What was the Trojan Horse in Greek Mythology?

14/09/2021

     The Trojan Horse was a huge wooden horse used as a military strategy by the Greeks during the Trojan War. If in fact it existed, it was one of the greatest feats of warfare in history! Know.

What is the Trojan Horse?

     The Trojan Horse was a large wooden horse built by the Greeks during the Trojan War, as a decisive stratagem for the conquest of the fortified city of Troy, whose ruins are in today's Turkish lands. Taken by the Trojans as a symbol of their victory, he was carried inside the walls, unaware that the enemy was hidden within. At night, warriors get off their horse, dominate the sentries and allow the entry of the Greek army, bringing the city to ruin.

     The story of the war was first told in Homer's Iliad, but the horse is not mentioned there, only briefly appearing in his Odyssey, which chronicles Odysseus' bumpy journey home. Other writers after him expanded and detailed the episode, such as Virgil mainly in his writing Aeneid, in book II.

These days "Trojan Horse" is the computer name given to seemingly "harmless" viruses that sit quietly and later damage your computer.

Did the horse really exist?

     The Trojan horse is generally considered a legendary creation in Greek mythology, but it is not impossible that it actually existed. It may, more likely, have been a real war machine transfigured by the chroniclers' fantasy. In any case, it turned out to be a fertile literary and artistic motif, and since antiquity it has been quoted or reproduced countless times in poems, novels, paintings, sculptures, monuments, films, and in other ways, including caricatures and toys.

     Several conjectural reconstructions of the horse have been made in recent times. It also became the origin of two well-known idioms: "Trojan horse", meaning a destructive deceit, and in this sense currently called a kind of computer virus, and "Greek gift", something received apparently pleasant but with disastrous consequences.

We believe that the Trojan horse really existed, just like the Trojan war. Clearly there's a lot of mythology involved, including the Greek Gods, but it's not a throwaway ploy.


In popular culture:

     The expression "Trojan horse" has become widely used in popular culture, always with the meaning of a cunning, deceitful and dangerous artifice, which allows covert penetration into enemy territory, and is the origin of the expression "a Greek gift", when we get something that looks nice but has bad consequences. It names a lie-based trading technique, a deceptive military strategy used in countless variants by armies since antiquity, and a type of computer virus that masquerades as a legitimate program to gain access to users' machines and initiate program destruction installed, steal passwords and operate damages of other natures. It also became a source of jokes and caricatures and was turned into children's toys.

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The Trojan Horse was a huge wooden horse used as a military strategy by the Greeks during the Trojan War. If in fact it existed, it was one of the greatest feats of warfare in history! Know.