Beware!

I read a curi­ous book last night about Homer’s Ili­ad, which I read when in high school. This book was writ­ten by a clas­si­cal schol­ar, who was try­ing to lay out what might or might not be his­tor­i­cal­ly true about Homer’s epic. The most fas­ci­nat­ing part for me was this: there was a city of Troy where it is sup­posed to be. In fact there were eight Troys dur­ing the late bronze and ear­ly Iron ages, when, accord­ing to this book, the Ili­ad was com­posed. Fur­ther­more, the archae­o­log­i­cal evi­dence sug­gests that one of the iter­a­tions of Troy—at the right time—Iliad time—was destroyed by an earthquake.

Hang on.

The Greek god of earth­quakes was Posei­don. That’s to say, Posei­don caused earth­quakes. The Greek sym­bol for Posei­don was a horse. Got that? So, appar­ent­ly, the Tro­jan Horse—so this books suggests—was an extend­ed metaphor for the destruc­tion of Troy, not by the Greeks, but an earthquake.

Moral: Beware of Greeks bear­ing metaphors.