The war begins when the beautiful but self-indulgent Helen deserts her husband, King Menelaus of Sparta, for the equally reckless Trojan prince Paris .

Agamemnon , the ambitious King of Kings, sacrifices his own daughter to launch a fleet of a thousand ships. He is joined by the subtle and brilliant Odysseus , who eventually devises the Trojan Horse.

In ( The Song of Troy ), Colleen McCullough strips away the divine interference of the gods to tell the Trojan War as a gritty, human-driven historical epic.