Trojan Horse

The Trojan Horse is a tale from the Trojan War about the subterfuge that the Greeks used to enter the city of Troy and end the conflict. In the canonical version, after a fruitless 10-year siege, the Greeks constructed a huge wooden horse, and hid a select force of men inside. The Greeks pretended to sail away, and the Trojans pulled the horse into their city as a victory trophy. That night the Greek force crept out of the horse and opened the gates for the rest of the Greek army, which had sailed back under cover of night. The Greeks entered and destroyed the city of Troy, decisively ending the war. The main ancient source for the story is the Aeneid of Virgil, a Latin epic poem from the time of Augustus. The event does not occur in Homer's Iliad, which ends before the fall of the city, but is referred to in the Odyssey. In the Greek tradition, the horse is called the "Wooden Horse" (Δούρειος Ἵππος, Doúreios Híppos, in the Homeric Ionic dialect). Metaphorically a "Trojan Horse" has come to mean any trick or stratagem that causes a target to invite a foe into a securely protected bastion or space. It is also associated with "malware" computer programs presented as useful or harmless to induce the user to install and run them.

Literary accounts

According to Quintus Smyrnaeus, Odysseus came up with the idea of building a great wooden horse (the horse being the emblem of Troy),^{[citation needed]} hiding an elite force inside, and fooling the Trojans into wheeling the horse into the city as a trophy. Under the leadership of Epeios, the Greeks built the wooden horse in three days. Odysseus' plan called for one man to remain outside of the horse; he would act as though the Greeks abandoned him, leaving the horse as a gift for the Trojans. A Greek soldier named Sinon was the only volunteer for the role. Virgil describes the actual encounter between Sinon and the Trojans:

Sinon successfully convinces the Trojans that he has been left behind and that the Greeks are gone. Sinon tells the Trojans that the Horse is an offering to the goddess Athena, meant to atone for the previous desecration of her temple at Troy by the Greeks, and ensure a safe journey home for the Greek fleet. The Horse was built on such a huge size to prevent the Trojans from taking the offering into their city, and thus garnering the favor of Athena for themselves.

While questioning Sinon, the Trojan priest Laocoön guesses the plot and warns the Trojans, in Virgil's famous line "Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes" (I fear Greeks even those bearing gifts),^[1]which became known as 'beware of Greeks bearing gifts," Danaos being the ones who built the Trojan Horse. However, the god Poseidon sent two sea serpents to strangle him and his sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus, before any Trojan believes his warning. According to Apollodorus, it was Apollo who sent the two serpents since Laocoon had insulted Apollo by sleeping with his wife in front of the "divine image".^[2] Helen of Troy also guesses the plot and tries to trick and uncover the Greek men inside the horse by imitating the voices of their wives. Anticlus would have answered, but Odysseus shut his mouth with his hand.^[3] King Priam's daughter Cassandra, the soothsayer of Troy, insists that the horse would be the downfall of the city and its royal family. She too is ignored, hence their doom and loss of the war.^[4]

Trojan War

Achilles tending the wounded Patroclus (Attic red-figure kylix, ca. 500 BC)

The war Setting: Troy (modern Hisarlik, Turkey) Period: Bronze Age Traditional dating: ca. 1194–1184 BC Modern dating: between 1260 and 1240 BC.[5] Outcome: Greek victory, destruction of Troy See also: Historicity of the Iliad

Literary sources Iliad · Epic Cycle · Aeneid, Book 2 · Iphigenia in Aulis · Philoctetes · Ajax · The Trojan Women · Posthomerica See also: Trojan War in popular culture

Episodes Judgement of Paris · Seduction of Helen · Trojan Horse · Sack of Troy · The Returns · Wanderings of Odysseus · Aeneas and the Founding of Rome

Greeks and allies Agamemnon · Achilles · Helen · Menelaus · Nestor ·Odysseus · Ajax · Diomedes · Patroclus ·Thersites · Achaeans · Myrmidons See also: Catalogue of Ships

Trojans and allies Priam · Hecuba · Hector · Paris · Cassandra ·Andromache · Aeneas · Memnon  · Troilus ·Penthesilea and the Amazons · Sarpedon See also: Trojan Battle Order

Related topics Homeric question · Archaeology of Troy ·Mycenae · Bronze Age warfare This box:  view   talk   edit

This incident is mentioned in the Odyssey:

What a thing was this, too, which that mighty man wrought and endured in the carven horse, wherein all we chiefs of the Argives were sitting, bearing to the Trojans death and fate!4.271 ff

But come now, change thy theme, and sing of the building of the horse of wood, which Epeius made with Athena's help, the horse which once Odysseus led up into the citadel as a thing of guile, when he had filled it with the men who sacked Ilion . 8.487 ff (trans. Samuel Butler)

The most detailed and most familiar version is in Virgil's Aeneid, Book II [1] (trans. A. S. Kline).

After many years have slipped by, the leaders of the Greeks,opposed by the Fates, and damaged by the war,build a horse of mountainous size, through Pallas’s divine art,and weave planks of fir over its ribs:they pretend it’s a votive offering: this rumour spreads.They secretly hide a picked body of men, chosen by lot,there, in the dark body, filling the belly and the hugecavernous insides with armed warriors.[...]
Then Laocoön rushes down eagerly from the heightsof the citadel, to confront them all, a large crowd with him,and shouts from far off: ‘O unhappy citizens, what madness?Do you think the enemy’s sailed away? Or do you thinkany Greek gift’s free of treachery? Is that Ulysses’s reputation?Either there are Greeks in hiding, concealed by the wood,or it’s been built as a machine to use against our walls,or spy on our homes, or fall on the city from above,or it hides some other trick: Trojans, don’t trust this horse.Whatever it is, I’m afraid of Greeks even those bearing gifts.’

Book II includes Laocoön saying: "Equo ne credite, Teucri. Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes." ("Do not trust the horse, Trojans! Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks, even bringing gifts.")

Well before Virgil, the story is also alluded to in Greek classical literature. In Euripides' play Trojan Women, written in 415 B.C., the god Poseidon proclaims, “For, from his home beneath Parnassus, Phocian Epeus, aided by the craft of Pallas, framed a horse to bear within its womb an armed host, and sent it within the battlements, fraught with death; whence in days to come men shall tell of 'the wooden horse,' with its hidden load of warriors.”^[6]