Menelaus didn't, however, and a war between the Greeks and the Trojans ensued. For 10 years, the war dragged on, until the Greeks decided to build a big wooden horse, hide inside it, wait until the Trojans pulled it within their walls, then spill out at night and sack the city. With the Trojans conquered, Hecuba really gets the raw end of this deal. All her sons are dead, including Paris, and she is about to go from Queen of Troy to slave in Greece. Later in the play, Athena, who feels she has been disrespected by the Greeks she helped, convinces Poseidon to drown the rest of the Greeks in a storm at sea.
War is tough on the women who survive.
At least partially, the deaths of the Trojan War lie at Aphrodite's feet, victims of her vanity. Her whims are also subtly woven into English playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker's The Love of the Nightingale. Theseus sails into town to kill the minotaur, who just happens to be the result of Minos' wife's affair with a bull that she thought was Poseidon. He succeeds in killing the beast with the help of Ariadne, and she sails back to Athens with him. Rather, she plans to sail back to Athens with him, but he abandons her on the island on Naxos.