Menelaus, who could not wage war alone, sought the assistance of his brother, Agamemnon, to help him avenge the loss of his wife. King of Mycenae (where Heinrich Schliemann much later discovered magnificent ruins), Agamemnon was a powerful ruler.
Achilles, whose mother had tried to prevent her son from fighting because of a prophecy which predicted his death if he fought against Troy, was hidden away. He was ultimately found by Odysseus (Ulysses) who persuaded the young man to fight. Achilles, together with his cousin and close friend Patroclus (Patroklos) sailed with Odysseus and the Greek fleet (of a thousand ships) to fight against Troy.
A fearless warrior, Achilles captured Briseis (a beautiful woman and wife of one of Achilles’ victims) as a war prize during one of his exploits. Although Troy itself was holding firm against the Greeks, Achilles had captured twenty-three towns in Trojan territory. (Briseis, parenthetically, was NOT King Priam’s niece, as depicted in the movie Troy.)
Soon, however, Briseis was the cause of a serious rift between Achilles and Agammenon. (It is with this story, in the tenth year of the
Trojan War, that the Iliad begins.)