to the fallen queen. Honor to her warriors.
To those posting photos of her body for propaganda: you have lost all shame.
The Trojan army has received unexpected reinforcements: a delegation of mounted warriors led by Queen Penthesilea, sovereign of the kingdom of the Amazons, entered the city at dawn. Palace sources confirm the alliance. It is the first significant external intervention since the conflict began.
[F12] · photo: Anatolia Wire
The arrival, a month ago.
Recurring rumors, never confirmed, of a possible escape by Queen Helen from the palace of Troy. Prince Paris denies it. The queen denies it. King Priam calls the rumors “slander from the usual suspects.”
[F16] · source unverified
The Achaean, under the photo: “She wants to come home too.” — Anatolia Wire: “She’s Trojan now too.”
@anon_castra_891 · Achaean soldier
Today I didn’t leave my tent. Maybe tomorrow I will.
I’ve lost count of the times I’ve waited to die and it didn’t happen.
nihilcontrarex.blog
Eight years have passed.
Eight years.
I was told, at embarkation, that we’d be home before the next spring. I was thirty. Now I’m thirty-eight.
I’m not writing to be read. I’m writing because one day someone will write the history of this war and call it “epic,” and when one of my children reads it, I want him to be able to find this too, in some archive, and say: no. There was also one who said no.
Aegean Daily
year seven · from Ithaca
His name is Argos. His master left for the war seven years ago.
Everyone on Ithaca knows him. Every morning, for seven years, he goes down to the harbor of Vathy. He sits on the dock where they last took him. He waits. When the sun is high he goes home. In the evening, if a ship comes in, he goes back down.
His master is one of the best-known kings of the Achaean expedition. He left Ithaca with the fleet at Aulis and is still at the front. His wife, Penelope, feeds the dog every day.
“At first he went down six, seven times a day,” says a fisherman at the harbor. “Now only twice. He’s old. But he always goes down.”
Argos is fourteen. For a dog his size, that’s a great deal.
[F14] · photo: Aegean Daily contributor
Argos at the harbor of Vathy, seventh year of the expedition.
Aegean Daily
year four · viral
A thirty-second video is going around the islands. A young Achaean, on night watch on the shore, dances alone under the moon. Just improvising, he laughs.
The video was posted two days ago by a comrade. Six million reactions. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in this war,” writes a woman in Cyprus.
Update, twenty-four hours later: the soldier fell in an ambush this morning. The family asks for privacy.
[F15] · video · sentry on watch, Achaean camp
6M reactions
Notifications · year seven · prisoner exchange
A twenty-four-hour suspension of hostilities agreed between the two armies for a prisoner exchange.
Commander Agamemnon: “We bring our sons home.”
We bring our sons home. This is the thing that matters.
The exchange has been completed. Forty-two Achaean prisoners and twenty-eight Trojans have been returned to their respective sides.
Military operations resumed. Clashes reported near the Scaean Gates.
For twenty-four hours we remembered that the other side is people too. Tomorrow we’ll forget again. It’s always been this way. Always.
Grain prices in the markets of the Aegean have reached record highs. The naval blockade of the strait, now in its seventh month, is producing consequences along the entire trade route to the inland cities. The Miletus exchanges have recorded their fourth consecutive day of early closures.
@anon_lemnos_312 · merchant on Lemnos
Prices rise when there’s fighting, fall when there’s talk of peace. For four years they’ve been rising.
Aegean Daily
investigation · from the islands
A report from the islands. Who’s getting rich off the conflict.
On Lemnos, the small port of Myrina is today one of the busiest in the northern Aegean. Bronze, wine, timber, slaves: everything passes through here. “Before the war we were six hundred people,” says a merchant. “Now we’re six thousand. Tomorrow we’ll be ten thousand.”
On Skyros, the island where the young Achilles was hidden as a boy to keep him from the expedition, new houses are going up. The owners are often former soldiers who never went back to the front.
