According to Greek tradition, the Trojan War lasted 10 years.
The conflict began after Paris of Troy took Helen from Menelaus, king of Sparta. Menelaus’s brother Agamemnon assembled a coalition of Achaean kings and warriors, who sailed to Troy and besieged the city. The siege became the central heroic conflict of the Greek mythological age.
Homer’s Iliad does not narrate all ten years. Instead, it focuses on a brief but decisive episode during the war’s final year, mainly the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon and the consequences of Achilles’ withdrawal. The poem covers only several days of fighting, while later poems and myths supply other events, including Achilles’ death and the Trojan Horse.
The number ten is therefore a traditional mythic chronology, not a securely established historical duration. Ancient writers proposed different dates for the war, and modern scholars still debate whether the story preserves memories of a specific Bronze Age conflict. The famous ten-year siege should not be confused with Odysseus’s separate ten-year journey home in the Odyssey.