Why is the trojan horse not in the iliad

Priam, King of Troy, was slaughtered along with every Trojan male — adult and child — while the women and girls were enslaved. The Greeks burned Troy to the ground. As for Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships, her husband Menelaus had insisted that he be the one to kill her, but became overwhelmed by her beauty once again and could not bring himself to do it.

Yet it was not actually mentioned by Homer. In turn, Paris would also meet his end after being hit by an arrow, fired by a Greek warrior. All such accounts of what happened after the fall of Hector come from sources other than the Iliad. The entirety of the Iliad — 15, lines of verse — focuses on just a few weeks in the final year of the Trojan War. The demigod Achilles, strongest of them all, feels affronted as he believes he has not been given the degree of honour he deserves from his fellow Greeks, and as such has decided to withdraw from the fight against Troy.

He sits on the beach weeping at the injustices done to him, and even prays to the gods that the Greeks will suffer at the hands of the Trojans without him, so that they will be forced to realise his worth. The many gods of Olympus have all picked sides in the fight, with some supporting the Greeks and others on the side of Troy.

As the battle rages, several gods intervene as they protect their side or harm the other. When Achilles withdraws, though, Zeus finally forbids the other gods to get involved and the Trojans, led by Hector, sweep down to the Greek encampment and are on the verge of setting fire to their ships.

It is at this desperate point that the Greek leaders plead with Achilles to return to the fight. He still refuses, but he allows his closest companion, Patroclus, to wear his armour on the battlefield to inspire the men. But when Patroclus charges into the fray, he confronts Hector and is cut down. The death sends a grief-stricken Achilles into a rage as he vows vengeance on Hector. With new armour made for him by the god Hephaestus, he rides in his chariot to the walls of Troy and faces the Trojan warrior.

Hector ignores warnings from the gods and fights Achilles, during which he is stabbed through the neck and dies. Far from just observing the Trojan War from Mount Olympus, the gods picked sides and got involved. She offered Paris lordship of Asia, but lost. The son of Zeus was a key supporter of the Trojans. Apollo may have also guided the arrow fired by Paris that killed Achilles. The goddess of love won the contest for the golden apple by offering Paris the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen.

She remained sympathetic to Paris and, despite not being associated with war, fought herself and was even wounded. It was Zeus who allowed the other gods to intervene in human affairs or not, and it was Zeus who was the keeper of fate — from which neither gods nor humanity can escape.

The goddess of wisdom and cunning was one of the three contestants for the golden apple to bribe Paris of Troy. She offered him victory in battle and wisdom, but she did not win and so supported the Greeks in the war, often joining the battlefield and encouraging the Greek forces to fight harder. As the divine blacksmith, he made the weapons and tools of the gods, such as the winged helmet and sandals of the messenger god Hermes.

During the Trojan War, Hephaestus designed new armour for Achilles when he finally decided to re-enter the conflict following the death of Patroclus. Hephaestus also intervened in the fighting on the Greek side.

The events of the rest of the war and indeed how the war came about is told not in Homer, but across a wider cycle of epic poems by other writers. Three claimed the apple: Aphrodite, goddess of love; Athena, goddess of wisdom, and Hera, wife of Zeus. It was put to Zeus to decide who should have the apple, but he instead put it to a human to choose: Paris of Troy.

All three goddesses attempt to bribe him. Athena promises victory in war and wisdom; Hera with lordship of Asia; and Aphrodite with the hand of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Sparta. After all, ships are often given poetical names and even animal ones. Like the Trojan Horse of Virgil and Quintus of Smyrna, a ship is a giant structure made of wood, and the ship, with Greek soldiers concealed inside, could have been used to enter the city of Troy by stealth with the soldiers on board perhaps being offered up as a tribute to the Trojans.

Or perhaps the Trojan Horse was neither horse nor ship, but an elite platoon or regiment. A giant wooden horse, really?

But the link between history and myth remains a fascinating one, even though our explanations may end up being as deceptive as the Trojan Horse itself. Image: via Wikimedia Commons. Trojans horse or otherwise are so embedded in our psyches, they might as well have been real. Thanks, Marie! Enter your email address to subscribe to this site and receive notifications of new posts by email.

All we do know is that, even if the poems were composed without writing and orally transmitted, at some stage they were written down in Greek, because that is how they have survived. Dr D'Angour explains the origins of another eight stories and myths in an article for the BBC , which has been reached millions of people as one of the most shared on the website over the last few days.

Dr D'Angour is currently undertaking a two-year project to recover the sounds of Greek music and to work out what significance these sounds have for some of the most famous poems from Ancient Greece.

Even less attention is paid to melodic structures, which thanks to the surviving fragments — as well voluminous writings by ancient authors and musical theorists admirably translated and compiled by Andrew Barker in Greek Musical Writings — is something on which we are now in a position to exercise an informed scholarly imagination.

The latest news and views in the arts, humanities and culture at Oxford University. Contact: Sarah Whitebloom, sarah. Skip to main content. A wooden horse at Truva Troy in northwest Anatolia, in what is now Turkey.