You are listening to Trojan War, the podcast, history's most awesome epic.

This is episode number eight in the series.

Today's episode is titled, Finding Achilles. So welcome back to episode number eight of Trojan War the podcast.

Now, if you'll recall at the end of episode number seven,

Agamemnon King of Kings, with his invasion

fleet set ready to sail to Troy, was missing two warlords. He was missing the warlord

Odysseus, and he was missing the warlord, Achilles. Clearly, he needed Odysseus for

Odysseus's brains. Odysseus was well regarded as the brightest, most clever of the Greeks, and Agamemnon wanted

a man like that by his side throughout the entire operation.

But he was also missing Achilles, the greatest and most formidable of the Greek soldiers,

Greece's own weapon of mass destruction, if you will.

So this episode is going to focus on the challenge of finding the

elusive Achilles. Now, Agamemnon worried. He had his fleet assembled. He had his 100,000

men-at-arms ready at the Port of Allis, ready to sail. The thousand boats had been built. And

while holding together a coalition army is no easy thing.

And Agamemnon recognized that the longer he delayed departure for Troy, the more risk there was

of something going terribly wrong with the coalition army and the whole thing falling apart.

Agamemnon was also looking at the time of year. It was getting into late summer.

And the autumn or the even more dangerous winter

storms in the Mediterranean would have made launching a fleet of the size that Agamemnon was planning

and launching completely impossible. So there was a risk that if Operation Trojan storm didn't get

off the ground in very short order in the next few weeks, then it might be delayed six months.

...