The Trojan War is perhaps the most famous of all Greek legends.

The Trojan War is perhaps the most famous of all Greek legends.

It tells of the ten-year siege of the city of Troy (in Anatolia in modern-day Turkey) and the eventual destruction of that city by a Greek army led by King Agamemnon.

The war broke out after Paris, son of Trojan king Priam, ran off with the beautiful Helen, wife of Menelaus, ruler of Sparta in southern Greece.

The lovers returned to Troy, but Menelaus could not allow such a terrible insult to go unavenged.

A vast army was collected under the command of his brother Agamemnon.

The troops were loaded on to 1,000 ships which set off for Troy.

Agamemnon’s army contained many famous warriors, like Odysseus, Ajax and the famous fighter Achilles — who could only be killed if he was wounded in the heel.

The first nine years of the siege were largely uneventful, but in the tenth the hot-tempered Achilles withdrew from the fighting following a row with Agamemnon.

His withdrawal inspired the Trojans, led by Priam’s eldest son Hector, who burst from the city and inflicted a series of defeats on the Greeks.

Achilles’ beloved friend Patroclus realised that the demoralised Greeks were facing certain defeat without their hero to inspire them.

So he persuaded the sulking Achilles to lend him his armour, hoping it would fool the Trojans into thinking Achilles had returned to the fight.

The ruse failed to work and Patroclus was killed by Hector.

The grief-stricken Achilles now returned to the fighting for real and killed Hector.

Achilles himself was later killed after he was hit in the heel by an arrow fired by Paris — and guided to its spot by the god Apollo.

Troy was finally taken by a clever trick.

The Greeks built a huge wooden horse, inside which a few hand-picked warriors were hidden.

The rest of the army then boarded their ships and pretended to sail away, leaving the wooden horse outside the gates of Troy as a peace offering.

Most of the Trojans were completely fooled.

Only the priest Laocoon sensed something was wrong.

He warned his fellow citizens not to take the gift inside the city walls.

But as Laocoon spoke, two giant snakes slithered from the sea and killed him and his two sons.

The snakes were sent by the goddess Athena, who supported the Greeks. Her plan worked.

The Trojans believed the killing of Laocoon proved the gods would be offended if they did not accept the gift and they dragged it within the city walls.

As soon as darkness fell, the Greeks emerged from the horse and opened the gates of the city.

The rest of the Greek army, which had silently returned, flooded in.

The city was sacked and burned. Its inhabitants were either killed or sold into slavery. Only a handful escaped.

The story of the climax of the Trojan War is told in an epic poem called the Iliad.

It is thought to have been written around 800 BC by a blind poet known to us as Homer, and is widely accepted as the beginning of European literature.

A sequel to the events at Troy, called The Odyssey, is also believed to have been written by Homer. It tells of how the hero Odysseus made his way home to Greece.

The Trojan War itself is traditionally dated to the 12th Century BC.

Modern archaeological excavations at the site of ancient Troy (now Hissarlik in Turkey) have shown that it was destroyed by fire in the early part of the era.