Did you know that the Ancient Greek influence Computer Science of today particularly through concept of the Trojan Horse?

Did you know that the Ancient Greek influence Computer Science of today particularly through concept of the Trojan Horse?
The siege of Troy seems believable, and the divine intervention can be explained as a




 product of ancient religion, the Trojan horse is maybe the least plausible thing in all the recounts of the Trojan war. This also explain its popularity: it’s so strange, a move so risky and daring, that it sticks with the reader.

However, according to Francesco Tiboni, a naval archeologist, the horse… wasn’t a horse. It was a ship.

Now, let’s give credit where it’s due: Tiboni isn’t the first to think the horse wasn’t a horse.
That what Epeo built was some machinery to bring down the walls, and not a horse, is well known among those who don’t believe the Trojans to be absolute morons.

Tiboni, however, is the first to expand upon this hypothesis with evidence — some believable, some a bit weak. Notice that almost all the linguistic links used to prove this theory come from the Odyssey, because the Iliad doesn’t cover the end of Troy.

Ships are “the horses of the sea”. This is how Penelope calls them in the fourth book, when she’s worried for her son: there was no need for him to board the fast ships, she says, that for men are like horses of the sea. This could be very well just a poetic license, tho.

In the I millennium BC Phoenicians and other Mediterranean sailors used to decorate their ships with horse-shaped figure head, like the ones in this Assyrian bas-relief. Tiboni theorized that hippos (the word with which Homer describe the machine and that we translate as “horse”) could be a reference to these ships Greeks were used to see in their travels.

Other words Homer uses in relation to the horse have much more sense if they were referencing a boat:

the “horse” was dragged inside the walls. This verb, eruo, is commonly used to describe the beaching of the Achean ships.
the horse is described as koilos, «concave», which is also used for ships.
durateos means, literally, «made of wooden plates». Now, ancient ships were “modular” boats: they were made of many wooden parts which were built separately and then assembled.

And speaking of building a ship: Epeo was a master ship builder, but he was no Leonardo Da Vinci. We’re supposed to believe that he built a massive wooden horse, big enough to hide a little army in his belly, from scratch — applying, coincidentally, the same techniques he used to build ships.

The Trojan horse was supposed to be a tribute to Poseidon, as a prayer for good travel; and it does make sense, because in Greek mythology horses were sacred to Poseidon. You know what else make a good ton of sense as a tribute to the God of the Sea? Yeah, a giant boat.

All in all, it’s just a theory and it leaves some questions open, the most prominent one being why early depictions of the Trojan war present the horse as — well, a horse.

It makes sense, at least to me, that the Trojans could be tricked into take a ship as a victory prize without much questions; and that the memory of this trick inspired poets on the other side of the sea, along with the sight of those horse-heads on bows of ships. But we will never know if it happened for real.

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