Does the saying ‘Never trust Greeks who bare gifts’ come from the Trojan Horse?
By admin on Jan. 13, 2012.
(I’m not too sure on this story but I think it went like this)
The people of Troy were like the first Romans and the invaders (Achilles and the others) were Greek and they handed the people of Troy a horse to Poseidon but it really had Greeks in it and they came out and attacked, so the gift was a trick that lead to the fall of the city of Troy. So is this where the saying comes from?
That is correct. The event does not occur in Homer’s Iliad, which ends before the fall of the city, but is referred to in the Odyssey. The main ancient source for the story is the Aeneid of Virgil, a Latin epic poem from the time of the Roman emperor Augustus. By the way, the Trojans were not Roman, they were Greeks also. They just happen to live in Asia Minor (present day Turkey), and not on mainland Greece. But the Romans did claim to be descended from the Trojans (they believed themselves to be descended from Prince Aeneas of Troy).
Category: horse gifts