Trojan horse

In the Greek Mythology, the episode of the Trojan horse is one of most famous of the Trojan War.

A myth

Sources of the myth

This episode is reported briefly by Homère in the Odyssey (and not in Iliade , as it is often believed): Ulysses, anonymous host of Alcinoos, request with the Aède Démodocos to sing (VIII, 492-495):

“(...) history of the cheval
that Épéios, assisted Athéna, built,
and trap that Ulysses led to the acropole
overloaded soldiers who were going to plunder Troy. ”

Homère then summarizes on a score of worms the account of Démodocos. Virgile, in Énéide , extends at greater length on this episode.

The nature of the myth

interest of the operation:

After having vainly besieged Troy during ten years, the Greeks have the idea of a trick to take the city: Épéios builds a giant horse out of hollow wooden, in which a group of soldiers carried out by Ulysses hides; a Greek spy, If not, succeeds in convincing Troyens to accept the offering, in spite of the warnings of Laocoon and Cassandre. The city makes a great festival then, and when the Greeks leave the horse, the inhabitants are taken by the torpor of alcohol. The Greeks open the doors then, allowing the remainder of the army to enter and plunder the city: all the men are killed, the women and the girls taken along like slaves and the male children killed them also to avoid a possible revenge.

dedication of the mongrel:

In the episode of the Trojan horse, Ulysses, character become famous for his mongrel (“intelligence crafty one”), returns a council very appreciated in the Trojan War in which it takes part. Here it is acted in fact of a trick. It is distinguished from the Triche but also from the Délit (or the Crime) in that the trick is authorized by the Loi or rules of the use, the play, art, the company, or the international agreements. In the species of the art of the war among Greeks, it is more particularly about a Stratagem.

The interpretation of the myth

The text of Homère being a poem, it is the object of interpretation. In particular, it was suggested that the gift was not a hiding horse of the warriors in its sides, but a boat carrying an embassy of peace, offers that Troyens too little being wary or too happy to make peace would imprudently have accepted. After the festival, Troyens discover to it sinister reality…

In support of this interpretation, one will notice that:

marine civilizations Greek and Viking (inter alia?), the horse and the boat assimilate. Thus, the horse is the animal of Poséidon;
it is Ulysses, the expert in words and tricks, one of the men often sent in embassy, which carries out the dance;
the sacrifice of a wood construction by simple abandonment on a beach is original a enough procedure for a supposed rite to provide the protection of Poséidon. The equivalent does not appear nowhere in mythology;
Autant it is easy to find explanations rational to the multiple divine interventions which punctuate the poem, as much it is difficult to literally take the miraculous intervention of the snakes which eliminate Laocoon. On the other hand, if one translates these snakes by underhand offers, which cause riots in which the chiefs of being wary (Laocoon) find death, one has a scenario which holds the road: the people are tired of the war, it is necessary to conclude.

Posterity

Of this legendary episode, one created the expression “Trojan horse” to speak about a gift which proves to be a subjacent curse or mechanisms. One preserved also the sentence “ Timeo Danaos and gave ferentes (“I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts”)”, i.e. “attention with the Greeks carrying gifts”, put in the mouth of Laocoon in '' Énéide '' (delivers II v.49) Lire on line.
a small museum was built in 1955 on the territory of the old town of Troy, close to the Dardanelles (nowadays in Turkey). He presents the remainders of the city, as well as a wooden horse built to symbolize that of the legend.

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