Trojan War

One of the best-known tales ever told, the Trojan War is the greatest war of Greek mythology. An alliance of Achaean (Greek) kings fought for ten years against the city of Troy after the Trojan prince Paris carried off Helen, the wife of Menelaus of Sparta. The story is told in Homer’s Iliad, which covers only a short stretch of the tenth year, and in the other poems of the Epic Cycle, in the tragedians, and in Apollodorus’ Library.

The war began, in the Cypria, with a plan of Zeus and Themis, and with a quarrel among three goddesses (Hera, Athena and Aphrodite) over a prize of beauty thrown among the guests at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis by Strife. Zeus sent the goddesses to Paris, who gave the prize to Aphrodite because she promised him Helen (Apollodorus, Epitome 3.2). Helen went with Paris to Troy, and Menelaus, with his brother Agamemnon, called up the Greek leaders, most of whom were bound by an oath to defend Helen’s husband (Epitome 3.6). After a siege of ten years the Greeks took Troy by the stratagem of the Wooden Horse, devised by Odysseus, burned the city and killed or enslaved its people. Many of the victors then died or wandered on the way home.

The Trojan War Explained: A Summary

The Trojan War was a ten-year siege in which an alliance of Greek kingdoms attacked Troy to recover Helen after Paris took her. The Greeks won by hiding warriors inside a wooden horse, and the sack of the city angered the gods, who punished many of the Greeks on their journey home.

• The cause: Paris awards the prize of beauty to Aphrodite, who repays him with Helen (Epitome 3.2)
• The obligation: the Oath of Tyndareus binds Helen’s former suitors to defend her husband (Library 3.10.9)
• The siege: nine years of fighting on and around the Trojan plain with no decision, the Greeks raiding the surrounding country (Cypria, in Proclus’ summary)
• The tenth year: Agamemnon’s quarrel with Achilles, the death of Patroclus, and the killing of Hector (Iliad 1–24)
• The end: the death of Achilles, the Wooden Horse, the sack of the city and the death of Priam at an altar (Epitome 5.3–23)
• The aftermath: the Returns, in which the victorious Greek leaders die, wander or come home to disaster (Odyssey 3–4; Returns, in Proclus’ summary)

Why Did the Greeks Attack Troy?

The Greeks attacked Troy to bring back Helen and the treasure that went with her, and to punish the Trojans for refusing to return them. The reason so many kingdoms joined was an oath: Helen’s suitors had sworn to defend whoever became her husband (Library 3.10.9; Epitome 3.6).

• The immediate cause was Paris’ abduction of Helen while he was a guest in the house of Menelaus (Epitome 3.3)
• The Oath of Tyndareus, which Odysseus suggested to Tyndareus, bound the suitors, and Menelaus sent a herald to each of the kings to remind them of it (Library 3.10.9; Epitome 3.6)
• The Greeks sent Menelaus and Odysseus to Troy to demand Helen, but the Trojans refused and threatened to kill the envoys, who were saved by Antenor (Epitome 3.28–29)
• Behind this stands the plan of Zeus. According to the Cypria, Zeus saw the earth weighed down by the countless tribes of men and resolved to relieve it by causing the great struggle of the Ilian war, so that “the load of death might empty the world” (Cypria, fragment quoted by the scholiast on Iliad 1.5). Apollodorus gives two other reasons: that Zeus wanted his daughter to be famous for having embroiled Europe and Asia, or that he wished to exalt the race of demigods (Epitome 3.1)

Who Were the Trojans?

The Trojans were the people of Troy (Ilios), a wealthy city in the Troad on the northwest coast of Asia Minor. In Greek myth they are not foreigners in any deep sense: they worship the same gods and are portrayed with as much sympathy as their enemies.

• Their royal house descended from Dardanus, a son of Zeus (Iliad 20.215–240)
• Their king was Priam, and their greatest warrior his son Hector. Their allies included the Lycians under Sarpedon (Iliad 2.876–877), the Ethiopians under Memnon (Epitome 5.3) and the Amazons under Penthesilea (Epitome 5.1)
• Homer gives many of the noblest scenes of the Iliad to Trojans, and the poem ends not with a Greek triumph but with the funeral of Hector (Iliad 24.804)
• Aeneas, a Trojan prince, escapes the sack in Virgil’s Aeneid (Book 2) and is the ancestor of the Romans, which is why Roman writers took the Trojan side

Who Won the Trojan War?

