Was the Trojan Horse Real?
The myths and history handed down from the ancient Greeks still permeate our culture today, from idioms such as “the Midas touch” and “Achilles’ heel” to the name of the world’s largest online retailer. Many of the legends recount the actions of Odysseus, the king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer’s epic poems the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey.” It’s believed these stories originated as oral performances and were committed to parchment in the eighth or mid-seventh century BCE. But there’s much that remains mysterious about Homer’s epics (including the very existence of Homer himself). One of the most iconic stories of the “Iliad” is that of the Trojan Horse, a tale so well known that the term is still used today to describe clever trickery that breaches defenses. Yet the question remains: Did the incident ever really happen?
We Now Know the City of Troy Was Real
Homer’s “Iliad” richly details the story of a decade-long siege against the city of Troy and its king, Priam, led by Menelaus, king of Sparta, and Menelaus’ brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae. In the story, the conflict is fought over Menelaus’ wife, Helen (famously described by poet Christopher Marlowe as having a “face that launch’d a thousand ships”), who was given to Priam’s son Paris by the goddess Aphrodite.
Ancient scholars, including Herodotus, the fifth-century BCE Greek historian often called the “father of history,” firmly believed that the Trojan War had occurred some 800 years before classical Greece. But over the years, the common belief became that both the war and the city of Troy itself were the stuff of fiction. That skepticism was finally put to rest in the 19th century, after German amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered a late Bronze Age mound now known as Hisarlik, in the northwest corner of modern-day Turkey. Excavations uncovered fortifications, pottery, and treasures from the site, which is now generally accepted to be the location of ancient Troy, putting the mythical city back on the map.
The existence of Troy raises the question: What else in Homer’s myth is real? Did the Trojan War actually happen? While proof of that great siege is more difficult to come by, there is evidence to suggest the Trojan War, which is said to have taken place around the 12th century BCE, was also a real conflict. Cuneiform tablets from the Hittite civilization reference a war with details that follow the rough outline of Homer’s battling empires. What’s more, charred arrowheads and unburied skeletons found in later archaeological excavations suggest that a large and violent conflict took place within the city’s walls, though there’s no knowing for certain if it was the 10-year Trojan War described in Homer’s epic.
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What Is the Story of the Trojan Horse?
According to accounts by Homer in the “Odyssey” — later expanded on by the Roman poet Virgil in the “Aeneid” — the siege against Troy had been grinding on for nearly 10 years when Odysseus hatched a scheme to construct a giant wooden horse on wheels (the horse being a symbol of Troy) to sneak Greek soldiers behind the city walls. According to the plan, the Greek army would appear to flee, abandoning the equine structure as a peace offering and a symbol of surrender. The hollow structure, however — described in Virgil’s “Aeneid” as “a horse of mountainous size” — would conceal soldiers hidden inside — as Virgil put it, to “secretly hide a picked body of men, chosen by lot, there, in the dark body, filling the belly and the huge cavernous insides with armed warriors.” This trickery would allow Odysseus’ soldiers to get past the gates and sack the fortress, finally defeating their Trojan foes. The ruse worked, according to the legend. The city of Troy fell, and Odysseus sailed away to begin his long journey home.
So Was the Trojan Horse Real?
The tale of the Trojan Horse has been recounted countless times — including with a giant rabbit in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail — and a wooden replica used in the 2004 film Troy now stands in Çanakkale, Turkey, near the site of ancient Troy. The timely legend even sparked the saying, “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” Yet historians still aren’t certain whether the story is factual or, more likely, an elaborate myth with some roots in reality. Some have theorized that the horse was a metaphor for whatever did destroy the city of Troy, such as a natural disaster or an enemy ship. But the prevailing theory is that the clever structure may have been based on ancient siege engines, such as battering rams, which were often covered with wet horse hides. The damp hides helped protect the wooden siege engines (and the soldiers using them) from flaming arrows, which may have been the inspiration for the legendary ruse.
