In the end, war must be won by one of the parties fighting. Wars are usually very difficult to end. After all the casualties have occurred throughout various battles, it frequently happens that the parties do not have a strategy strong enough to claim victory. The Trojan War, fought between the Greeks and Trojans, did have an eventual winner, but this winner would not have claimed victory without the significant “Trojan Horse”. As Lin Donn states about the war, “The Greek Warriors had been trying to breech the walls around Troy for ten years, and they couldn’t have done it without the ‘Trojan Horse’” (Donn). The Trojan horse was significant in the Trojan War because it allowed the Greek army an easy way into Troy, led the Greeks to destroy the city of Troy, and helped the Greeks end the war.
Notably, the Trojan horse gave the Greek army an easy way to penetrate the walls of Troy. After years of trying to enter Troy, and destroy the city, Odysseus, King of Ithica, finally developed a strategy which could easily let them into the city. Odysseus designed the Trojan horse, in which him and his army would hide, and let the people of Troy take in. He created the horse to act a sense of treaty by the Greeks, which would give the Trojans a sense of security about the horse. In Caroline Alexander’s book The War that Killed Achilles: The true story of Homers Illiad and the Trojan War , Alexander states, “The other Greeks appeared to sail for home, leaving behind only the horse which deceitfully persuaded the Trojans to take it within the city walls” (Alexander). Alexander’s statement informs us that the horse allowed the Greek army to enter through the walls of Troy. Now that the Trojan horse got the Greek army into Troy, they still had to...
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... 10 years. The Trojan horse is fully credited to the intelligent Odysseus. This is how significant the Trojan horse was.
Works Cited
Alexander, Caroline. The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War. New York, NY: Viking, 2009. Print.
Gill, N.S. "The Sequence of Major Events in the Trojan War." About.com Ancient / Classical History. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014
"Ancient Greece for Kids - Main Index." Ancient Greece for Kids - Main Index. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2014.
Donn, Lin. "Legend of the Trojan War (Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts) - Ancient Greece for Kids." Legend of the Trojan War (Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts) - Ancient Greece for Kids. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. "Funk & Wagnalls Dictionaries." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.
- M.I. Finley, the World of Odysseus. Introduction The Trojan War and its characters are detailed in the writings of Homer, Vergil, Dante and many others. It is a fantastical tale of a decade-long siege of a powerful city by a massive pan-hellenic force. However, even though it has proved to be such a rich source of inspiration for writers, poets and artists throughout history, it is debated whether it actually took place. Heinrich Schliemann famously said “I have gazed on the face of Agamemnon” while discovering tombs with the bodies of Mycenaean chieftains in Turkey.
Works Cited Robinson, C.E. (2007). Hellas – A Short History of Ancient Greece. Pantheon Books Bury, J. B.; Russell Meiggs (2000). A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great Lazenby, JF. The Defence of Greece 490–479 BC.
When it begins to seem as if the Trojan War will never end, a large wooden horse appears outside the walls of Troy, and the people of the city become skeptical of the mysterious statue. The Trojans have little trust for the Greeks because of their cunning attacks and deceiving war tactics, however, they place a great deal of pride in the fact that they do not cheat their war opponents and place their moral values before everything else. In “Book II”, Virgil opens with Sinon, a Greek warrior, announcing his abandonment by the Greeks to the people of Troy saying the rest of his men retreated back to Greece; “Unblamed may I break the oath of Greek allegiance, unblamed hate them and bring all to light that they conceal; nor am I bound by any laws of country” (Virgil, Aeneid: Book II 168-169). Aeneas begins to feel pity for the poor man pleading for acceptance as one of their own and starts to contemplate letting him into the city. Sinon continues to elaborate that the wooden horse was a gift to the goddess Minerva, who had turned away from the Greeks due to the desecration of one of her temples. Denying the statue’s entrance to the city and leaving it to the power of the weather would consequently infuriate her. Considering showing their values of kindness, trustworthiness, and respect for the gods, Aeneas allows the horse to enter Troy and accepts Sinon’s plea for
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. "Peloponnesian War (ancient Greek History)."Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, 24 Dec. 2013. Web. 05 Apr. 2014
To those who already knew the stories of the Trojan War heroes (which all of the original Greek audience of the epic would),
drive to conquer the Trojan army with or without the aid of Achilles. In doing
After he says this, the Trojans give him their full trust and decide to take the horse into Troy. This quote also displays the deception of the Greeks, because what happens turns out to be the total opposite of what Sinon says. When Laocoon objects about allowing the giant wooden horse into the city, a serpent devours him; consequently, this causes the Trojans to believe that the Gods want the horse to be accepted into Troy. After all of the Trojans fall asleep, the Greek army exits the hollow stomach of the horse and destroy the city of Troy.The Aeneid depiction of the Greeks shows them as untrustworthy people who use trickery and lies to win a battle rather than using sheer intelligence. The Trojans are seen in a much better lighting than the Greeks in the Aeneid. While Sinon uses his lies to deceive the Trojans, the Trojans listen and believe what he
"The Iliad is a poem that celebrates the heroic values war imposes on its votaries (27)." Homer himself describes war as "bringing glory to man." War is a huge part of both the Achaeans and the Trojans' lives. Characters gain glory through their performances and bravery in battle. Furthermore, Homer persuades the reader that war is the glorious way to settle a dispute. For example, Hector and other Trojans scorn Paris for backing down from Menelaus. On the other hand, Achilles acquires glory by deferring the option of a long, peaceful life in order to fight and become an epic hero. The characters in The Iliad value honor and glory to such a degree that they are willing to give up life itself in order to possess it.
