The Trojan Horse

If you stood on the windy plains of Troy 3,000 years ago, the first thing you would smell was salt, and the second was old campfire smoke. For 10 long years, those two smells had been drifting together over the Aegean Sea, carried on a restless wind that seemed as tired of the war as the men who fought it. To understand this story, we must travel back to the world of the ancient Greeks, a culture of bronze armor, towering ships, and songs sung by firelight. This is a tale that reaches us from their world, passed down through the centuries in the grand sweeping poetry of Homer, and later retold by the Roman poet Virgil. It is a story with many faces, remembered differently depending on whether you ask the ones who sailed away or the ones who stood upon the battlements. But in every telling, it begins with a wall, and it ends with a choice. For 10 years, two great armies had stared at one another across a narrow strip of dusty earth. On one side was Troy, a magnificent city of stone, with walls so high and thick, they were said to have been built by the hands of the gods themselves. Behind those walls lived the Trojans, families, merchants, weavers, and farmers, all ruled by the aging gentle King Priam. They were a people who loved their home, and for 10 years they had defended it, living behind barred gates, watching the horizon with anxious eyes. On the other side, stretched along the sandy beach, was the Greek army. They had come in a thousand black ships, crossing the wine dark sea to win back Helen, a queen of incomparable beauty who had been taken from her Greek home to live within the stone walls of Troy. The Greeks had built a city of their own on the sand, a city of leather tents, wooden huts, and deep trenches. 10 years is a long time for a war. It is long enough for babies to grow into children who have never known a day without the sound of clashing swords. It is long enough for the bright bronze of shields to turn dull and green with salt crust, and for the white sails of ships to rot into gray rags. By the 10th year, the plains of Troy were a place of deep weariness. The great heroes of both sides, the unstoppable Greek warrior Achilles, and the noble Trojan prince Hector, were gone, buried beneath mounds of earth that grew weeds in the winter rains. The soldiers on the beach were homesick, dreaming of the olive groves of Greece and the voices of wives and children they had not seen since they were young men. Inside the city, the Trojans were starving, their storehouses emptying, their hearts heavy with the memory of the brothers and sons they had lost. Every morning, the Greek soldiers would march out from their camp, their spears gleaming in the rising sun. Every morning, the Trojan warriors would march out through the Scean gate to meet them. They would fight in the dust until the sun sank into the sea, and then both sides would retreat to count their dead. It was a stalemate. The Greeks could not break through the stone walls of Troy, and the Trojans could not drive the Greeks back into the sea. One evening, in the Greek camp, a meeting was called in the tent of High King Agamemnon. The air inside was thick with the smell of tallow candles and damp wool. The kings and generals sat in a circle, their faces lined with exhaustion. "We cannot stay here another winter," Agamemnon said, his voice heavy. "The men are talking of mutiny. The ships are decaying. If we cannot take the city now, we must board our vessels and sail home in shame." The kings looked at the ground. To go home defeated after 10 years of blood and sweat was a bitter thought. But what else could they do? They had tried every strategy. They had tried siege, they had tried trickery on the battlefield, they had tried single combat between their…

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