I once read something about there having been a tribe of ants who for one reason or another were tranformed into humans by the Gods (who, naturally, need not rationally justify their odd pranks) and these where then known as Myrmidons.
*shrug*
I think the source was Age of Mythology, so I can't exactly vouch for the accuracy but the game seems to have gotten most other myths more or less right.

Historically ? Far as I know the best that can be said about the whole Iliad is that Troy apears to have existed and gotten razed by enemies (several times actually; the famous sack happened to the city-state's most prosperous and powerful incarnation, as far as archeological evidence says) and just about all the rest is anyone's guess and for the most part likely Homer spinning tall tales and telling a good story.

There's a theory the famous "wooden horse" was actually a siege engine known as the Assyrian Horse, a sort of low siege tower with a vaguely horse-like profile, that appears in Assyrian reliefs around the same times.