The Greeks won. Troy was taken and burned (Epitome 5.21–23), but the victory cost the winners dearly, and Greek myth treats the aftermath as a disaster for both sides.

• Achilles, Ajax, Patroclus and Antilochus all died before the city fell, and Agamemnon was murdered in his own house on his return (Odyssey 3.193–198, 4.512–537; Epitome 5.3–7)
• Locrian Ajax was drowned at the Capherian rocks, Odysseus wandered for ten years before reaching Ithaca, and Menelaus came home only after years in Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean (Returns, in Proclus’ summary; Odyssey 4.81–85)
• Diomedes and Nestor, by contrast, put to sea early and got home safely (Returns, in Proclus’ summary; Odyssey 3.165–185)
• The sack itself – Priam killed at an altar, Cassandra dragged from the statue of Athena, Astyanax thrown from the walls – is what turned the gods against the victors (Sack of Ilium, in Proclus’ summary; Epitome 5.21–23)

The Background of the War

Peleus and Thetis

The origin of the Trojan War goes back to a divine love contest. Zeus and Poseidon both desired the sea-nymph Thetis, but gave her up when Themis prophesied that the son born to Thetis would be mightier than his father (Apollodorus, Library 3.13.5). In another version, Prometheus warned Zeus that a son of Thetis would be lord of heaven, and in yet another Zeus gave her to a mortal in anger because she would not lie with him, having been brought up by Hera (Library 3.13.5). In every version Thetis was given to the mortal Peleus, son of Aeacus, who was famed for his piety; with the help of Chiron he seized her and held her fast through all her changes of shape (Library 3.13.5).

The Apple of Discord

Zeus and the other gods feasted at the marriage of Peleus and Thetis. Strife, who had not been invited, threw a prize of beauty among the guests, and Hera, Athena and Aphrodite began to contend for it (Epitome 3.2; Cypria, in Proclus’ summary). In later writers the prize is a golden apple meant for the fairest of the goddesses (Hyginus, Fabulae 92), which is how it came to be called the Apple of Discord. Zeus, who could not choose among them without angering the other two, commanded Hermes to lead the three goddesses to the Trojan prince Alexander (Paris) on Mount Ida to be judged by him (Epitome 3.2).

The Judgment of Paris

Each goddess promised Paris a gift. Hera said that if she were preferred to all the women, she would give him the kingdom over all men; Athena promised victory in war; and Aphrodite promised him the hand of Helen. Paris decided in favour of Aphrodite, and sailed to Sparta in ships built by Phereclus (Epitome 3.2; Iliad 5.59–64). The Iliad already knows the judgment: Paris, it says, offended Hera and Athena by giving the prize to the goddess who offered him a ruinous lust (Iliad 24.25–30). In the Cypria, before Paris sailed, his brother Helenus foretold the future to him and Cassandra prophesied what would happen afterwards, and Aphrodite ordered Aeneas to sail with him (Cypria, in Proclus’ summary).

The Suitors of Helen and the Oath of Tyndareus

Helen was the daughter of Zeus and Leda, and was brought up by Leda’s husband Tyndareus, king of Sparta (Library 3.10.7). When she came of age, so many noble suitors came to ask for her that Tyndareus feared that the choice of one might set the others quarrelling. Odysseus promised that, if Tyndareus would help him win the hand of Penelope, the daughter of Tyndareus’ brother Icarius, he would suggest a way by which there would be no quarrel. Odysseus told Tyndareus to exact an oath from all the suitors that they would defend the favoured bridegroom against any wrong done to him in respect of his marriage. The suitors swore, and Tyndareus chose Menelaus for Helen and asked Icarius to bestow Penelope on Odysseus (Library 3.10.8–9).

The Abduction of Helen

Paris came to Sparta, where he was entertained by the sons of Tyndareus and then by Menelaus, and where at a feast he gave gifts to Helen (Cypria, in Proclus’ summary). After he had been Menelaus’ guest for nine days, Menelaus went to Crete to perform the funeral rites for his mother’s father Catreus. On the tenth day Paris persuaded Helen to go off with him. She left behind her daughter Hermione, then nine years old, put most of the property on board and sailed with him by night (Epitome 3.3). In the Cypria Aphrodite brought Helen and Paris together (Cypria, in Proclus’ summary). Hera sent a storm that drove them to Sidon, and Paris spent a long time in Phoenicia and Cyprus, fearing pursuit, before he came to Troy with Helen (Epitome 3.4).