Not everyone wants the war to end.
The Trojan prince Troilus has fallen in an ambush near the fountain of Thymbra. He was thirteen. The circumstances of the death are under review. One version, reported by Achaean sources, speaks of combat. One version, reported by Trojan sources, speaks of an execution. A photograph, circulating briefly this morning, has been removed.
King Priam
@rexpriamus
My son Troilus was thirteen.
Thirteen.
I will never ask the gods for anything again. I have stopped asking.
@anon_hellas_204 · a mother
My son was twenty when he shipped out. Now he’s twenty-eight. I get news every three or four months. The last three letters seemed written by someone I don’t know.
I don’t remember his face anymore. I have a little statue of him as a child. I look at it every evening.
9 replies
V
Aulis
The spring the fleet couldn’t sail.
The Achaean fleet set sail this morning from the port of Aulis. Military sources speak of over a thousand ships. The expedition is bound for the Anatolian coast. Commander-in-chief Agamemnon made no statement at the departure. The ceremony was held behind closed doors.
The Achaean
special edition
The largest expedition ever to leave the Greek coast sets sail this morning. Commander Agamemnon: “We return only when the mission is accomplished.”
Calchas’s editorial on the front page: “The gods have spoken. Now it falls to men.”
→ Special: the genealogy of the expedition, pp. 4-11
Aegean Daily
investigation · weeks later
Clytemnestra, queen of Mycenae and wife of Commander Agamemnon, breaks her silence. A mother tells what really happened at Aulis.
“They sent for me. They told me: your daughter will marry Achilles, you must bring her, it’s an opportunity. I was fourteen when they married me off. Iphigenia was fourteen too. I put her good dress on her. She was afraid. I told her: everything will be fine.”
“When we arrived, there was no wedding. There was an altar.”
“My husband would not look me in the face. The seer was saying words. I held Iphigenia by the hand.”
“They told me: the gods want it. The expedition depends on it.”
“I have nothing left to say to any of you.”
[the full interview, 18:00]
The Achaean
response to the interview
Following the controversial interview published by an island outlet, the high command reaffirms its version of the facts.
“The ritual sacrifice performed at Aulis answered to precise oracular requirements and was conducted according to the forms established by the college of military priests. Any other interpretation is the product of the private grief of the family involved, grief we respect but which cannot substitute itself for historical truth.”
Commander Agamemnon did not comment.
nihilcontrarex.blog
Fourteen years old.
Her name was Iphigenia. She was the daughter of the commander-in-chief. They’d brought her to Aulis telling her she was going to marry Achilles.
These are just words. I write them so someone will read them, even if no one will.
A fourteen-year-old girl was killed to launch a fleet that will fight for ten years a war that — someone remind me — we’re starting because of what?
[F17] · photo: family archive
@clytemnestra_mycenae: “My daughter’s name was Iphigenia.”
The Achaean
day of the ceremony · weeks before
Commander Agamemnon presided this morning over the propitiatory rite required by the oracle. The fleet will be able to sail within the next few hours.
The entire expedition gathered on the shore. The chief military priest officiated according to the ancient form. The chosen maiden was honored.
The Achaean
the day before
Commander Achilles weds the daughter of Agamemnon. A new alliance between the Myrmidons and the palace of Mycenae. Iphigenia expected by this evening.
“A simple ceremony, in the field,” camp sources say. “Commander Achilles will leave his own tents free for the guests.”
The Achaean expedition, gathered at Aulis, has been unable to sail for the fourteenth consecutive day. Contrary winds and heavy seas. The court seer Calchas has been summoned in extraordinary session by the commander-in-chief. There is informal talk of cultic requirements necessary to propitiate the departure. No official statements have been issued.
@anon_argos_017 · a young man from Argos
Tomorrow I ship out. I’m seventeen. My father survived the campaign against Thebes, he was thirty-two.
