HELEN OF TROY (PT 1): THE FACE THAT LAUNCHED A THOUSAND SHIPS

(Part Two comes Thursday at 4pm EST)

For more than three thousand years, one of the greatest stories ever told has survived: a beautiful queen, a Trojan prince, a betrayed husband, an army of Greek warriors, and a fleet sailing across the sea toward the mighty walls of Troy.

Her name was Helen.

According to legend, her disappearance from Sparta with the Trojan prince Paris ignited the legendary Trojan War. Kings and warriors answered the call. Among them were names that would echo through history: Agamemnon, Menelaus, Odysseus and the almost unstoppable Achilles.

Waiting inside Troy were King Priam, Paris and Troy's great defender, Hector.

But there is a question behind the legend:

How much of it was true?

In Part One, we travel to a dusty hill at Hisarlik in modern Turkey, where 19th-century businessman and amateur archaeologist Schliemann became obsessed with the possibility that the city described in Homer's ancient epic wasn't imaginary at all.

He started digging.

And what came out of the ground changed the argument forever.

Troy had existed.

From there we enter Homer's extraordinary world and discover the legend of Helen, Paris and Menelaus, the judgment of the goddesses, the gathering of the Greek army, and the ships sailing toward Troy.

But we stop with the battle still ahead.

Because before we let Homer tell us how the Trojan War unfolded, we need to return to the archaeology and ask:

If Troy was real, what else might have been real?

Were its legendary walls based upon actual fortifications?

Was the city attacked?

Was it destroyed in war?

Could an ancient catastrophe have survived for centuries through oral storytelling before becoming one of the world's greatest works of literature?

This is part archaeological adventure, part literary adventure, and one of history's most fascinating collisions between fact and legend.

COMING THURSDAY AT 4 PM ET

HELEN OF TROY (PT 2): THE BATTLE FOR TROY

First, we'll return to the ruins and discover what later archaeologists found beneath the hill.

Then we'll rebuild Troy in our imaginations and return to Homer's battlefield.

Paris versus Menelaus.

Achilles and his terrible rage.

Hector fighting to defend his family and his city.

The legendary siege.

And ultimately the ingenious plan that supposedly succeeded where years of fighting had failed:

The Trojan Horse.

Was this simply one of humanity's greatest legends?

Or had Homer's stories preserved fragments of something that really happened thousands of years ago?

Join us Thursday at 4 PM Eastern for HELEN OF TROY (PT 2): THE BATTLE FOR TROY, right here on 1001 Heroes, Legends, Histories & Mysteries.

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