The House of Troy

The Trojan royal house descends, Homer says, from Zeus himself through Dardanus. Tros gives the people their name; his sons split the line — Ilus founds Ilios and fathers Laomedon, the king who cheated Apollo and Poseidon of their wage for building Troy’s walls; Assaracus’s branch runs to Anchises, beloved of Aphrodite; and young Ganymede is carried up to pour wine for Zeus.

Solid lines: parentage · double bar: union · dashed: attested only in later tradition. Tap a name to open its entry.

Priam and Hecuba preside over the doomed generation: Hector, the city’s one defense, husband of Andromache and father of the infant thrown from the walls; Paris, whose judgment and theft of Helen light the fire; Cassandra, cursed to prophesy unbelieved. The elder line dies with the city — but the junior branch escapes: Aeneas, son of Aphrodite, carries his father from the flames, and Virgil’s Aeneid — in this library — makes of that escape the founding of Rome.