I don’t even really know who Helen is.
no replies
Aegean Daily
the mobilization
The king of Ithaca enlisted at the last minute. An unexpected scene, a child at the center of the story.
All of Ithaca is talking about it. Three days ago, the young king Odysseus was seen plowing his own fields with a donkey and an ox yoked together, scattering salt instead of grain. They said he’d gone mad with grief at leaving his wife and newborn son.
The Achaean command’s envoy, Palamedes, arrived the same day. He took little Telemachus, a few months old, and set him down in front of the plow.
Odysseus stopped the plow.
He shipped out the next day.
“It was a misunderstanding,” he said at the harbor. “I’ll be there. For Hellas.”
[F18] · photo: archive
Ithaca, October.
The Achaean diplomatic mission to the palace of Troy has ended without result. The delegation, led by King Menelaus of Sparta and King Odysseus of Ithaca, formally demanded the return of Queen Helen. Trojan prince Paris rejected the demand. King Priam ratified the refusal. The joint statement issued at the close of talks speaks of “distant positions” and “a willingness to continue dialogue.”
King Priam
@rexpriamus
The Greeks have come to ask us for a woman the way you’d ask for a stolen sheep back. ABSURD.
My daughter, my guest, my family.
Helen is a queen of Troy. She has been one from the moment she crossed my gates. Those who don’t understand it will come to learn it.
News arriving from Sparta. Queen Helen, wife of King Menelaus, is said to have disappeared over the past forty-eight hours. Palace sources speak of abduction by a foreign guest. The same source confirms the guest’s identity: Prince Paris of Troy, present at the palace for about three weeks.
The Achaean
the next day
Sparta in shock. The young Trojan prince Paris is said to have abducted Queen Helen during her husband’s absence. King Menelaus returns urgently from Crete.
“This is not a private affair,” declares a source close to the palace of Mycenae. “It is an offense against the sacred laws of hospitality. It is an offense against all of Greece.”
→ Editorial by Calchas: “The gods will not forgive.”
[F21] · single post by @helena_ilium
No caption.
[F20] · post by @paris_ilium · three weeks before
“Excellent hospitality.”
VI
The Apple
The night it all started, and nobody noticed.
archive material · Olympus Network
Aegean Daily
entertainment · the day after
The goddess of love triumphed in last night’s finale. Hera and Athena come away diminished. The judge, young Paris of Troy, decides after five hours of deliberation.
A victory that shifts the balance on Olympus. Aphrodite, already the bookmakers’ favorite, took the prize after an evening of twists, tears, and a closing standing ovation from the studio audience.
The sole judge, a nineteen-year-old shepherd, second-born son of the king of Troy, read the verdict in a visibly emotional voice. “It was the most important moment of my life,” he declared on his way out.
→ The photo special, pp. 6-14
I trust the judge reflected on the consequences of his choice. Choices do not end with the evening on which they are made.
official statement
Hera
“I thank everyone who supported me these past weeks. I do not accept the outcome of the program. I trust in time and in the justice of the gods. This decision is not final.”
[F19] · post by @paris_ilium
“Still can’t believe it.”
Aegean Daily
behind the scenes · hours later
Whispers from the backstage of the finale. The rumors going around in the hours that followed. The three deities are said to have offered the judge “personal incentives.” No official confirmation.
It’s said that Hera offered young Paris “sovereignty over two kingdoms.” Athena is said to have promised him “victory in every war he fights.” Aphrodite — the winner — is said to have promised him “the most beautiful woman in the world.”
The three goddesses deny it. The show’s production calls the rumors “tasteless gossip.”
The audience laughs.
@viewer_022 · a viewer
I binged every episode with my mom. When Aphrodite won we hugged each other.
My brother says we’re being dramatic. He doesn’t understand anything about television.
31 replies
coming soon, prime time
Three goddesses. One judge.
One winner only.
“To the fairest.”
sponsor · Olympus Network