the Trojan hero, he slays Hector in single combat.

The Iliad closes with the burial of Hector. The death of
Achilles and the capture of Troy were related in later poems.
The hero of so many achievements perishes by an arrow shot by the
unwarlike Paris, but directed by the hand of Apollo. The noblest
combatants had now fallen on either side, and force of arms had
proved unable to accomplish what stratagem at length effects. It
is Ulysses who now steps into the foreground and becomes the real
conqueror of Troy. By his advice a wooden horse is built, in
whose inside he and other heroes conceal themselves. The
infatuated Trojans admit the horse within their walls. In the
dead of night the Greeks rush out and open the gates to their
comrades. Troy is delivered over to the sword, and its glory
sinks in ashes. The fall of Troy is placed in the year 1184 B.C.

The return of the Grecian leaders from Troy forms another series
of poetical legends. Several meet with tragical ends. Agamemnon
is murdered on his arrival at Mycenae, by his wife Clytaemnestra
and her paramour AEgisthus. But of these wanderings the most
celebrated and interesting are those of Ulysses, which form the
subject of the Odyssey. After twenty years' absence he arrives
at length in Ithaca, where he slays the numerous suitors who
devoured his substance and contended for the hand of his wife
Penelope.

The Homeric poems must not be regarded as a record of historical
persons and events, but, at the same time, they present a
valuable picture of the institutions and manners of the earliest
known state of Grecian society.