The Trojan Horse

The Trojan Horse

In a Nutshell

The tale of "The Trojan Horse" is kind of like a war movie mixed with a thriller. You've got two big armies duking it out, bent on each other's total destruction. You've got brave heroes who'll do anything for their cause. And then there's a secret mission chock full of danger, with tons of lives hanging by threads. If that's not enough to keep an audience on the edge of its seat, we don't know what is.

There's no doubt that the stakes are high for every nail-biting moment of this tale. If the sneaky Greeks hiding in the giant wooden horse make it through the gates, then the great city of Troy and all its people are doomed. However, if one hidden Greek sneezes at the wrong time the Trojans definitely won't be saying, "Gesundheit." More likely, they'll bless that sneeze by setting the horse and every Greek inside it on fire. What happens? Well, you'll just have to click forward for the thrilling conclusion.

 

Shmoop Connections

Explore the ways this myth connects with the world and with other topics on Shmoop

The most famous version of "The Trojan Horse" pops up in Virgil's Aeneid, when the shell-shocked Aeneas recounts the downfall of his city.

Homer's Iliad sputters out before it gets to the part about the Trojan Horse, but it's a must read for anybody looking to know all the crazy stuff that went down earlier in the war.

Odysseus may have been crafty enough to come up with the idea for the Trojan Horse, but he wasn't quite clever enough to make it home to Ithaca in good time. Check out Homer's Odyssey for all deets on the wise guy's looooong journey home.

According to Dante' Inferno, Ulysses (Odysseus) must burn forever in hell as payback for the Trojan Horse and all his other deceptions. (Ah come on, lighten up, Dante.)