50 Fun Facts About Trojan Horse

The Trojan Horse story is NOT told in which of these famous ancient poems?

Homer's poem ends with Hector's funeral, long before the city falls; the Odyssey mentions the horse only in passing.

Which Roman poet gives the fullest surviving account of the Trojan Horse?

Book 2 of his epic has Aeneas tell the tale to Queen Dido at a banquet in Carthage.

Which Greek hero was the chief architect of the horse plan, and hid inside it himself?

It capped a war in which he had also stolen the Palladium and dragged a reluctant Achilles into the fight.

Which Greek craftsman physically built the horse?

Ancient writers say he later settled in Italy and dedicated his carpentry tools to a goddess near Metapontum.

According to Quintus Smyrnaeus, how long did the Greeks take to build the horse?

The same poet says the horse was chosen because it was the emblem of Troy.

What did the Greeks pretend to do after leaving the horse outside Troy?

In fact they burned their tents and hid the fleet behind a nearby island.

Behind which island did the Greek fleet hide while the horse did its work?

A beacon lit by Sinon guided the ships back after dark.

Which Greek stayed behind to convince the Trojans the horse was a harmless offering?

In the Aeneid he claims the plot's mastermind left him to die because they were old enemies - which the Trojans find easy to believe.

Sinon told the Trojans the horse was an offering to which goddess?

The story was that it atoned for the Greeks' desecration of her temple and would buy the fleet a safe voyage home.

Why, according to Sinon, had the Greeks built the horse so enormous?

The implication was that if the Trojans did manage it, the goddess's favour would pass to them - so of course they tried.

Sinon was related to the mastermind of the horse plot. How?

Both descended from the master thief Autolycus, which perhaps explains the talent for lying.

According to Apollodorus, where did Sinon light his beacon to call the fleet back?

Once the fleet was close, the men inside the horse climbed out and opened the gates.

Which Trojan priest warned against the horse and struck it with a spear?

The Aeneid says the groan of the men inside would have given the game away had the gods not already doomed Troy.

The saying 'Beware of Greeks bearing gifts' comes from a Latin line beginning with which words?

'Danaans' was Homer's name for the Greeks; most printed texts read 'ferentis' rather than 'ferentes'.

How does Laocoön die in the Aeneid?

The Trojans read it as punishment for attacking a sacred object, which sealed their decision to bring the horse in.

In Apollodorus's version, which god sent the serpents against Laocoön, and for what offence?

Sophocles wrote a lost tragedy on the priest; in that version he was a priest who broke a vow of celibacy.

Which Trojan princess also warned about the horse but was cursed never to be believed?

She survived the sack only to be murdered in Mycenae by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.

Which god had given the Trojan prophetess her gift before cursing it?

The usual story is that she promised herself to him in return for the gift, then refused him.

Homer says Helen walked around the horse and tried to lure the Greeks out by doing what?

Anticlus nearly answered before a hand was clamped over his mouth.

Who was with Helen as she circled the horse, according to her husband's account in the Odyssey?

He had married her after Paris's death, and her first husband killed him during the sack.

In the Odyssey, who sings of the wooden horse at the Phaeacian court, moving Odysseus to tears?

The song prompts the guest to reveal his identity and begin telling his own story.

In late tradition, the number of Greek warriors hidden inside the horse was standardised at what?

Earlier sources disagree wildly: 30, 50, 23, or 'more than 30'.

Which of these Greek leaders is named as one of the men hidden inside the horse?

Once inside the city he tracked down Helen's latest husband and killed him.

Which two lost poems of the Epic Cycle told the horse story in full?

Only fragments and ancient summaries survive of either.

In the Little Iliad, how did the Trojans get the horse into the city?

The rationalising writer Palaephatus used the same detail to argue that the horse was just a ruse to make the Trojans knock down their defences.

In the Sack of Troy (Iliou persis), the Trojans debate three fates for the horse. Which option wins?

In this poem the serpents kill Laocoön and only one of his sons, and Aeneas takes the omen as his cue to leave.

Which captured Trojan seer revealed the conditions for taking Troy, including the theft that led to the horse?

