If you ask someone who has never read the Iliad to name one scene from it, chances are, the first scene that person will probably name is the scene with the Trojan Horse. The Trojan Horse, though, is actually never even mentioned in the Iliad. The Iliad ends with the funeral of Hektor, long before the fall of Troy. The story of the Trojan Horse is first told in flashback by the blind bard Demodokos in Book Eight of the Odyssey.
If you tell the person that the Iliad ends with the funeral of Hektor and ask them to name another scene, then they’ll probably tell you the iconic scene where Achilles goes to the gates of Troy and calls for Hektor to come out and face him. It’s a scene that appears in nearly every adaptation of the Trojan War made in the past two decades. That scene, though, doesn’t appear in the Iliad at all either. In fact, it doesn’t appear in any ancient source whatsoever; it is purely an invention of Hollywood.
The birth of a modern trope
The story of how this trope emerged begins with a scene in the 2004 historical war drama film Troy, directed by Wolfgang Peterson and written by David Benioff. In a scene near the very end of the film, Achilles (played by Brad Pitt) rides up to the gates of Troy in his chariot, dismounts, and starts screaming for Hektor (played by Eric Bana) to come out and face him.
After saying farewell to his wife Andromache, Hektor goes out to face Achilles. The whole city watches on the ramparts as the two warriors face off. First they fight each other with spears, then with swords. Eventually, Achilles kills Hektor by hurling a spear through his shoulder and then impaling him through the chest with his sword. The film then shows Andromache’s face filled with grief, horror, and terror at the sight of her husband’s gruesome death.
A mostly identical scene occurs in the 2018 BBC drama Troy: Fall of a City at the end of episode six, “Battle on the Beach.” The main difference is that, in Troy: Fall of a City, Achilles (played by David Gyasi) doesn’t come to the gates of Troy alone; instead, he brings three Trojan captives with him and starts killing them off one-by-one in effort to force Hektor to come out and face him.
The fact that he tries to draw Hektor out by killing hostages makes Troy: Fall of a City’s version of Achilles into a somewhat more menacing character than the one portrayed in Troy. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that the darker portrayal of Achilles in this show is probably at least partially inspired by the darker, grittier television shows of the past two decades, like Rome and Game of Thrones, in which heroes and villains are not clearly delineated.
ABOVE: Shot from the 2004 film Troy of Achilles (played by Brad Pitt) riding up to the gates of Troy in his chariot
ABOVE: Shot from the 2004 film Troy of Achilles standing outside the gates of Troy screaming for Hektor (played by Eric Bana) to come out and face him
A new version of the trope from this year
In September 2019, the trailer for the new video game A Total War Saga: Troy, which will be released later this year,was released. The trailer centers around a scene of Achilles marching up to the gates of Troy and screaming for Hektor to come out and face him. The trailer shows Achilles marching up to the gate, killing soldiers as he goes. Then it shows him standing there in front of the gate shouting for Hektor. It shows the gates opening and Hektor coming out. Then it shows Achilles and Hektor fighting.
The version of the scene from the trailer for A Total War Saga: Troy really makes absolutely no sense. In both Troy and Troy: Fall of a City, the reason why Hektor is inside the city is because there is no battle going on when Achilles approaches. In the Total War version, though, there is a battle going on, which makes us seriously wonder why Hektor isn’t on the battlefield with everyone else. Is Hektor supposed to be a coward in this version? Then why does he ultimately come out to face Achilles? Nothing about the trailer makes any sense.
I also find it hilarious that, in the trailer, there are rows upon rows of soldiers in full battle armor just standing there outside the city as Achilles approaches. For some reason, they aren’t fighting and they aren’t running; they’re just standing there doing absolutely nothing. If the trailer were at all trying to be realistic, those soldiers would either be fleeing in terror or marching forward to attack Achilles.
What is interesting, though, is that the scene of Achilles shouting for Hektor isn’t just a minor part of the trailer; it is the main focus of it. The trailer presumably focuses on this scene because it has apparently now become one of the most instantly recognizable scenes from the Trojan War, alongside the scene of the Trojan Horse and the scene of Achilles’s death (which, by the way, isn’t in the Iliad either).
ABOVE: Scene from the trailer for the video game A Total War Saga: Troy, which will be coming out later in 2020, of Achilles standing outside the gates of Troy screaming for Hektor to come out and fight him
How it actually happens in the Iliad
In the Iliad, there is no scene in which Achilles marches up to the gates of Troy and calls on Hektor to come out and fight him. Instead, in Book Twenty-One of the Iliad, Achilles goes into battle against the Trojans and kills so many of them that all of the remaining forces except Hektor flee inside the city.
In Book Twenty-Two, Achilles confronts Hektor, who is already outside the city because, unlike the others, he has not fled inside. At the last moment, Hektor is overcome by fear and he runs away. Achilles chases Hektor all the way around the city of Troy three times. Hektor is given stamina to keep running by the god Apollon, but, no matter how hard he runs, he can’t escape from Achilles.
Then, under Zeus’s orders, Athena appears to Hektor disguised as his brother Deiphobos. She convinces him to stop running and fight Achilles, telling him that she will fight alongside him. Hektor tries to make a pact with Achilles that whoever wins will not defile the other’s body, but Achilles refuses the offer, saying that, just as there can be no pact between lions and men or between wolves and sheep, there can be no pact between the two of them.
Achilles throws his spear at Hektor, but Hektor ducks out of the way, causing the spear to miss. Unbeknownst to Hektor, Athena retrieves the spear and gives it back to Achilles. Then Hektor throws his own spear at Achilles, thinking that Achilles has lost his only spear and that his own brother Deiphobos is standing right behind him to hand him another spear in case he misses. Hektor hits Achilles’s shield and his spear bounces off, but, when Hektor turns to retrieve the spear he is expecting his brother to hand him, he finds that Athena has vanished.
