The Wooden Horse of TroyThe Trojans cheered when they awoke one day to find that the Greek army had finally left after ten years, and they were shocked to receive an unusual gift - a big wooden horse.
The Greeks had left. They appeared to have given up and departed Troy in peace after ten years of war and siege. When the Trojans watched the Greek ships sailing away, they couldn't believe their eyes. It was incredible.
The weird wooden horse they had left behind, standing just outside the city gates, was equally astonishing. Was it a present or a ruse?
King Priam of Troy was undoubtedly suspicious that the wooden horse was a ruse.
"The Greeks are the most cunning people on the planet," warned Priam of the Trojans. "We must use extreme caution!"
Priam was aware that some Trojans regarded the horse as a symbol of good fortune and victory. They intended to drag it inside Troy's walls. Priam barred them from doing so until scouts had gone out to ensure that the Greeks had indeed returned home.
In anticipation of a Greek ambush, the scouts equipped themselves with swords and spears. Then they slipped out of town to examine the location of the Greeks' camp. There had been no ambush. Also, there was no camp. As the Trojans arrived, they saw that the Greeks had torched their homes and tents. Only a few mounds of scorched wreckage remained.
While the scouts were making their way through the ruins, they came across a lone Greek man hiding behind some bushes. They took him out and put him on the ground, kicking and screaming.
"Please do not murder me!" he pleaded.
Suddenly he began moaning. "What calamity has befallen me! I'm so unlucky!" The Greek man wept so much as he grieved and lamented that the Trojans began to feel sorry for him.
"Who are you?" they inquired. "Why did the Greeks leave you behind?"
"My name is Sinon, and the Greeks despise me!" moaned the guy. "They decided to return home after realising they would never be able to capture Troy. They were afraid the gods would think them cowards so they sought the oracle's advice..."
"What did the oracle say?" the Trojans inquired.
"The oracle declared that if the Greeks left behind one man as a sacrifice, the gods would not judge them cowards," Sinon said. "That sacrifice is me. Our captain, Agamemnon, disliked me, and Odysseus, the crafty, ruthless guy, frequently expressed his desire to kill me! They now have their way."
Sinon had ceased crying by this point, and his tears had been replaced by rage and anger. "They've betrayed me!" he exclaimed. "Oh, I'm going to betray them!"
Sinon sprang to his feet and grabbed one of the Trojans by the arm, forcing him to pay attention. "I pledge to tell your King everything," Sinon said. "I know the wooden horse's secret. That secret will be revealed only to King Priam."
The Trojans perked up as Sinon described the wooden horse.
"Let's carry this filthy Greek to Priam," declared the Trojan leader.
"No, there's something strange going on," one of the scouts said. "I don't trust this guy; let's kill him right now!" He examined Sinon with stern, suspicious eyes. Sinon shook and shrunk in the face of his stare.
"Look at him!" exclaimed the Trojan leader. "A fearful individual like this cannot be a threat to us. Furthermore, he has been betrayed and seeks vengeance. A man like this will always tell the truth."
Sinon hid his face in his hands and began wailing loudly once more. Sinon was smirking behind his hands, unseen by the Trojans. 'The plot is working,' he reasoned. 'Everything is proceeding exactly as Odysseus intended.'
If the Trojans had any doubts about the Greeks' departure, they were quickly dispelled after Sinon gave Priam his account. "The Greeks made the wooden horse as a gift for the goddess Athene," Sinon stated. Look at the carved smile on its face. It was placed there by the Greeks to divert Athene's wrath. They were scared she'd unleash storms to destroy their ships as they travelled back... but here's the truly clever part of their plan..."
"What? What?" Priam wanted to know. Everyone in Priam's court was straining to hear what Sinon had to say.
"The Greeks were confident that you would burn the horse when you found it, thinking it was some kind of deception on their behalf," Sinon said, "and if that happened, Athene's rage would fall on Troy, and she would send a big thunderbolt and a cloud of fire to burn down this magnificent city."