His other conditions were the arrows of Heracles and bringing Achilles' son into the war.

Pausanias says a god's title 'Carneus' came from what the Greeks cut down in his sacred grove to build the horse?

The Greeks appeased the angry god with sacrifices, and the name stuck.

Some ancient and modern writers think the 'horse' was really what?

Pausanias sniffed that anyone who thought otherwise took the Trojans for utter fools; others suggest a ship with men hidden in the hull.

Fritz Schachermeyr saw the horse as a metaphor for which natural event breaching Troy's walls?

Poseidon was god of horses as well as of earthquakes, and Troy VI shows heavy quake damage.

The Mykonos vase, one of the earliest depictions of the horse, dates from about when?

It is a big storage jar found with human bones inside; Greek warriors peer out of openings in the horse's flank.

On the Mykonos vase, what does the horse have along its side that reveals the men within?

Below it, warriors slaughter women and children - the artist showed no Trojan soldiers at all.

The earliest surviving image of the horse of all, from about 700 BC, appears on what?

A fibula is a brooch; the Mykonos and Tinos jars followed a few decades later.

The famous Laocoön statue was excavated in Rome in which year?

Pliny the Elder had praised it as standing in the palace of the Emperor Titus, credited to three sculptors from Rhodes.

Which Renaissance artist rightly guessed Laocoön's missing arm was bent back over his shoulder?

A bent arm found in a builder's yard in 1906 was finally attached in 1957, replacing centuries of outstretched restorations.

Where was the Laocoön statue displayed between 1800 and 1815?

Napoleon's armies carried it off from Italy; it returned to Rome in January 1816.

In computing, a 'trojan horse' is malware that does what?

Unlike viruses and worms, trojans generally do not try to spread themselves; the term was already familiar to readers of the first Unix manual in 1971.

Which computer scientist popularised 'trojan horse' in his 1983 Turing lecture 'Reflections on Trusting Trust'?

He said he learned of the idea from a US Air Force report on the security of Multics.

The German government's 'state trojan' spyware was nicknamed after which Star Wars character?

German-speaking countries call such government malware 'govware'.

In the 2004 film Troy, where do the Greeks hide their ships while the horse sits on the beach?

Sean Bean's scheming Ithacan presents the horse as a peace offering.

The 'Trojan Horse' scandal of 2014 concerned an alleged plot to take over schools in which British city?

It began with an anonymous, unsigned letter; a 2022 New York Times podcast argued the whole affair was a hoax.

Trojan brand condoms, launched in 1916, first appeared with what image on the packaging?

By 2006 the brand accounted for over 70 percent of condoms sold in US drugstores.

The site identified as Troy, in Çanakkale province, Turkey, was added to which list in 1998?

A replica of the film horse and a giant modern one now greet visitors to the region.

When Helen mimicked the Greek wives' voices, who nearly answered before Odysseus covered his mouth?

Homer tells the story in the Odyssey, where the horse gets only a passing mention.

In which Euripides play does Poseidon describe a horse built 'to bear within its womb an armed host'?

The play dates from 415 BC and calls the craftsman 'Phocian Epeus', aided by the craft of Pallas Athena.

In Virgil's account, what had the Greeks desecrated that the horse was supposedly meant to atone for?

Sinon added that the horse was deliberately too large to fit through the gates, so the Trojans could not claim Athena's favour.

Which ancient rationaliser said the Greeks hid in a hollow called the 'Argive Company', not the horse?

In his telling the horse was simply built too big for the gates so the Trojans had to tear down part of their wall.

According to Quintus Smyrnaeus, the horse's inscription dedicated it to Athena in exchange for what?

The Greeks then burned their tents and slipped away to Tenedos by night, leaving Sinon behind as bait.

After the war, where did Epeius reportedly dedicate the tools he used to build the horse?

The Aristotelian Corpus records the tools being kept as sacred offerings in southern Italy, where Epeius settled.

A 2010s theory links the tale to Phoenician merchant ships that Greeks called 'hippos' because of what?

Such ships carried precious metals and tribute, so the tale may originally have had soldiers hidden in a vessel disguised as tribute.