Pyrrhus who plays a deeper and personal meaning into the story has his fathered killed by Paris and seeks to avenge him by slaying someone just as dear to Paris, his own father Priam. However with the great walls of Troy blocking his advance there is little he could do, but madness drives him and they build a great “Trojan” horse as a transport to fool the superstitious Trojans. To make it believable they even stage like they abandoned the siege by having all of their ships sail away from the island off on the far end to avoid attention, and leaving the horse there as if it were a gift from the gods. The Trojans seeing this as a great victory happily took the horse into Troy and threw a great feast, and drunk themselves to sleep. Then in th...
The heroes of ancient Greece were tall, terrible figures of herculean strength and superhuman power. They weren’t thought of as heroes for their personality or character, but for the massive number of soldiers slain in war or one-on-one duels won for their countries. A perfect personification of the ancient hero is Achilles, the protagonist of Homer’s The Iliad. As described in the manuscript, Achilles was the greatest fighter and warrior among the Achaeans. He is an exceptional warrior, and The Iliad is filled with accounts of his victories in battle. Not only that, but he defeats Hector, the leader of the Trojan arm...
Odysseus was the person who originally came up with the idea of the Trojan horse, the strategy by which the Greeks were finally able to take the city of Troy itself and have it fall (Hunter). Odysseus came up with this very cunning idea of to take down Troy. This is what led to the fall of Troy. If he never thought of this idea Troy may have never have fallen. Therefore, Odysseus's amazing wits won over Troy and they could have never done it without him. He could have just said lets go brute force into Troy and most of them if not all of them would have fallen on the battlefield that day. He made sure all the ships and camps were hidden and did it during the celebrating that was happening in Troy. This way he was able to make it seem like it was a gift from the gods. I believe this is the best example of reinforcing my thesis from a secondary text. The reason why is that the Trojan Horse is the reason why they won the Trojan War. For ten years the battle was go in neither direction. However, then came along this idea that Odysseus thought of all on his own he claimed (WorldPress.com). The pure genuis of this strategy to wait patiently inside of a giant wooden horse until the city went to sleep was an unthinkable idea it seemed like back then.
Cartwright, Mark. "Greek Tragedy." Ancient History Encyclopedia. Ancient History Encyclopedia, 16 Mar. 2013. Web. 04 Mar. 2014.
The Trojans take the horse back to Troy and while everyone sleeps, the Spartans (who have been hiding inside the horse) open the gates of Troy to let in their army and burn Troy to the ground. In the process, Prince Paris sees Achilles trying to get Briseis to safety and Paris kills Achilles. Though we do see some similarities between the Iliad and Troy, these similarities are very loosely based. I think the movie made the characters seem less barbaric and some of the sets, especially the city of Troy, seemed a bit too elaborate. The movie, though enjoyable, was definitely not a factual representation of Homers classic Iliad.
The term, the Trojan Horse, comes from Greek mythology, in which the Greeks battled the Trojans during the Trojan War. After a 10-year siege, the Greeks constructed a huge wooden horse and hid a select force of men inside. They used it to enter the city of Troy and win the war. A giant wooden horse was given to their foes, the Trojans, as a peace offering. But after the Trojans drag the horse inside their city walls, Greek soldiers snuck out of the horse's hollow belly and opened the city gates, allowing their compatriots to pour in and capture Troy.
In Homer’s The Iliad he tells of the battles and events during the time of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles. This was just a small portion of the Trojan War that had lasted ten years. The Iliad shares the ideas of the glory of war, military values over family life, and the impermanence of human life and its creation. One thing that Homer does is characterize the two different warriors Achilles and Hector. These two great warriors both show different kinds of traits that shape the character they become throughout the The Iliad. Achilles is the main hero in The Iliad, but Homer subliminally tries to persuade the reader that Hector is the true hero in this story.