The Wooden Horse

ATHENE now inspired Prylis, son of Hermes, to suggest that entry should be gained into Troy by means of a wooden horse; and Epeius, son of Panopeus, a Phocian from Parnassus, volunteered to build one under Athene’s supervision. Afterwards, of course, Odysseus claimed all the credit for this stratagem.

b. Epeius had brought thirty ships from the Cyclades to Troy. He held the office of water-bearer to the House of Atreus; as appears in the frieze of Apollo’s temple at Carthea, and though a skilled boxer and a consummate craftsman, was born a coward, in divine punishment for his father’s breach of faith-Panopeus had falsely sworn in Athene’s name not to embezzle any part of the Taphian booty won by Amphitryon. Epeius’s cowardice has since become proverbial.

c. He built an enormous hollow horse of fir planks, with a trap-door fitted into one flank, and large letters cut on the other which consecrated it to Athene: ‘In thankful anticipation of a safe return to their homes, the Greeks dedicate this offering to the Goddess.’ Odysseus persuaded the bravest of the Greeks to climb fully armed up a rope-ladder and through the trap-door into the belly of the horse. Their number is variously given as twenty- three, thirty or more, fifty, and, absurdly enough, three thousand. Among them were Menelaus, Odysseus, Diomedes, Sthenelus, Acamas, Thoas, and Neoptolemus. Coaxed, threatened, and bribed, Epeius himself joined the party. He climbed up last, drew the ladder in after him and, since he alone knew how to work the trap-door, took his seat beside the lock.

d. At nightfall, the remaining Greeks under Agamemnon followed Odysseus’s instructions, which were to burn their camp, put out to sea, and wait off Tenedos and the Calydnian Islands until the following evening. Only Odysseus’s first cousin Sinon, a grandson of Autolycus, stayed behind to light a signal beacon for their return.

e. At break of day, Trojan scouts reported that the camp lay in ashes and that the Greeks had departed, leaving a huge horse on the seashore. Priam and several of his sons went out to view it and, as they stood staring in wonder, Thymoetes was the first to break the silence. ‘Since this is a gift to Athene,’ he said, ‘I propose that we take it into Troy and haul it up to her citadel.’ ‘No, no!’ cried Capys. ‘Athene favoured the Greeks too long; we must either burn it at once or break it open to see what the belly contains.’ But Priam declared: ‘Thymoetes is right. We will fetch it in on rollers. Let nobody desecrate Athene’s property.’ The horse proved too broad to be squeezed through the gates. Even when the wall had been breached, it stuck four times. With enormous efforts the Trojans then hauled it up to the citadel; but at least took the precaution of repairing the breach behind them. Another heated argument followed when Cassandra announced that the horse contained armed men, and was supported in her view by the seer Laocoön, son of Antenor, whom some mistakenly call the brother of Anchises. Crying: ‘You fools, never trust a Greek even if he brings you gifts!’, he hurled his spear, which stuck quivering in the horse’s flank and caused the weapons inside to clash together. Cheers and shouts arose: ‘Burn it!’ ‘Hurl it over the walls!’ But, 'Let it stay,’ pleaded Priam’s supporters.

f. This argument was interrupted by the arrival of Sinon, whom a couple of Trojan soldiers were marching up in chains. Under interrogation, he said that Odysseus had long  been trying to destroy him because he knew the secret of Palamedes’s murder. The Greeks, he went on, were heartily sick of the war, and would have sailed home months before this, but that the uninterrupted bad weather prevented them. Apollo had advised them to placate the Winds with blood, as when they were delayed at Aulis. ‘Whereupon,’ Sinon continued, ‘Odysseus dragged Calchas forward, and asked him to name the victim. Calchas would not give an immediate answer and went into retirement for ten days, at the end of which time, doubtless bribed by Odysseus, he entered the Council hut and pointed at me. All present welcomed this verdict, every man relieved at not being chosen as the scapegoat, and I was put in fetters; but a favourable wind sprang up, my companions hurriedly launched their vessels, and in the confusion I made my escape.’

g. Thus Priam was tricked into accepting Sinon as a suppliant, and had his fetters broken. ‘Now tell us about this horse,’ he said kindly. Sinon explained that the Greeks had forfeited Athene’s support, on which they depended, when Odysseus and Diomedes stole the Palladium from her temple. No sooner had they brought it to their camp than the image was three times enveloped by flames, and its limbs sweated in proof of the goddess’s wrath. Calchas thereupon advised Agamemnon to sail for home and assemble a fresh expedition in Greece, under better auspices, leaving the horse as a placatory gift to Athene. ‘Why was it built so big?’ asked Priam. Sinon, well coached by Odysseus, replied: ‘To prevent you from bringing it into the city. Calchas foretells that if you despise this sacred image, Athene will ruin you; but once it enters Troy, you shall be empowered to marshal all the forces of Asia, invade Greece, and conquer Mycenae.’

h. ‘These are lies,’ cried Laocoön, ‘and sound as if they were invented by Odysseus. Do not believe him, Priam!’ He added: ‘Pray, my lord, give me leave to sacrifice a bull to Poseidon. When I come back I hope to see this wooden horse reduced to ashes.’ It should be explained that the Trojans, having stoned their priest of Poseidon to death nine years before, had decided not to replace him until the war seemed to have ended. Now they chose Laocoön by lot to propitiate Poseidon. He was already the priest of Thymbraean Apollo, whom he had angered by marrying and begetting children, despite a vow of celibacy and, worse, by lying with his wife Antiope in sight of the god’s image.