Apollodorus also records the other tradition that Hermes carried the real Helen to Egypt and gave her to King Proteus, and that Paris took only a phantom of her to Troy (Epitome 3.5). Euripides tells this story in his Helen. Herodotus heard yet another version from the Egyptian priests: storms drove Paris and Helen to Egypt, where King Proteus kept Helen and her treasure for Menelaus and sent Paris away (Herodotus 2.112–120).

Recruiting the Greek Heroes

When Menelaus learned of the abduction, he went to Agamemnon at Mycenae and begged him to muster an army against Troy. Agamemnon sent a herald to each of the kings, reminded them of their oaths, and warned them that the insult had been offered to the whole of Greece (Epitome 3.6). In Apollodorus’ catalogue of the army, the Mycenaeans under Agamemnon brought a hundred ships, the Argives under Diomedes eighty, the Lacedaemonians under Menelaus sixty and the Pylians under Nestor forty, with Idomeneus of Crete, Achilles with the Myrmidons, Protesilaus from Phylace and Philoctetes among the other leaders. Apollodorus counts forty-three leaders and 1,013 ships in all (Epitome 3.11–14). Homer’s Catalogue of Ships gives the Greek forces with somewhat different numbers (Iliad 2.494–760); among its leaders are Ajax son of Oileus from Locris and Ajax son of Telamon from Salamis (Iliad 2.527, 2.557).

Recruiting Odysseus

Odysseus, who was settled in Ithaca with Penelope and their infant son Telemachus, did not want to go to the war and pretended to be mad. In the Cypria, Menelaus and Nestor gathered the leaders and found out Odysseus’ trick at the suggestion of Palamedes, who seized his son Telemachus. Apollodorus says that when Odysseus pretended to rave, Palamedes snatched Telemachus from Penelope’s bosom and drew his sword as if to kill him, and in his fear for the child Odysseus confessed that his madness was pretended and went to the war (Epitome 3.7; Cypria, in Proclus’ summary). Odysseus later took his revenge on Palamedes by forging a letter and burying gold in his quarters, so that Agamemnon found the evidence and had Palamedes stoned as a traitor (Epitome 3.8).

Achilles: A Flashback

Achilles was the son of Peleus and Thetis. The Iliad knows that his mother gave him a choice of two fates: a long life at home without glory, or a short life with undying fame at Troy (Iliad 9.410–416). Apollodorus says that Thetis wished to make the baby immortal, and that without Peleus’ knowledge she used to hide him in the fire by night to destroy the mortal element he had from his father, and anointed him with ambrosia by day, until Peleus saw the child writhing on the fire and cried out. Thetis then left her son and went back to the Nereids (Library 3.13.6).

The familiar story that Thetis dipped the baby in the river Styx and held him by the heel is a later tradition. It is not found in Homer or in Apollodorus, and Homer shows Achilles being wounded in battle (Iliad 21.166–167). When Achilles was nine years old, Calchas declared that Troy could not be taken without him. Thetis, foreseeing that it was fated that he should perish if he went to the war, disguised him in female garb and entrusted him as a maiden to Lycomedes, king of Scyros (Library 3.13.8).

Recruiting Achilles

On Scyros Achilles had a love affair with Lycomedes’ daughter Deidamia, and a son Pyrrhus, later called Neoptolemus, was born to him. But the secret was betrayed, and Odysseus, seeking him at the court of Lycomedes, discovered him by the blast of a trumpet (Library 3.13.8). In the Cypria, by contrast, Achilles reached Scyros only on the voyage back from Mysia, and there married Deidamia (Cypria, in Proclus’ summary). Either way, Achilles joined the expedition, and at fifteen years old was given command of the fleet, with Agamemnon in command of the whole army (Epitome 3.16). Now the Achaean forces were complete.

