The Oracles of Troy (The Adventures of Odysseus)

In the original myths, Helenus is a genuine seer whom the gods entrust with the final oracles that point to the fall of Troy. He even appears as a warrior, if only briefly, in The Iliad. But with two prophets already in the book – Calchas and Cassandra – and innumerable fighting men, I decided to rob him of these virtues and make him a charlatan instead. Though Odysseus was not sent to fetch the bone of Pelops, and the guardian of the tomb is entirely my own invention, he was sent to fetch Neoptolemus from Scyros and steal the Palladium from Troy. Disguised as a beggar, he entered the city, met Helen and gleaned important information from her before returning later with Diomedes and making away with the effigy.

Even with all the oracles fulfilled, Troy would not have fallen if Odysseus had not thought up the greatest military ruse of all time. This makes him the most effective hero of the whole siege and recognises that wars are ultimately won by brains rather than brawn. He also had the idea of leaving behind a man to persuade the Trojans the horse should be taken into the city rather than burnt on the plain. In the myths this job was done by Sinon and not by Omeros, who does not appear in any of the original tales.

One of the drawbacks of trying to condense such a vast collection of stories into a comparatively short narrative is that much has to be cut out. Regrettably, one such edit was the tale of Lacoön. Yet another Trojan seer, he protests the folly of bringing the wooden horse inside the city walls, but is cut short when Apollo sends two sea-serpents to crush him and his twin sons to death. The horrified Trojans take this as a sign that the horse is to be accepted, whatever their suspicions.

The horrific sack of Troy, with its widespread murder and rape, is typical of the end of any great siege where the victorious warriors take out their pent up anger on the city’s population. Aeneas was one of the few males to escape – though not with the help of Odysseus – and according to the Romans his ancestors later went on to found the city of Rome. Antenor and his family also escaped (with the help of Odysseus), but poor Astyanax did not. Some versions have the boy murdered by Neoptolemus, others by Odysseus. I have been kinder to both Astyanax and Odysseus in my account.

You will not find Eperitus in any of the myths. He, his love affair with Astynome (who appears in The Iliad as Chryseis) and his feud with his father are all inventions of my imagination. I wanted at least one major character whose fate, unlike those of Odysseus and the others, is entirely in my own hands!

And so the war is over, but not the adventure. In fact, the greatest chapter in the whole saga is just about to begin. As Odysseus turns toward home he is ignorant of the new challenges the Fates are lining up before him. From man-eating songstresses, seductive witches and one-eyed monsters, to the very depths of Hades, he must call on all his courage and wit if he is ever to return home to his beloved Penelope.