General Notes

Antenor 1 was one of the Elders of Troy at the time of the Trojan War.During the sack of Troy he was spared by the Achaeans, either because he advocated peace and the restoration of Helen, or because he betrayed the city. After the war he came to northern Italy where he founded Padua.


The conflict.  When the seducer Paris took with him gorgeous Helen fromSparta to Troy, he did not imagine the size of the conflagration he was about to cause, nor did he fear any consequences; for women had been abducted before and no one had gone to war for their sake. But this time,for reasons known to the gods and in part also to mortals, a huge coalition was formed by many kingdoms throughout the whole of Hellas,determined to sail to Troy and to obtain, either through persuasive wordsor through harsh force, the restoration of the Spartan queen and the property that the Trojan prince had stolen.
Embassy.  Some believe and feel that whereas war arouses enthusiasm,giving opportunity for courage and glory to come forth, peace tends to cause boredom, its demands being less challenging. Yet, war brings death and destruction, and that is why the desire of a peaceful settlement,makes its way even into the hearts of those who are more eager to fight.For negotiation may sometimes yield the desired results. And so, when the powerful army led by King Agamemnon reached the Troad, Odysseus and Menelaus were sent as ambassadors with the mission of persuading theTrojans to restore Helen and the Spartan property.
Antenor 1 defends the ambassadors.      This embassy failed and theTrojans, who had summoned an assembly, not only refused to restore Helen and the property, but also threatened to kill the envoys. It is then that Antenor 1, whose childhood and young years have not been preserved in any known record, comes into the story already as an aged man, intervening to protect the ambassadors and thereby averting what is normally regarded as a particularly treacherous crime. He also wished to restore Helen, asOdysseus later recalled:"I was sent also as a bold ambassador to Ilium's stronghold and visited and entered the senate-house of lofty Troy. It was still full of heroes...I pleaded the common cause which Greece had entrusted to me, I denounced Paris, demanded the return of Helen and the  booty, and I prevailed on Priam and Antenor who sided with Priam. But Paris and his brothers and his companions in the robbery scarce restrained their impious hands from me..." [Odysseus to the Achaeans.Ovid, Metamorphoses 13.196]
Proposal of Antimachus 5.     It was Antimachus 5 who, being the mosteloquent in the Trojan assembly, defeated all proposals to give back Helen to Menelaus and also bade slay the envoys. On account of this atrocious recommendation to the assembly Antimachus 5's sons Pisander 1and Hippolochus 2 lost their lives. For when later Agamemnon chanced to have them at his mercy in the battlefield, he did not spare them as they begged --although they offered rich treasures as ransom--, but instead slew them so that they would pay for their father's foul outrage.
Antenor 1's picture of the ambassadors.      When later Antenor 1recalled the episode with the ambassadors, whom he had received as guests in his own house, he described Menelaus as taller than Odysseus and as a man of fluent but short speech; yet, he added, Odysseus was the more royal when they both were seated, and by far the more eloquent.
He insisted more than once.   Antenor 1 was of the opinion that to restore Helen was the proper thing to do, and years later, during the war, he still caused trouble by letting the Trojan assemblies know what he thought:"Trojans, Dardanians and allies...hear a proposal which I feel compelled to make. Let us have done now, and give Helen back to the Atrides, along with all her property. By fighting on as we are doing, we have made perjurers of ourselves. No good that I can see will ever comeof that..." [Antenor 1 to the Trojan assembly. Homer, The Il