The story of Troy and the Trojan War is a well-known legend. According to tradition, the conflict began after Paris, the son of King Priam of Troy, was given Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, by Aphrodite. Helen, the half-mortal daughter of Zeus, was already married to Menelaus, the brother of Agamemnon and the King of Sparta.

After Helen left Sparta with Paris, Menelaus summoned an expedition to go to Troy to win her back. Included in this expedition was Achilles who, as a result of being dipped in the River Styx as a baby, was invulnerable except for his heel.

Troy was besieged by the Greeks for ten years, and several well-known events took place during the long and arduous conflict, including the death of Achilles after Paris fired an arrow into his heel. Paris too was killed in the conflict. The siege was only brought to an end after Odysseus, the King of Ithaca, had the idea of the wooden horse. The horse was presented as a gift to the Trojans, but Greek soldiers were hidden inside. When the horse was brought into Troy, the soldiers crept out, opened the gates of the city, and let the Greek army into Troy. As a result, the city was burned and the Trojans massacred. Only Aeneas, the son of Aphrodite and the Trojan Anchises, escaped. His travels were later recorded in The Aeneid by the Roman writer Virgil. Helen returned home to Sparta with Menelaus.

It is impossible to separate fact from mythology in the legend of Troy. Indeed, it has long been debated whether any conflict actually took place. The story was passed down by oral tradition before being recorded by Homer in The Iliad, believed to have been written in the 9th-8th centuries B.C. However, by the time the legend was written down, it would no doubt have been altered by generations of bards.

In the late nineteenth century, an ancient city called Ilion was excavated near the coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey). It is thought that this might be a likely location for the lost city of Troy and the basis of the legend, as a conflict seems to have taken place there in around 1250 B.C., resulting in the destruction of the city.

From a numismatic point of view, the legend of Troy is believed to have taken place at least 500 years before the first coins were struck. Therefore, there are no coins contemporary to the period of the Trojan War.

For enthusiasts of the legend who see the horse as the turning point of the war, coins were struck later in the Greek world that depict horses. In fact, many city-states issued such coins and several examples are shown below (click on the thumbnails to view larger images):

In the Roman period, Julius Caesar, who believed that his ancestry could be traced back to Aeneas, issued a denarius with a reverse type depicting Aeneas and his father Anchises (pictured below).

To purchase any of the coins pictured above please contact
Paul Hill of the Spink Coin department (020 7563 4043)