How big was the Trojan horse?

The Trojan Horse would have been around 10 feet broad (3 meters). This is based on the breadth of the largest gate unearthed in the Troy remains. The Horse would have been at least 25 feet (7.6 meters) tall based on the fact that the Trojans had to tear down the higher walls in order for the horse to enter the city.

The Trojan horse was a massive hollow wooden horse built by the Greeks to gain entry into Troy during the Trojan War. Epeius, a skilled carpenter and pugilist, constructed the horse.

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Did the trojan horse exist?

The Trojan Horse tale is well-known. It was first described in the Odyssey, and it tells how Greek soldiers were able to conquer Troy after a failed ten-year siege by hiding in a huge horse given as a gift to the goddess Athena.

Was it, however, a myth? Archaeological evidence reveals that Troy was certainly burned down, but the wooden horse is imaginative fiction, probably inspired by the way ancient siege engines were wrapped with damp horsehides to prevent them from being set alight, explains Oxford University classicist Dr. Armand D’Angour.

There is even some question regarding the existence of Homer, the man credited with writing the Odyssey and regarded as the greatest of Greek epic poets. ‘It’s generally assumed that the major epics that bear Homer’s name, the Iliad and Odyssey, were produced orally, without the help of writing, some time in the 8th Century BC, the result of a centuries-long tradition of oral minstrelsy,’ adds Dr. D’Angour.

While the ancients had no doubt that Homer was a real bard who wrote the great epics, nothing is known for definite about him. All we know is that, even if the poems were produced without writing and verbally conveyed, they were written down in Greek at some point since that’s how they survived.

In an essay for the BBC, Dr. D’Angour explores the roots of another eight legends and myths, which have reached millions of people as one of the most shared on the internet in recent days.

Dr. D’Angour is now working on two-year research to reconstruct the sounds of Greek music and determine the importance of these sounds in some of Ancient Greece’s most famous poetry.

Imagine if all we had from five centuries of Western opera were the libretti and a few pieces of the music, he says. This is, more or less, the predicament of students who study classical Greek poetry, which spans five centuries from 800 to 300 BC.

The poets who wrote the Iliad and Odyssey, the love poems of archaic Lesbos, the triumph odes of the early fifth century BC, and the choral sections of Greek tragedy and comedy — they all wrote the lines to be sung and accompanied by musical instruments.

‘Yet little attention is devoted to the rhythms so meticulously etched into the lyrics of these songs, which have long been recognized and studied under the intimidating umbrella of Greek meter. Even less attention is devoted to melodic structures, which, owing to surviving fragments as well as copious works by ancient authors and musical theorists (admirably translated and gathered by Andrew Barker in Greek Musical Writings), we may today exercise an educated scholarly imagination.

By ignoring the auditory dimension, readers of ancient writings risk missing out on some of the original aesthetic effects of these songs.

Where is the trojan horse?

The Trojan horse was a massive hollow wooden horse built by the Greeks to gain entry into Troy during the Trojan War. Epeius, a skilled carpenter and pugilist, constructed the horse. The Greeks went to the neighboring island of Tenedos, claiming to leave the fight, leaving behind Sinon, who convinced the Trojans that the horse was a sacrifice to Athena (goddess of war) that would render Troy impenetrable.

Despite Laocoon and Cassandra’s warnings, the horse was led through the city gates. That night, Greek troops emerged from it and unlocked the gates to allow the Greek army to return.

The story is described in detail in Book II of the Aeneid and is mentioned briefly in the Odyssey. The phrase Trojan horse has evolved to allude to externally induced subversion. Beginning in the late twentieth century, the term “Trojan horse” was given to seemingly harmless computer algorithms that are created to destroy or disrupt a computer’s programming or to steal personal information.

Why the Trojan Horse Almost Certainly Wasn’t a Horse?

Was the Trojan Horse truly made of wood? Let us return to an old Greek epic poem that tells the story of the wooden horse. No, not the Iliad or the Odyssey, but Quintus of Smyrna’s epic poem Posthomerica (i.e. “after Homer”). In the Posthomerica, Odysseus devises the concept of constructing a wooden horse as a type of prize – the horse being the emblem of the city of Troy – as a means of duping the Trojans into enabling Greek forces to enter the city by stealth.

The plan is for a single Greek soldier, Sinon, to appear at the gates of Troy with the horse as a present, claiming to be traveling alone and with the big wooden horse as a sacrifice to the goddess Athena in retaliation for the Greeks’ devastation of Trojan temples.

Why did the Trojans accept the wooden horse?

One of history’s most renowned ruses is the Trojan Horse. The Greeks had laid siege to Troy for ten years, and the battle had dragged on. They made a wooden horse and left it outside the city. The Trojans mistook the horse for a peace gift and dragged it around their city.

Likewise, what became to the Trojan horse after the war? Following the Trojan defeat, the Greek heroes gradually returned home. Odysseus required ten years to complete the difficult and sometimes interrupted trip home to Ithaca described in the Odyssey. Helen, whose two Trojan husbands were murdered in the conflict, returned to Sparta to govern with Menelaus.

One could also wonder why the Trojans had to demolish the city walls when they carried the wooden horse into town.

Some wished to carry the wooden horse into the city, while others, understandably skeptical, wished to destroy it. Sinon then said that if the wooden horse was destroyed in any way, the goddess would destroy Troy for its impiety, but that if it was carried within the city’s gates, Troy would conquer Greece.

Conclusion

To conclude, under Odysseus’ instruction, the Greeks constructed a massive wooden horse — the horse being the city of Troy’s emblem — and left it at the gates of Troy. The Trojans saw the massive wooden horse as a peace present to their gods, and hence as a sign of their victory after a protracted siege.

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