While modern popular culture treats the Trojan Horse as the grand climax of the Trojan War, Homer’s Iliad actually ends well before the event, concluding with the funeral of the Trojan prince Hector. Homer’s Odyssey only mentions the horse in brief flashbacks, such as songs performed by the bard Demodocus and memories shared by King Menelaus, giving Odysseus credit for the stratagem without detailing the city's fall.
In antiquity, the full narrative was recorded in a series of now-lost Greek poems known as the "Epic Cycle" (specifically the Little Iliad and the Ilioupersis). Because those early Greek texts vanished over time, a massive narrative gap was left in surviving classical literature, leaving ancient and modern readers alike without a detailed Greek account of the final siege.
That gap was dramatically filled nearly eight centuries later when the Roman poet Virgil composed the Aeneid (written between 29 and 19 BC).
In Book 2, Virgil presents a vivid, heart-pounding first-person account of Troy’s final night through the eyes of Aeneas, a Trojan survivor who would go on to lay the foundations for Rome. Virgil introduced the famous dramatic details that define the legend today: the deceptive Greek spy Sinon who convinced the Trojans the horse was a sacred gift, the tragic priest Laocoön who warned "I fear the Greeks, even when bringing gifts" before being killed by sea serpents, and the chaos as soldiers poured from the horse's hollow belly to open the gates.
Because the Aeneid became the central literary masterpiece of the Roman Empire and Western education, Virgil’s Roman-centric retelling permanently cemented the story of the Trojan Horse into world history.
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