Starting point of Homer's Iliad, the Trojan War is, without a doubt, one of the most important and recognized war conflicts in history, one of the cornerstones of Western culture. There a coalition of Achaean armies faced the city of Troy (Ilion). And, according to classical myth, it was a punishment expedition by the Achaeans, whose casus belli would be the abduction of the beautiful Helen of Sparta by the Trojan prince Paris... These events, well known in the popular imagination to this day, were considered true by the ancient Greeks. However, although Homer started from real events, controversy periodically resurfaces, because how much truth is there in the story of the aedo? And where does the idea of an invading horse or the famous Achilles' heel come from? In short, how much history and how much legend in the mythical Trojan War?

His deep knowledge of Greco-Latin culture and the Bronze Age throughout the western Mediterranean allows Barry Strauss to place the Iliad in its context and, in the process, deploy his dazzling and detailed prose on the political, military and social environment of one of the most legendary battles of all time. And he does so with his usual narrative expertise and unusual ability to make the reader relive the historical episode as if it were happening before his eyes.

We are facing a masterpiece on one of the main themes of the history of Classical Antiquity, essential for any history buff, written by one of the world's great specialists of the period.