i. Laocoön retired to select a victim and prepare the altar but, in warning of Troy’s approaching doom, Apollo sent two great sea-serpents, named Porces and Chariboea, or Curissia, or Periboea, rushing towards Troy from Tenedos and the Calydnian Islands. They darted ashore and, coiling around the limbs of Laocoön’s twin sons Antiphas and Thymbraeus, whom some call Melanthus, crushed them to death. Laocoön ran to their rescue, but he too died miserably. The serpents then glided up to the citadel and while one wound  about Athene’s feet, the other took refuge behind her aegis. Some, however, say that only one of Laocoön’s sons was killed and that he died in the temple of Thymbraean Apollo, not beside Poseidon’s altar; and others that Laocoön himself escaped death.

j. This terrible portent served to convince the Trojans that Sinon had spoken the truth. Priam mistakenly assumed that Laocoön was being punished for hurling his spear at the horse, rather than for having insulted Apollo. He at once dedicated the horse to Athene and although Aeneas’s followers retired in alarm to their huts on Mount Ida, nearly all Priam’s Trojans began to celebrate the victory with banquets and merry-making. The women gathered flowers from the river banks, garlanded the horse’s mane, and spread a carpet of roses around its hooves.

k. Meanwhile, inside the horse’s belly, the Greeks had been trembling for terror, and Epeius wept silently, in an ecstasy of fear. Only Neoptolemus showed no emotion, even when the point of Laocoön’s spear broke through the timbers close to his head. Time after time he nudged Odysseus to order the assault-for Odysseus was in command-and clutched his lance and sword-hilt menacingly. But Odysseus would not consent. In the evening Helen strolled from the palace and went around the horse three times, patting its flanks and, as if to amuse Deiphobus who was with her, teased the hidden Greeks by imitating the voice of each of their wives in turn. Menelaus and Diomedes squatting in the middle of the horse next to Odysseus, were tempted to leap out when they heard themselves called by name; but he restrained them and, seeing that Antielus was on the point of answering, clapped hand over his mouth and, some say, strangled him.

l. That night, exhausted with feasting and revelry, the Trojans slept soundly, and not even the bark of a dog broke the stillness. But Helen lay awake, and a bright round light  blazed above her chamber as signal to the Greeks. At midnight, just before the full moon rose-the seventh of the year-Sinon crept from the city to kindle a beacon of Achilles’s tomb, and Anterior waved a torch. Agamemnon answered these signals by lighting pine-wood chips in a cresset on the deck of his ship, which was now heaved-to a few bow-shots from the coast; and the whole fleet drove shorewards. Antenor, cautiously approaching the horse, reported in a low voice that all was well, and Odysseus ordered Epeius to unlock the trap door.

m. Echion, son of Portheus, leaping out first, fell and broke his neck; the rest descended by Epeius’s rope-ladder. Some ran to open the gate for the landing party, others cut down drowsy sentries guarding the citadel and palace; but Menelaus could think only of Helen, and run straight towards her house.

1. Classical commentators on Homer were dissatisfied with the story of the wooden horse. They suggested, variously, that the Greeks used a horse-like engine for breaking down the wall, (Pausanias); that Antenor admitted the Greeks into Troy by a postern which had a horse pointed on it; or that the sign of a horse was used to distinguish the Greeks from their enemies in the darkness and confusion; or that when Troy had been betrayed, the oracles forbade the plundering of any house marked with the sign of a horse-hence those of Antenor and others were spared; or that Troy fell as the result of a cavalry action; or that the Greeks, after burning their camp, concealed themselves behind Mount Hippius (‘of the horse’).

2. Troy is quite likely to have been stormed by means of a wheeled wooden tower, faced with wet horse hides as a protection against incendiary darts, and pushed towards the notoriously weak part of the defences-the western curtain which Aeacus had built. But this would hardly account for the legend that the Trojan leaders were concealed in the horse’s ‘belly’. Perhaps the Homeridae invented this to explain a no longer intelligible icon showing a walled city, a queen, a solemn assembly, and the sacred king in the act of rebirth, head first, from a mare, which was the sacred animal both of the Trojans and of the Aeacids. A wooden mare built of fir, the birth-tree, may have been used in this ceremony, as a wooden cow facilitated the sacred marriage of Minos and Pasiphaë. Was the struggle between Odysseus and Antielus deduced perhaps from an icon that showed twins quarrelling in the womb?

3. The story of Laocoön’s son, or sons, recalls that of the two serpents strangled by Heracles. According to some versions, their death occurred in Apollo’s shrine, and Laocoön himself, like Amphitryon, escaped unharmed. The serpents will, in fact, have merely been cleansing the boys’ ears to give them prophetic powers. ‘Antiphas’ apparently means ‘prophet’- ‘one who speaks instead of the god.’

4. On the divine level this war was fought between Aphrodite, the Trojan Sea-goddess, and the Greek Sea-god Poseidon-hence Priam’s suppression of Poseidon’s priesthood.

5. Sweating images have been a recurrent phenomenon ever since the Fall of Troy; Roman gods later adopted this warning signal, and so did the Catholic saints who took their places.

6. In early saga Epeius’s reputation for courage was such that his name became ironically applied to a braggart; and from braggart to coward is only a short step.