Reaching Troy

An Early Sign

The Achaean leaders first gathered at Aulis. After a sacrifice to Apollo, a serpent darted from the altar to a plane tree where there was a nest, and ate the eight sparrows in it and then the mother bird, which made the ninth, and was turned to stone. Calchas said that the sign had been given by the will of Zeus, and inferred from it that Troy was destined to be taken in the tenth year (Epitome 3.15; Iliad 2.299–330).

Telephus

The Greeks did not know the way to Troy, and put in to Mysia and ravaged it, supposing it to be Troy. Telephus, the son of Heracles and king of the Mysians, armed his people and drove the Greeks to their ships, killing many, among them Thersander, son of Polynices. When Achilles rushed at him, Telephus fled, was entangled in a vine-branch and was wounded in the thigh by Achilles’ spear (Epitome 3.17). Storms scattered the Greek fleet, and they returned to their own countries, and eight years passed before they mustered again at Aulis (Epitome 3.18–19).

Telephus meanwhile had been told by Apollo that his wound would heal only when the one who had caused it became a physician. He came, in rags, to Achilles at Argos and promised to show the Greeks the course to steer for Troy. Achilles healed him by scraping off the rust of his Pelian spear, and Telephus showed the way (Epitome 3.20).

Iphigenia at Aulis

When they returned to Aulis for the second time the fleet was windbound. Calchas said that they could not sail unless the fairest of Agamemnon’s daughters were sacrificed to Artemis, because the goddess was angry with Agamemnon, who had said of a deer he had shot that even Artemis could not have done it better (Epitome 3.21; Cypria, in Proclus’ summary). Agamemnon sent Odysseus and Talthybius to Clytaemnestra to ask for Iphigenia, claiming that he had promised her in marriage to Achilles in reward for his service. Clytaemnestra sent her, and Agamemnon set her beside the altar and was about to slaughter her when Artemis carried her off to the Taurians, made her her priestess and substituted a deer at the altar; some, Apollodorus says, say that Artemis made her immortal (Epitome 3.22). Euripides tells the story in his Iphigenia in Aulis, where Achilles, who had not been told about the plan, is angry at having been used as a pretext, and in his Iphigenia among the Tauri, where she serves Artemis as priestess.

Tenedos

After putting to sea from Aulis, the Greeks touched at Tenedos, which was ruled by Tenes, son of Cycnus (or, according to some, of Apollo). When the Greeks stood in for the island, Tenes tried to keep them off by throwing stones, but was killed by Achilles with a sword-cut in the breast, though Thetis had warned Achilles not to kill Tenes, because he himself would die by the hand of Apollo if he slew him (Epitome 3.23–26). On Tenedos, while the Greeks were sacrificing to Apollo, a water-snake bit Philoctetes; his wound did not heal, and the army could not endure the stench, so Odysseus, by the orders of Agamemnon, put him ashore on Lemnos with the bow of Heracles (Epitome 3.27).

The Course of the War

The Diplomatic Mission

From Tenedos the Greeks sailed for Troy and sent Odysseus and Menelaus to demand the return of Helen and the property. The Trojans held an assembly, refused to give Helen back and threatened to kill the envoys, who were saved by Antenor (Epitome 3.28–29). The Iliad remembers the same embassy (Iliad 3.205–224, 11.138–142).

Protesilaus

Of the Greeks, the first to land from his ship was Protesilaus, and after slaying not a few of the barbarians, he fell by the hand of Hector (Epitome 3.30). The Iliad says only that a Dardanian man killed him as he leapt ashore, far the first of the Achaeans (Iliad 2.698–702). In the Cypria Protesilaus was likewise killed by Hector, and Achilles then killed Cycnus, a son of Poseidon, and drove the Trojans back (Cypria, in Proclus’ summary).

The Nine-Year Siege of Troy

The Trojans were not simply besieged. According to the Cypria, the Greeks first assaulted the city, and then went out and laid waste the country and the cities round about. Achilles drove off the cattle of Aeneas, sacked Lyrnessus, Pedasus and many neighbouring cities, and killed Troilus. When the Achaeans wished to return home, Achilles restrained them (Cypria, in Proclus’ summary). Troy was also supported by allies who came from the surrounding lands (Iliad 2.816–877). In the Iliad itself, in the tenth year, Agamemnon tests the army by proposing flight, and the troops run for the ships until Odysseus stops them (Iliad 2.1–210). The Iliad also says that nine years have gone by and the ships’ timbers have rotted (Iliad 2.134–138).

