Troy and the Trojan War

In the ancient legends of early Greece, a city-state called Ilium, representing a colony of earlier migrating Greeks, existed in the north west corner of modern Turkey. The story of Ilium (Troy) and its siege by the Greeks was told in two epics by the Greek poet Homer (Iliad, Odyssey), and a third (Aeneid) by the Roman poet Virgil. Limited historical material in a rich admixture with the myths common to the Greek gods of …

…No pottery or other objects from the Troy site (containing images) suggests a large wooden horse. As for Homer himself, there is little evidence. If he lived, it was in the 8th or 9th century, some 400 years after the events he writes about, which would have been conveyed to him as an oral tradition. We may never know. But it is a good story, and it has flavored many another in the three millennia since.