"So the wooden horse was a trick after all," King Priam explained. We will demonstrate to the Greeks that we are not fools here in Troy. We will handle this animal with dignity and respect. Bring it inside the city limits. We'll throw a big party to commemorate it. Priam gave Sinon a nice pat on the back. Sinon, we owe you a great deal. You are welcome to join us as an honoured guest. Sinon laughed quietly to himself. Of course, everything he told King Priam was a lie, save that the Greeks had given up hope of winning the war. That was, at the very least, correct.
"If we cannot beat the Trojans by force of arms, we must defeat them through cunning," Odysseus informed the other Greeks. Listen up, I've got a plan ". When the Greek leader, Agamemnon, learned of Odysseus' plot, he ordered his men to take their axes and cut down trees in the woodland on nearby Mount Ida. The Greeks' most skilled carpenter, Epeius, then started to work with his crew. He sawed the trees into hundreds of boards and began building the wooden horse. Epeius finished it in three days.
Agamemnon gave the order to fire the Greek camp as soon as the horse was ready. While the ships in the adjacent harbour were being prepared for sea, Odysseus, Epeius, and several Greek warriors donned their armour. They hid their swords and spears beneath their cloaks. When it got dark, they climbed a long ladder and entered the horse's hollow belly through a trap door on one side. While everyone was inside, Epeius opened and bolted the trap door. They sat in the darkness, holding their swords closely so they didn't rattle while the horse was pulled to a point outside Troy's walls.
So Agamemnon and the rest of the Greeks, except for Sinon, boarded their ships and sailed away. Sinon was abandoned in the camp, waiting for the Trojans to find him.
The Trojans were so captivated by Sinon's account that they threw open the city gates and dragged the wooden horse inside. A mob gathered behind them, singing, dancing, and cheering.
'They think they've won the war,' Sinon reflected. 'They'll soon realise they've misplaced it!'
The Trojans eventually became exhausted and began to return home. Sinon remained behind. As the last Trojan had vanished, he dashed over to the wooden horse and rapped three times on one of its legs.
"At long last!" Odysseus whispered in the darkness of the horse's belly.
"The time for action has arrived!"
Odysseus and his men took their swords and spears from their wrappings. Epeius crept to the trap door, unbolted it, and lowered it. He pulled the ladder from his bag and cautiously dropped it to the ground. All of the Greeks descended within a few minutes, and two of them dashed to where Trojan sentries stood guard in front of the great city gates. The sentries were sound asleep. They had consumed far too much wine throughout the festivities. The Greeks appeared out of nowhere. The sentries and two swifts with daggers.
This was the time for Sinon to ascend the rampart staircase. He was holding a torch in his hand. Sinon shook his head back and forth. He noticed a responding signal far away, over the water: a torch, similar to his own, moving from side to side. It was a watchman on the Greek ships. The ships had not set sail, as the Trojans had assumed. They'd simply sailed away around a nearby headland.
The rowers yanked hard on their oars, and the Greek ships began to return to Troy. The Greeks were opening the gates within the city. Agamemnon and his warriors immediately poured into Troy, and the city was soon filled with shouting, screams, and the crackle of burning structures. The Greeks stormed the King's palace and slew Priam and his family. Others went through the streets with swords drawn, murdering any Trojan they could find. Others tossed flaming torches into the houses, resulting in horrifying screams from within as the occupants inside burned to death.
The streets of Troy were soon littered with the remains of the dead, and the entire city was enveloped in dense, black smoke. Men, women, and children screamed in panic as they ran around. There was no way out. They were either slaughtered or brought to the ships in chains.
By the time daylight arrived the once-grand city of Troy had devolved into a burning, quiet ruin. There were no survivors.
When the Greeks finally left, taking their hostages as well as all the wealth and riches, they had looted, the only building that remained was the wooden horse. It stood in the square, unaffected by the flames, smirking triumphantly.