The Rage of Achilles

In the tenth year, Chryses, a priest of Apollo, came to the Greek camp to ransom his daughter Chryseis, whom Agamemnon had taken as a prize. Agamemnon refused, and Chryses prayed to Apollo, who sent a plague on the army (Iliad 1.8–52). Agamemnon was forced to give Chryseis back, but took Briseis from Achilles in her place. Achilles, furious, withdrew from the fighting and asked his mother Thetis to see that the Greeks were driven back to their ships (Iliad 1.101–412; Epitome 4.1).

Patroclus

With Achilles out of the fighting, the Trojans drove the Greeks back to their ships and came close to setting them on fire (Iliad 12–15). Achilles’ closest friend, Patroclus, asked for his armour and led the Myrmidons into battle, and the Trojans were repulsed (Iliad 16.1–283). Patroclus was killed by Hector, helped by Apollo and the Trojan Euphorbus (Iliad 16.784–857).

The Victorious Return of Achilles

Achilles, mad with grief, was reconciled with Agamemnon and returned to the battle. After killing a great number of Trojans, he fought Hector in single combat under the walls and killed him (Iliad 19–22). Earlier, Hector had said goodbye to his wife Andromache and his little son Astyanax (Iliad 6.390–502). Achilles refused to give back Hector’s body and dragged it behind his chariot (Iliad 22.395–404; 24.14–22). In the end he gave in, moved by Priam, who came alone by night to the Greek camp, with the help of Hermes, to beg his son’s body from his son’s killer (Iliad 24.334–676). The Iliad ends with the funeral of Hector.

The Death of Achilles

The Iliad ends before Achilles’ death, but it foretells it. The dying Hector warns Achilles that Paris and Phoebus Apollo will slay him at the Scaean gate (Iliad 22.358–360). Other champions came to Troy’s aid after Hector’s death. Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, killed many Greeks and was killed by Achilles (Epitome 5.1). Memnon, son of Dawn, came with a great force of Ethiopians, killed Antilochus and was killed by Achilles (Epitome 5.3). Then Achilles himself was killed at the Scaean gate by Paris and Apollo; Apollodorus says that the arrow struck him in the ankle (Epitome 5.3).

A fight took place over the body, in which Ajax killed Glaucus and carried the body out of the shower of darts while Odysseus fought off the Trojans (Epitome 5.4). The Greeks buried Achilles’ bones mixed with those of Patroclus (Epitome 5.5; Odyssey 24.76–77). The arms of Achilles were offered to the bravest, and Ajax and Odysseus competed for them; Odysseus won, Athena drove Ajax mad, and Ajax later killed himself (Epitome 5.6–7; Odyssey 11.543–564).

When the war had lasted ten years, Calchas prophesied that Troy could not be taken without the bow and arrows of Heracles. Odysseus and Diomedes brought Philoctetes from Lemnos, he was healed by Podalirius, and he shot Paris (Epitome 5.8). The Greeks also fetched Achilles’ son Neoptolemus from Scyros, and he killed Eurypylus, the leader of the Mysians who had come to help Troy (Epitome 5.11–12).

Odysseus’ Ploy: the Trojan Horse

Many other heroes died in the following days. Finally, Odysseus devised a plan to end the war. He told it to Epeius, a builder, who made a hollow wooden horse; Odysseus persuaded the best of the Greeks to climb into it in full armour (Epitome 5.14; Odyssey 8.492–495). The rest of the army burned their tents and sailed to Tenedos, leaving behind Sinon to light a beacon (Epitome 5.14–15). The Trojans debated what to do with the horse, and in the end took it inside the walls as an offering to Athena. Cassandra and Laocoon warned them (Epitome 5.16–17), and in Virgil Sinon persuades the Trojans with a false tale (Aeneid 2.57–198). That night Sinon lit the beacon, the Greeks came out of the horse, opened the gates, and Troy fell (Epitome 5.19–20). The full story is on the page of The Trojan Horse.

