Who Fought for Troy?

Troy does not fight alone. In the Iliad, the Trojan-Dardanian core is accompanied by contingents from the Troad, the Hellespont, Anatolia and Thrace. But the tradition does not end where the poem ends: after Hector, new reinforcements arrive, among them Penthesilea’s Amazons and Memnon’s Ethiopians. Homer’s Trojan coalition is already broad; later tradition expands the scale of the conflict even further.

Why did Troy need so many allies?

The Iliad presents a war of coalitions. The Trojan Catalogue opens with ‘the Trojans and their allies’ (Iliad 2.815) and brings together contingents from different regions. It is not a diplomatic census or a historical snapshot of the Bronze Age: it is an epic organisation of peoples, territories and leaders that makes the breadth of the defending side visible.

The Trojans of the city and Aeneas’ Dardanians belong to the closest core. This page deals with the contingents added by the Catalogue alongside that core; their relationship with Troy is not identical in every case.

Which peoples appear in the Iliad?

The following table lists the fourteen contingents associated with the Trojan-Dardanian core in the Catalogue of Iliad 2.824–877. It does not include Trojans and Dardanians, discussed in Were the Trojans and Dardanians the Same?. The places of origin are approximate, and disputed identifications are marked as such.

People / contingent	Leader or leaders	Approximate origin	Source / context
People of Zelea	Pandarus	Zelea, at the foot of Ida	Iliad 2.824–827; local contingent of the Troad
Adrastea, Apaesus, Pityeia and Tereia	Adrastus and Amphius	Troad	Iliad 2.828–834; local contingent
Peoples of Percote, Practius, Sestus, Abydos and Arisbe	Hippothous and Pylaeus	Hellespont / Troad	Iliad 2.835–839; grouping of places, not a single ethnonym
Pelasgians	Hippothous and Pylaeus	Larisa; identification disputed	Iliad 2.840–843; ethnonym of uncertain scope
Thracians	Acamas and Peirous	Thrace	Iliad 2.844–847
Cicones	Euphemus	Thracian coast	Iliad 2.846–847
Paeonians	Pyraechmes	around the Axios; cautiously identified	Iliad 2.848–850
Paphlagonians	Pylaemenes	northern Anatolia	Iliad 2.851–855
Halizones	Odius and Epistrophus	Anatolia; identification disputed	Iliad 2.856–857
Mysians	Chromis and Ennomus	Mysia / north-western Anatolia	Iliad 2.858–861
Phrygians	Phorcys and Ascanius	Phrygia	Iliad 2.862–863
Maeonians	Mesthles and Antiphus	Maeonia / Lydia, with caution	Iliad 2.864–866
Carians	Nastes and Amphimachus	Caria / south-western Anatolia	Iliad 2.867–875
Lycians	Sarpedon and Glaucus	Lycia, ‘from afar’, by the Xanthus	Iliad 2.876–877

Where did they come from?

The Catalogue does not place all these groups at the same distance from Troy. Some belong to the Troad itself or to the Hellespont; others come from Thrace, northern Anatolia, Phrygia, Caria or Lycia. This variety helps explain why ‘Trojans’ can sometimes function, in a broad narrative sense, as shorthand for the defending side, even though not all its members are Trojans in the strict sense.

The linguistic plurality of the defending army also appears in the Iliad (Iliad 4.437–438). It does not, however, allow us to assign each contingent an exact historical identity or turn the Catalogue into a map of states.

Who were Sarpedon’s Lycians?

The Lycians are the clearest example of a distant ally: the Catalogue places them ‘from afar’, by the river Xanthus, under Sarpedon and Glaucus (Iliad 2.876–877). Sarpedon plays a prominent role in the poem and dies in Book 16. Their distance and the prominence of their leaders show that the Trojan alliance extends far beyond the immediate surroundings of the city.

Did all these peoples arrive at the same time?

The Iliad lists contingents already present around Troy, but does not provide a complete chronology of when each arrived. We should not turn the order of the Catalogue into a recruitment sequence or assume that all reached the fighting at the same moment. The table records their presence in the poem, not a reconstructed military itinerary.

Who arrived later according to tradition?

Here another layer of tradition begins. The Iliad ends with Hector’s funeral; it does not narrate the continuation of the war. The summary of the Aethiopis, a lost poem of the Epic Cycle known only indirectly, places Penthesilea and Memnon among Troy’s defenders after Hector’s death. The summary of the Little Iliad, which continues after the death of Achilles, adds Eurypylus. Penthesilea, Memnon and Eurypylus do not belong to the Iliad’s Catalogue of allies.

Reinforcement / contingent	Main figure	Source / moment in the tradition
Amazons	Penthesilea	Lost Aethiopis, known through Proclus’ summary: she arrives after Hector and Achilles kills her
Ethiopians	Memnon	Lost Aethiopis, known through Proclus’ summary: Memnon kills Antilochus and Achilles kills Memnon
Mysians	Eurypylus, son of Telephus	Lost Little Iliad, known through Proclus’ summary: he comes to Troy’s aid with a Mysian contingent and Neoptolemus kills him

Did the Amazons fight for Troy?

According to the summary of the Aethiopis, Penthesilea comes to help the Trojans after Hector’s death and is killed by Achilles. That is the core that can be attributed indirectly to the cyclic poem. Quintus of Smyrna develops the episode later in the Posthomerica; other famous details, such as Achilles’ love for the dead Penthesilea, belong to later traditions and should not be projected back onto Proclus’ summary.

Who was Memnon?

Memnon is another reinforcement who arrives after Hector. The Odyssey remembers him in connection with Antilochus and Achilles (Odyssey 4.186–188), but his battle episode belongs to the Aethiopis: the surviving summary says that he kills Antilochus and that Achilles kills him. Epic tradition makes him the son of Eos and Tithonus; that genealogy does not derive from the Homeric formula ‘rosy-fingered Dawn’.

Who was Eurypylus?

Eurypylus, son of Telephus, comes from Mysia as a late ally of the Trojans. The Odyssey remembers him among the men killed by Neoptolemus, together with many of his Mysian companions (Odyssey 11.519–522), but it does not narrate his arrival or his fighting. The summary of the Little Iliad places that episode after Achilles’ death: Eurypylus comes to Troy’s aid and Neoptolemus kills him.

He should not be confused with the Achaean Eurypylus, son of Euaemon, who does fight in the Iliad. They are two different characters with the same name.

Did the Ethiopians come to defend Troy?

In the tradition of Memnon, yes: they arrive as his contingent. The name should not be equated with the modern state of Ethiopia. The Ethiopians of epic belong to a remote southern horizon whose relationship with later geographies requires caution. For this page, it is enough to distinguish clearly between the evidence of the Aethiopis and the allies listed in the Iliad’s Catalogue.

Are Penthesilea and Memnon in Homer?

Not as episodes of the Iliad. The Odyssey knows Memnon in a memory of the war, but does not narrate his arrival or his combat. Penthesilea does not appear in the surviving Homeric poems. Their place in the fuller story of the war comes from cyclic tradition and later elaborations.

How, then, do we reconstruct the war as a whole?

The answer depends on the source and on the stage of the tradition. For the core narrative of the Iliad, the poem itself is the principal evidence. For Penthesilea, Memnon, the death of Achilles, the Horse or the sack, we must state that the poems of the Cycle are lost and known through summaries, fragments and later testimonies.

Tragedy, mythography and Latin or Late Antique poetry do not automatically fill Homer’s silences: they offer other versions that must remain distinct.