Literature Well Documented

Trojan Horse

"A trick that gets something harmful accepted by disguising it as a welcome gift."

The wooden horse used to smuggle Greek soldiers inside the walls of Troy is best known today from Virgil's Aeneid, written in the 1st century BC, and gets a brief mention in Homer's much earlier Odyssey (probably 8th century BC), where it's referenced as something the audience would already know well rather than explained from scratch. That detail matters: it means the story predates both surviving poems and was already part of a shared oral tradition by the time either was written down. The idiom itself only needs that literary tradition to be real, and it is, regardless of whether an actual deception involving an actual horse-shaped object happened during any real siege of Troy.

Myth vs. FactWhether a literal wooden horse was used in an actual historical siege is a genuinely open question for archaeologists, separate from the idiom. The idiom only depends on the story being old, well-attested Greek literary tradition, which it clearly is.

Sources: Homer, Odyssey (probably 8th century BC); Virgil, Aeneid, Book II (1st century BC).

Trojan Horse

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