At Mykonos is a large ceramic vase from the 7th century B.C. with the oldest graphic record of the Trojan Horse, but where in Homer's Iliad is this famous wooden creature that put an end to the 10 years of the Trojan War?
Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia. In the Staatliche Museen, Antikenabteilung, Berlin.
The Trojan Horse was important for the winning of the Trojan War and Achilles was the greatest of the Greek heroes, so it would make sense to find Achilles in the wooden beast that won the war for the Greeks, but was he?
"Sword and Sandals" is the name of our own special sub-genre of action/adventure movies. While it's a self-evident title, there's more to the name than the obvious.
It seems the Iliad is full of mad men. There's Achilles mad with rage at Agamemnon. There's Ajax who in his madness slaughters the cattle. And then there's Odysseus. Did such a clever man really go mad or was he faking?
You know about the Trojan Horse at the end of the story, and probably the apple that Paris awarded Aphrodite that started all the trouble. You may even know the Trojan War is said to have lasted 10 years. What happened during all this time?
Homer doesn't call the Greeks Greeks. The ancient Greeks don't either. Instead they call themselves Hellenes. Most people who study the Trojan War are familiar with Helen of Troy, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to imagine the name Hellenes comes from Helen, but if that's the etymology, there shouldn't be a double "l".
Could the Greeks have destroyed Troy without the Trojan Horse? Barry Strauss says most scholars doubt the existence of the horse, but it wasn't necessary.
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
| 