The Romans went so far as to present themselves as the descendants of the surviving Trojans. In his poem, the Aeneid, Virgil described how the hero Aeneas escaped the burning citadel with a group of followers after the Greeks entered in their wooden horse. John Dryden, England’s first official poet laureate, translated superbly the part where the horse was made: “The Greeks grew weary of the tedious war,/ And, by Minerva’s aid, a fabric rear’d,/ Which like a steed of monstrous height appear’d”. Aeneas and his men left to found a new home in Italy.

Grim realities

It isn’t surprising that people have been convinced of the reality of the Trojan War. The grim realities of battle are described so unflinchingly in the Iliad that it is hard to believe they were not based on observation. A soldier dies by the water and “eels and fish make busy around him, feeding upon and devouring the fat around his kidneys”. Achilles spears Hector “at the gullet, where a man’s life is most quickly destroyed”, as Martin Hammond translated it. Troy, too, is portrayed in such vivid colour in the epic that a reader cannot help but to be transported to its magnificent walls.