𓃗 𓃗 𓃗

Leaving aside the small percentage of the population who are by nature petracolous𖤓, who in the West hasn’t heard something described as a “Trojan Horse” at some time or other, even if they may not grasp that its a reference to the fabled Trojan Horse of Greek mythology? Its usage in the modern world—signifying a trick or stratagem that causes a target to invite a foe into a securely protected bastion or place—makes it one of the great, storied metaphors of human interaction and existence. In the age of IT the term has also crossed over into computing jargon to describe any malicious computer program that fools users into willingly running it (often called simply  a “Trojan”). But let’s get back to the origin story, the literary-mythical “Trojan Horse” (Troia hippos or douráteos hippos) of antiquity upon which its metaphorical longevity of currency rests.

The ancient sources of the classical world—principally Virgil’s Aeneid, Quintus of Smyrna’s The Fall of Troy and Homer’s Odyssey (but not the Iliad!)—gave us the legendary Trojan Horse story, an audacious ruse by the Achaeans§ to penetrate the impenetrable walls of Troy with the crafty “gift” of a deceptive and catastrophe-bringing equine decoy. The master-scheme, masterminded by Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, succeeded spectacularly, bringing the ten long years of a Hellenic-Trojan war, hitherto thought to be utterly inconclusive, to a swift and definitive conclusion.

Unsurprisingly in a story about great heroic warriors, all of the kudos for the triumph of the wooden horse gets lavished on Odysseus’ head, with the wily king of Ithaca being described by tradition as “the architect of the Trojan Horse”. The problem with this exalted tag being ascribed solely to Odysseus is that it completely glosses over the vital role of Epeius of Phocis who can stake a comparable (and literal) claim to the title in the Trojan Horse episode. The germ of the idea was the genius master-stroke of Odysseus, yes, but he still needed a highly skilled artisan–builder to bring the oversized horse decoy into being. Epeius, a soldier and pugilist in the Achaean ranks had been a master carpenter in his civilian life before the war, and the task was down to him, not Odysseus, to make the Wooden Horse a reality. Epeius designed and built the gigantic super-sized model of a horse with a hollow belly large enough to hold 30 warriors and their armour and weapons, making his creation a plausible structure, well-constructed and finely detailed…and he did all this in just three days – apparently with some help or inspiration from the goddess Athena. Without Epeius’ Herculean labour of monolithic scale carpentry, Odysseus would not have the Trojan Horse which is synonymous in Greek mythology with his name, the very instrument which proved a total game-breaker ending the stalemate in the decade-long war between Agamemnon’s Achaeans and Priam’s Trojans. 

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𖤓 ie, living under a rock

§ the name Homer (or “Homer”) used in referring to the ancient Greeks