The Trojan Horse

The Trojan Horse

Virgil’s Aeneid, upon closer inspection, appears to be entirely based off of an unchangeable fate. Nothing can escape or change it once it has been set into motion. The fall of Troy is an example shown in the book. Aeneas speaks of the event as if there was never a chance that it could have been avoided.

The second book of the Aeneid begins with Aeneas retelling the story regarding how Troy fell. Conflict immediately arises when the Trojans initially find the horse. Laocoön wants the massive wooden horse destroyed and hurls a spear at it (2.30). At the same time, Sinon is found and explains that the horse was built as an offering to Minerva and if any harm comes to it, then Troy will be destroyed as a result (2.35). Laocoön is then devoured by serpents for throwing a spear at the horse. This omen motivates the Trojans to take the horse within their walls in order to please Minerva (2.36). The rest is history. As Aeneas tells this story, he continually refers to fate as being the true cause of the entire event taking place.

What if the fate that these characters live by was different? Let’s say that rather than bringing the horse into Troy, the Trojans destroyed it where it stood at Laocoön’s advice. The course of the fate of the war would have been a polar opposite with what actually happened. The best Greek fighters left in the war would have perished. With no prominent fighters or strategists left, the Greek army would have had nothing left to hope for because it was clear they could not penetrate the walls of Troy by other means. The Trojans would have even had the opportunity to take the offensive against the Greeks at this point, which would mean taking the war off of their own shores and into the Greek mainland instead. With an absence of leadership, the Greek army would eventually succumb to the Trojan onslaught and history would have forever been changed.