The Raid of Troy

The Greeks entered the houses and killed the sleepers. Neoptolemus killed Priam, who had taken refuge at the altar of Zeus of the Courtyard (Epitome 5.21; Aeneid 2.506–558). Menelaus killed Deiphobus, who had married Helen after Paris died, and led Helen back to the ships (Epitome 5.22; Little Iliad and Sack of Ilium, in Proclus’ summary). Aias the son of Oileus, trying to drag Cassandra away by force, tore away with her the image of Athena, and the Greeks were so enraged that they resolved to stone him; he escaped only by taking refuge at Athena’s altar (Sack of Ilium, in Proclus’ summary). After burning the city, the Greeks sacrificed Polyxena, a daughter of Priam, at the tomb of Achilles. In this poem Odysseus kills Astyanax, and Neoptolemus takes Andromache as his prize (Sack of Ilium, in Proclus’ summary). Apollodorus says the Greeks threw Astyanax from the battlements (Epitome 5.23).

Euripides tells the fate of the Trojan women. In the Trojan Women the captive queen Hecuba is allotted to Odysseus, Cassandra to Agamemnon and Andromache to Neoptolemus, and the Greeks throw the child Astyanax from the walls (Trojan Women 235–291, 719–739, 1133–1135). In the Hecuba, the Greeks vote to sacrifice Polyxena to Achilles, and Neoptolemus slays her at his tomb (Hecuba 107–109, 521–570). Aeneas escaped the carnage in Virgil’s Aeneid, carrying his father out of the burning city (Aeneid 2.707–804), and later reached Italy.

The Aftermath

The Returns, the epic that begins where the Sack of Ilium ends, tells how Athena caused a quarrel between Agamemnon and Menelaus about the voyage. Agamemnon stayed on to appease the anger of Athena. Diomedes and Nestor put out to sea and got home safely. Menelaus reached Egypt with five ships, the rest having been destroyed. Locrian Ajax died in the storm at the Capherian rocks, and Neoptolemus, warned by Thetis, travelled home overland (Returns, in Proclus’ summary).

The Odyssey gives the best-known of these stories: Nestor reached Pylos safely, Menelaus wandered for years in Egypt and Cyprus before reaching Sparta with Helen, and Agamemnon was killed on his return by Aegisthus, who had seduced his wife Clytaemnestra (Odyssey 3.130–312; 4.351–586). Aegisthus reigned for seven years until Orestes returned from Athens and killed him (Odyssey 3.303–310). Aeschylus tells the end of the Atreid story in the Oresteia, where Orestes is acquitted at Athens (Aeschylus, Eumenides). The Odyssey is the story of Odysseus’ own ten years of wandering.

Was the Trojan War Real?

Troy was a real city; whether the war was a single historical event is uncertain. The Greeks themselves treated the war as history: Herodotus opens his Histories with the Persian and Phoenician accounts of the abduction of Helen as the beginning of the quarrel between Greeks and Asians (Herodotus 1.1–5), and he argues about what really happened to Helen (Herodotus 2.112–120).

Excavations at Hisarlik in northwest Turkey have uncovered a Bronze Age city that was destroyed and rebuilt many times, but nothing that names Priam, Hector or any other figure from the myth. Most scholars now treat the myth as a memory of real conflict in the region, magnified over generations by oral poets into one heroic war. The poems themselves, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and the poems of the Epic Cycle, are all much later than the events they describe.

Trojan War Sources

Homer’s Iliad describes a short period in the tenth year of the Trojan War and ends with the burial of Hector. The Odyssey (3–4, 8, 11, 24) and the poems of the Epic Cycle, known from the summaries of Proclus (Cypria, Aethiopis, Little Iliad, Sack of Ilium, Returns), fill in what went before and after. To learn what happened next, including the Trojan Horse, you can read the second book of Virgil’s Aeneid. Most of the epitome of Apollodorus’ Library (3.1–5.23) narrates the Trojan War, from its mythological background (Library 3.10.7–9, 3.13.5–8) through a summary of the Iliad to the sack of the city. Euripides’ Trojan Women, Hecuba, Helen, Iphigenia in Aulis and Iphigenia among the Tauri, Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Herodotus (1.1–5, 2.112–120) and Hyginus (Fabulae 92) add further versions.

See Also: Achaeans, Thetis, Peleus, Paris, Helen, Achilles, Tyndareus, Menelaus, Odysseus, Calchas, Clytemnestra, Agamemnon, Iphigenia, Patroclus, Hector, Priam, The Trojan Horse, The Sack of Troy