This date in 1184 BC is the traditional date when the Greeks presented Troy with a giant wooden Horse. 10 things you might not know about the Trojan war and the Trojan horse:
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The Trojan War is a legendary conflict that took place between the ancient Greeks and the city of Troy. The inciting incident is said to be the abduction of Helen, the wife of Menelaus, by Paris, a prince of Troy. The war rumbled on for ten years before the Trojan horse incident.
We know about this war because the story is told in the epic poems “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” attributed to Homer. There have been numerous translations of the story by John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Louis MacNeice and many more.
Did this war really happen or was it an epic tale Homer made up? Respected historians of the past, such as Herodotus, the so-called ‘Father of History’, and Eratosthenes, a mathematician, certainly thought so and came up with actual dates for it. Writings from other places, including Egypt, mention this war as well. It has also been said that the graphic descriptions in Homer’s works suggest he must have been there and seen it happen. All that said, modern scholars are a little more sceptical. They’d say there probably was a war, but Homer exaggerated it and added some mythic embellishments.
Perhaps the horse wasn’t a gift at all, or even a horse, but a siege engine. The classical poets, it has been suggested, misunderstood what they were seeing. The fact that military machinery is sometimes named after animals, or that siege engines were sometimes covered with wet horse hides to protect them against flaming arrows might have led to this misunderstanding.
The Trojan horse was a strategy thought up by the Greeks to end the war once and for all. They built a massive wooden horse and left it outside the gates of Troy. Then they pretended to sail away as if they’d conceded defeat and left the horse as a peace offering. However, hidden inside the horse were soldiers who, late at night, opened the gates and let in the Greek army, who’d quietly sailed back again.
The horse was said to be about 30 meters (98 feet) tall. It was intricately carved and must have taken considerable time and effort.
Stories differ in terms of how many soldiers were actually inside, from a handful to about forty. These soldiers included famous figures like Odysseus, Menelaus, and Ajax.
The Trojans saw the horse as a symbol of victory and a religious offering. It’s possible that a spy named Sinon helped convince them it would bring good fortune if they brought it inside.
Not everyone believed it, however. A Trojan priest called Laocoön suspected treachery and famously said, “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts,” the Trojans ignored his advice.
The term Trojan horse has entered the modern vernacular as a cautionary tale about being aware of possible deception. A malicious computer program that tricks users into running it is called a "Trojan horse".
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