Hacker News Reader

Nice catch. The Iliad doesn't actually concern itself with the end of the Trojan War.

The horse is mentioned briefly in the Odyssey, since it's attributed to Odysseus's cunning wit. Probably the work that describes it most thoroughly is the Aenid, which came hundreds of years after Homer's works or the Little Iliad.

View on HN

That's six or seven hundred years that Virgil wrote the Aneid, as a sort of founding myth for Rome during its transition from the republic to ... or really at the beginning of the empire (not long after Julius Caesar's death). It was almost a sort of political propaganda, legitimizing and linking the empire to an ancestral root to their gods.

The Romans often were inspired by, appropriated, imitated, or embraced Greek culture which was looked upon highly. Much of their success can be attributed to their ability to integrate many cultures and meld them into a diverse Roman culture.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com