The Ilisy

Back in the old days, a Greek guy with an apple stole another Greek guy’s wife, and pretty soon, all hell broke loose and a huge war broke out.

Years later, as the Greeks continued to fight, a group known as Achaeans invaded a city named Troy took a couple of women from the Trojans.

This caused the father of one of those women to pray to a god by the name of Apollo (most old school gods were named after Rocky characters), who responded by killing a ton of Achaean soldiers, which forced the guy who took the kidnapped woman to give her back, which caused him to ask for the other woman they took, which pissed off the guy who was doing it with her—an Achaean super warrior named Achilles—which caused him to pack up and leave the Achaean army, which in turn caused the god Zeus to step in and help out the Trojans, which is really confusing to me considering how I’ve never actually seen or heard anyone talk to a god before.

Anyways, with Zeus on their side and Achilles out of the picture, the Trojans proceeded to kick the crap out of the Achaeans, causing Achilles to feel so bad that he sent his friend to fight in his place.

Shortly thereafter, the friend was killed in battle—and Achilles was so pissed that he paid the Trojans a visit and got pre-Socratic on their behinds.

Then, with the help of the goddess Athena, he managed to kill the man who killed his friend, and pretty much spent the next few days pissing on his corpse, until the dead man’s father begged him to stop.

PART TWO: The following Tuesday, another notable Achaean warrior—a fellow by the name of Odysseus—left Troy on a ship with some other Achaean soldiers, robbed an island, helped some of his friends overcome their coke addictions, got a man-eating Cyclops drunk and blinded him, traded some stories for a bag of wind, lost most of his men on an island, kicked it in the underworld for a while, listened to some songs, and ate some really expensive hamburgers.

The following Wednesday, a storm caused by Zeus killed all of Odysseus’s remaining men, and took him to an island where a nymph kept him as a slave for seven years.

But the gods helped him out, and he ended up making it back to his native city of Ithaca, about twenty years after he left to fight the people of Troy.

The Goddess Athena disguised him as a beggar—and after learning that a dozen scummy men were making plays for his wife, he dropped by his home still in disguise.

His wife, suspecting that the beggar was her husband, arranged an archery contest to confirm his identity, rather than simply asking him who he was.

Now, the object of the contest was to use Odysseus's great bow to fire an arrow through a row of twelve axes, and the winner would be entitled to Penelope’s hand in marriage. (The rest of her body would go to the winner of a rock, paper, scissors tournament.)

After the scumbags all tried and failed to do so, Odysseus managed to pull off the feat with ease, and then proceeded to kill the scumbags with the help of his son and servants, and reveal himself to all.