Since Hektor is without his spear, but Achilles still has the spear that Athena returned to him, Achilles is able to kill Hektor. After killing him, Achilles strips Hektor’s body naked, pierces his feet, and drives rawhide cords through them. Then he ties the cords to the back of his chariot and drives around the city of Troy, dragging Hektor’s naked and mangled corpse along behind him with his head in the dust.
Hollywood may have its reasons for portraying the fight the way it does, but its portrayal of the fight is not the same as the portrayal that is found in the Iliad. Most notably, the now seemingly iconic scene of Achilles shouting for Hektor to come out and fight him does not appear in the original epic.
ABOVE: The Triumph of Achilles, painted in 1892 by the Austrian painter Franz Matsch, depicting Achilles dragging Hektor’s lifeless corpse along behind his chariot, as described in Book Twenty-Two of the Iliad
About those gates…
By the way, while we’re talking about the gates of Troy, the way that they are portrayed in most films is also completely inaccurate. Modern portrayals almost always seem to depict the city of Troy having colossal walls with huge ramparts and towers and massive gates that stand many times the height of a man. In the trailer for A Total War Saga: Troy, Achilles is portrayed as practically a giant and yet the gates of Troy still stand at least three times his total height, even with him standing a significant distance closer to the viewer than the gates.
The actual ruins of the historical Troy are not quite so impressive. Troy was a much smaller, less well-fortified city during the Bronze Age than modern films would lead you to believe. It did have walls, but they weren’t the unbelievably massive walls that you always see in films.
I can completely understand, though, why modern filmmakers choose to portray Troy as having massive walls and gates that tower higher than a three-story home. After all, based on my reading of it, the Iliad itself tends to give an impression of Troy being much larger and better-fortified than the actual ruins suggest. I think that exaggerating the size and scale of things is just a fundamental characteristic of the epic genre. There’s nothing wrong with it; it’s just good to keep in mind when these works are exaggerating and not get legend confused with history.
As I talk about in this article I wrote in March 2019, the Trojan War as it is described in Greek literature is almost certainly fictional anyways. There may have been military conflicts between various Mycenaean kingdoms and the city of Troy during the late Bronze Age, but there almost certainly wasn’t a real ten-year-long siege of Troy, a real Achilles, a real Hektor, or a real Trojan Horse. Since the whole story is fictional to begin with, I figure there isn’t much point in getting wildly upset over historical accuracy.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the walls of the acropolis of Troy VII
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a portion of the walls of Troy VII
Oh, and about the whole sandy desert…
Another interesting thing that one notices in all these scenes of Achilles fighting Hektor is that modern depictions seem to nearly always portray the terrain around Troy as dry, sandy desert. In Troy, there are patches of grass here and there around the city, but it’s mostly nothing but barren dust. In the trailer for A Total War Saga: Troy, there is not plant life of any kind anywhere to be seen.
In reality, though, that’s not even remotely what the terrain around the actual city of Troy has ever looked like. The city of Troy is actually located on a large hill above a grassy plain. If you look out from the ruins of Troy on the sea, you will find that there is virtually no sand in sight—just a bunch of fields.
Today in the twenty-first century, these fields are mainly full of crops. It is possible the ancient Trojans may have grown crops in some of the surrounding fields in the Bronze Age, but, during a time of war when it was unsafe for people to grow crops in the fields directly surrounding the city, these fields would have probably been mostly overgrown with grass and wild plants, just as the ruins of Troy themselves are today.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing the actual terrain around the city of Troy
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the landscape around Troy
ABOVE: Another photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing the landscape around the ruins of Troy
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the landscape around Troy, clearly taken in the dry heat of summer. Notice that it’s still not surrounded by barren desert.
I think that the reason why modern films and video games do not portray the city of Troy being on a hill is probably connected to how modern cities are laid out. In ancient times, cities were built on hills because hills were easier to fortify. Today, though, we don’t worry about fortifying our cities, so we can just build them wherever we want.
I think that the reason why modern films and video games portray Troy as being surrounded by desert is probably because people know that Troy is in Turkey, which they know is part of the Middle East, and people automatically assume that the entire Middle East is nothing but desert. This is, of course, totally wrong; the landscape of the Middle East is actually quite diverse and it’s not all just barren desert. Large parts of Turkey especially are actually quite green.
This is one thing that I really do blame filmmakers for. Having Troy totally surrounded by barren desert isn’t just wrong but actually quite ridiculous. Ironically, Troy: Fall of a City has been extensively criticized for its lack of historical accuracy, but, of all the modern adaptations I have seen, I think that it is actually the closest to getting the landscape around Troy correct.
The makers of Troy: Fall of a City at least managed to include grass, trees, and plants around the city rather than having it completely surrounded by barren wasteland. Also, their version of the city of Troy is sort of on a bit of a hill. The city is still depicted as an enormous metropolis on a modern scale surrounded by colossal walls, but I am at least ok with that, since it at least isn’t ridiculous.
ABOVE: Shot of the city of Troy from afar from Troy: Fall of a City
ABOVE: Shot of Achilles approaching the city of Troy on his chariot from Troy: Fall of a City
Conclusion
It turns out that one of the most commonly-portrayed scenes in twenty-first century adaptations of the Trojan War legend is actually an invention of Hollywood. You know what, that’s ok. Hollywood is allowed to have creative license. Nonetheless, it is worth keeping in mind which aspects of these films come from actual ancient texts and which aspects are purely modern inventions.
