Architect of the Trojan Horse – Odysseus contra Epeius

385 words 

𓃰𓃭𓃗

Leaving aside the small percentage of the population who are by nature petracolous𝔸, who in the West hasn’t heard of the fabled Trojan Horse from Greek mythology? It’s one of the great, storied metaphors of human life, its meaning signifying a trick or stratagem that causes a target to invite a foe into a securely protected bastion or place. The term has crossed over into computing jargon to describe any malicious computer program that fools users into willingly running it (often called simply  a "Trojan"). But what of the original, literary-mythical Trojan Horse (douráteos hippos) that accounts for its metaphorical longevity?

The ancient sources of the classical world—principally Virgil’s Aeneid, Quintus of Smyrna’s The Fall of Troy and Homer’s Odyssey (but not the Iliad)—gave us the Trojan Horse  story, an audacious ruse by the Achaeans to penetrate the impenetrable walls of Troy with the “gift” of a deceptive equine decoy. The master-scheme, masterminded by Odysseus, the king  of Ithaca, succeeded spectacularly, bringing the 10 long years of Greek-Trojan martial conflict finally to a definitive conclusion. All the  kudos for the triumph of the wooden horse gets lavished on Odysseus’ head with the wily Ithacan ruler being commonly described as “the architect of the Trojan Horse”. The problem with this tag is that it completely glosses over the vital role of Epeius of Phocis who can stake a comparable claim to the title in the Trojan Horse episode. The core idea was Odysseus’ of course but he still needed a skilled builder to bring the mega-horse decoy to fruition. Epeius, a soldier and pugilist in the Achaean ranks,  had been a master carpenter in his civilian life and it was down to him to make the Wooden Horse a reality. Epeius designed and built the gigantic super-sized model of a horse, with a hollow belly large enough to hold 30 warriors and their armour and weapons, creating a plausible structure, well-constructed and finely detailed, and he did all this in just three days – with some help or inspiration from the goddess Athena. Without Epeius’ Herculean achievement, Odysseus would not have the Trojan Horse with which he is so intimately associated,  the very instrument which proved a total game-changer in breaking the stalemate in the decade-long war between Agamemnon’s Achaeans and Priam’s Trojans. 

Odysseus

𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡𝄡

𝔸 ie, living under a rock