We learn what happened after the truce, not in the Iliad itself, but in the Odyssey from tales told by the minstrel Demodokos, by Helen, and by Odysseus, as well as in the great tragic plays of the fifth century B.C.E. and in a seventh-century poetic compilation of unknown authorship known as the Little Iliad.

According to these sources, Achilles is killed by an arrow shot by Paris that penetrates his heel—his one vulnerable spot. The Greeks trick the Trojans into accepting the famous wooden horse into their city as a gift, but the horse is full of Greek warriors, who emerge during the night to sack Troy and thus bring an end to the war. Many of the heroes will return home. Some, like Odysseus, will have difficulty doing so; some will do so with tragic consequences. Agamemnon, for instance, will be murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover.