The Trojan Horse

Who else here believes the story of the Trojan Horse ould be true? Come on now it was supposedly a big wooden horse right? Even a drunk monkey would run away from that.

No, this actually makes perfect sense. The Trojans fell trap to one of the oldest tricks in the book, flattery. They assumed that the horse was some sort of recognition from Greece that Troy was better than them. I don't know if the story was actually true but it's not unlikely that such a thing could happen.

I have no trouble beleiving the Trojan Horse story is true.

That kind of trickery still happens today. Rigged weapons sold to other countries. Crypto chips with backdoor in it. Special forces disguised as opfor for sabotage behind the lines. You name it.

And in more banal situations. People clicking on virus attached to emails titled "Here's the file you asked for" from a guy they don't know or never asked any file from him. Or people giving their bank account number to a shady dude in Nigeria.

I see no reason why people would not get fooled by a wooden horse at the time. Tales of this historic event sound credible to me.

Okay, no one will know for certain, if the story of the Trojan horse is true or not.

According to how the story goes, the Spartans laid siege to Troy for 10 years, & deciding they'd had too heavy of losses & a defeated morale, decided they were going to trick the Trojans outside of their splendored walls.

This being in ancient times, people were extremely superstitious, they thought the gods did things for them, or left signs of favor bestowed upon certain people because the gods were pleased.

The Spartans decided to take advantage of this superstitiousness, & used the majority of their boats, to build a great horse, as a trophy left by the gods for the Trojan people, of the city of Troy.

The Trojans believing in the divine gods, & that they had favored them, found the horse the next morning, with the Spartans no where to be seen, little did the Trojans know, but the Spartans used the remaining boats they had & sailed off out of sight of the city & laid in wait til their plan could come to fruition.

The Trojans brought the great horse to their city, had to actually remove a section of the gate, as they horse was so huge, & then the Trojans partied all night long, little knowing, the belly of the horse held a vast amount of Spartans troops laying in wait.

The Spartans waited most of the night, til the Trojans fell asleep from the revelling & drinking on their "Victory" over the Spartans & the favor that was shown upon them by the gods, & when the time came, the Spartans dropped out of the horse, signaled the rest of the Spartan soldiers to come to the gate. They let them in, & then the slaughtering began.

If I remember the story correctly, they left none alive.

This story, is the reason for the old adage : Never Trust A Greek Bearing Gifts.

~offers you a gift with an Evil Grin upon His face~

the 21st century trojan horse does work - the " reality [sic] teevee shpw " - SPACE CADETS , teevee_show shows that you can fool all of the people some of the time

in short they persuaded some folk that tbey were going into space , despite the fact they never left a hanger in surrey

the " trick " holiday / competicition scams that police forces use to capture long term targets of arrest warrants are another one


the trojan horse worked against a supersticvious bronze age city state - the same psychology works today - if you update the props and premise

What makes this so believable to me is how POSSIBLE the act is. This is no Chariot leading the Sun around the world. This is no one fisher bringing about 10,000 fish in a day. This is about a group of soilders salvaging their boats in a last ditch effort to fool an enemy that was slowly winning the war.

Supply lines were quickly going dry, as any would after a 10 year siege. The walls had shown to be a great benefit to the Natives as it was also a great demoralizer to the Invaders. In those days a simple wall could very well be the difference in a battle.

An over confident enemy either opened the gates to find a Gift From God or a Peace Offering from an honorable advisary that had been bested. Both are believable when you consider how Religous the time period was, and how the harbor was empty. This was a time of Hounorable Warfare. To save the lives of thousands in their troops sometimes Officers would call each other out in a duel to settle the situation. Leaving an Offering could have been seen as a sign of Great Respect from a Formidable Enemy that had been bested. Perhaps not even a true Surrender, perhaps a "We leave you this to keep, until we return for it" sort of favor.

Count me as one of those "It could, and I feel it DID, happen just like the story says."

The Inherent Need to Believe

As plausible as the concept and curiosity of the Trojan Horse maybe be to many of us, in truth, Homer did what Hollywood today does: Homer took a long and complicated historical oral tradition of a conflict, condensed it, and made it simpler to understand, while spicing it up, so to speak, with romance and grand rivalries.

There is no archaeological evidence(s) that specifically or directly supports and/or reinforces Homer’s Hollywood version of a ten-year long [interestingly, also according to Greek oral tradition, ten-years was how long the romantic and mythical war between the Zeus and his allies and the Titans was believed to have lasted], Bronze Age conflict pitting the herculean Mycennaean Greeks against the vaunted and mighty Trojans, ending in the Trojan Horse being the romantic and deadly tool that led to the fiery and castastrophic destruction of Troy. Additionally, along with the Trojan Horse mention, there are way too many inconsistencies to Homer's epic battle involving Troy.

The story of the Trojan Horse is simply a hollow, forgive the pun, romantic and tragic myth, having no verifiable basis in and of archaeological or historical validity or truth. It does, however, make for grand and exciting movies.





seekerof

I have an idea lets make a trojan hors and roll it up to a 51

I used to make trojan horses, that was when i was experimenting in internet security (past area of work)

i know its off topic, but i thought i'd lighten the topic a bit

I don't know about the real trojan horse story..... haven't really read much into it

Spartans?

You mean Myceneans.

[edit on 30-12-2005 by Unplugged]

It was lead by King Mnenelaous (spelling?), he was a king a few kings before Leonidas.

there is always some truth in myth

No. The greek force was led by king Agammemnon, Mycenean king and it was a coalition of various cities (including Crete, Argos, Pylus etc.). Actually Sparta took only minor role (Menelaus was the cuckolded husband but he was not the most powerfull king).

[edit on 30-12-2005 by longbow]