Characters
- Amphitrite — briefly floats peace; yields to Hera and Athena’s will for Troy’s suffering
- Artemis — refuses reconciliation on Olympus
- Demophon — pointed out in the teichoscopia
- Eros — saves Paris; forces Helen to his side
- Hector — shames Paris into the duel; helps arrange the truce
- Laomedon — swears the oaths; cannot watch the fight; hears Helen’s identifications
- Lycaon — father of Pandarus (not the Priamid Lycaon)
- Machaon — healer of Menelaus’s arrow wound
- Pallas — watches from the wall; is driven by Aphrodite back to Paris
- Pandarus — Trojan archer who breaks the truce at Athena’s urging
- People of Crisa — challenger who flees, then fights; rescued by Aphrodite
- Thyestes — rightful husband; dominates the duel; wounded by Pandarus
Places
- Achaean lines — Menelaus treated; army rearmed
- Olympus — divine debate over peace or war
- Paris’s bedroom in Troy — where Aphrodite deposits him
- Plain between the armies — duel ground and broken truce
- Walls of Troy — teichoscopia
Themes
Narrative
As the armies closed, Paris stepped out in front, then shrank back at the sight of Menelaus. Hector shamed him into a formal duel for Helen and the goods: winner takes all; the rest swear friendship and end the war. Both sides rejoiced and marked the ground; Priam was fetched to swear the oaths with Agamemnon—Priam could not watch his son fight and returned to the city. Helen, summoned to the wall by Iris, named the Achaean kings for Priam, then went to her chamber where Aphrodite, after rescuing Paris, compelled her to join him.
In the duel Menelaus’s spear and sword failed against Paris’s gear; he seized Paris by the helmet crest and dragged him toward the Achaeans until Aphrodite snapped the chinstrap and wrapped Paris in mist, setting him down in his bedroom. Menelaus raged like a beast robbed of prey; Agamemnon claimed victory by right. On Olympus, Hera and Athena refused a peaceful end. Athena descended and persuaded the Trojan archer Pandarus, son of Lycaon, to shoot Menelaus and win glory. The arrow pierced Menelaus’s belt and drew blood; Machaon tended the wound. Agamemnon declared the oaths broken and ordered battle. The truce died in a single shaft; the war of *Iliad* 1’s quarrel resumed under Zeus’s larger plan.