Go Horse – The Trojan horse

The Trojan horse is probably the most famous ploy and myth in history. After ten years of war, the Achaeans managed to enter the walls of the city of Troy by deception, as Homer and Virgil recount it centuries later. In fact, the Greeks pretend to desist from the siege by leaving their ships, but they leave an immense wooden horse on the beach, in front of the city walls: however, the horse hides Ulysses , the creator of the stratagem, and his best soldiers. However, one of the best-known legends in the history of world literature most likely arose from a translation error. The Hippos Homer wrote about was not a wooden quadruped, but a Phoenician-type warship.

The name comes from from the horse-head figurehead typical of the boat. Discover now all our trips, tours, holidays and horse trekking in Greece. It all could have started in the seventh century BC: the memory of the warships of which Homer spoke was lost and the term Hippos began to be translated only with “equus”, horse, precisely. And this error was also made by one of the greatest Latin authors Virgil, who introduced the myth of the Trojan horse in Western culture with his Aeneid. Although it’s erroneous, the “Trojan horse” will always remain a metaphor of a great deception and a stratagem to penetrate the defenses in the common imagination.