Il Cavallo di Troia
The Trojan Horse, also called the wooden horse, is undoubtedly the greatest and best-known deception in mythological tales.
It is in the Aeneid, Virgil's work that the whole story is described with its exciting details, which has become extremely important reading in high schools to understand and learn about the world of Ancient Greece. The narrative begins with Homer's Iliad, the epic poem which tells the story of the conquest of the city of Troy by the Greeks and the Achaeans, but which focuses on the events of the last fifty days of the tenth year as well as the end of the bloody and long siege with the epilogue of the destruction of the city.
So it all begins on the mythical Mount Olympus, home of the Gods. One day Eris, goddess of discord, due to her lack of official invitation to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, nevertheless shows up at the ceremony with a golden apple (hence the apple of discord) to be given to the most beautiful female creature, thus fueling a altercation between Aphrodite, Hera and Athens. The Goddesses therefore decide that Paris, son of the king of Troy and brother of Hector, should decide the winner. Paris chooses Aphrodite who, to demonstrate her gratitude, causes the beautiful Helen, wife of Menelaus King of Sparta, and considered the most beautiful mortal in the world, to fall madly in love with him so much so that the young prince, also kidnapped by love decides to take her with him to Troy, not considering the terrible consequences that this gesture would have generated in the betrayed husband. The rest is history, the epic begins here and continues until the Aeneid.
Once Queen Helen has disappeared, Menelaus runs to his powerful brother Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, who, thirsty for power, seizes the great opportunity to declare war on the Trojans and take possession of the territories, which are strategic due to their position being on the Dardanelles Strait, a crucial point for the access to the Black Sea. A gigantic fleet of 1200 ships then leaves to reach the beach in front of Troia where they will ultimately remain there for ten years as the city with its high and powerful walls is impregnable.
After battles with enormous losses for a decade without reaching a conclusion on both sides, Ulysses has an ingenious idea that will prove perfect to enter, destroy and conquer Troy. With the wood of some ships a gigantic horse was built where the most valuable warriors were hidden inside, including Ulysses himself and the valiant Achilles and left on the beach, while the other ships with the Greeks seemed to have left the coast forever recognizing the defeat. In reality Agamemnon's fleet was hidden on the nearby island of Tenedos away from the eyes of the Trojans who thought they had defeated them. Although Laocoön, the Trojan warrior and priest of Apollo, together with the prophetess Cassandra, opposed accepting this strange gift as they were convinced of a deception, the horse was brought inside the city.
Convincing Priam, King of Troy, known for his kindness, was Sinone, a young Greek who spontaneously handed himself over to the enemy by swearing falsely and in agreement with Agamemnon and Ulysses, that the Greeks had withdrawn as Athena was the protector goddess of the The Greek army would no longer support and protect him because Ulysses had desecrated the temple dedicated to her and that the horse was nothing more than an offering to the Goddess as a sign of respect and repentance for the sacrilege committed.
Now inside the impenetrable walls, the soldiers well hidden in the belly of the horse, waited for the arrival of the night and when everyone was now sure of the victory and engaged in the celebrations based on wineskins, they went out and set Troy on fire, conquering and destroying it. . The end of the story, however, unfortunately leads to the death of Achilles at the hands of Paris who with an arrow hits him right in his only fatal point, the heel, the only part of his body not deified when his mother Thetis immersed him in the river Styx holding him precisely for a heel.
We can therefore say that the Trojan Horse was the most brilliant and terrible war machine that wrote a part of history that will survive over time and that gave us mythical adventures of legendary heroes that we will never tire of remembering and narrating.