Doctor Curmudgeon: An Intriguing Tale

By Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D. FAAP Doctor Eisman is in Family Practice in Aventura, Florida with her partner, Dr. Eugene Eisman, an internist/cardiologist

Somewhere around the 12th or 13th century BC, there was a war between Greece and Troy. And this war went on for about ten years.

How did this war start? Well, several accounts say that it was all Paris’ fault. He was the son of the King of Troy. And Paris got it in his head to run away with Helen. Helen happened to be married to Menelaus, the king of the Greek city-state of Sparta.

Not a good move. Sparta was well known for its great warriors and military prowess. But Paris didn’t think twice and the war began.

It was finally ended by a wooden horse.

Not just any wooden horse, but a massive wooden horse, large enough to conceal a lot of Greek warriors. There aren’t any accounts of its size, but Virgil writes about it in his poem, the Aeneid. He describes it as being massive, with wheels and a trapdoor.

The Greeks became war weary of their attempts to penetrate Troy. and so, somebody came up with the idea of the wooden horse. A master carpenter Epeius, was commissioned to build it.
In the midst of their siege of Troy, the Greek army then faked a retreat. Off they sailed to a nearby island. And Troy was deluded into thinking they had won the war. But the wily Greeks left behind a soldier called Simon. He pretended that he was a deserter.

Of course, the Trojans captured him. And Simon spun his lie about the great wooden horse at their gate. Simon told his Trojan captors that the Greeks had left it as an offering to the Goddess of War Athena, and were hoping that it would secure their safe return to Sparta.

The Trojans believed him when he warned them not to destroy the horse. Athena would be very mad at them, but if they dragged it inside, they could be assured of her protection

And so the story goes that the unwary Trojans pulled it into their city.

They spent that night drinking and carousing in celebration of their great victory over Greece.

In the night, the Greek soldiers stealthily crept out through the trapdoor and opened the city gate for the rest of the Greek army.

What happened next? A horror story. Trojans were massacred and the city was sacked.

But is the story of the Trojan horse a brilliant military deception, a myth, or a metaphor?

In 2021, some Turkish archaeologists found wooden planks dating back thousands of years in the location of Troy. These archaeologists felt that they had actually found remains of the real Trojan horse.

In the 2014 Oxford University newsletter, Dr. Armand D’Angour wrote “archaeological evidence shows that Troy was indeed burned down; but the wooden horse is an imaginative fable, perhaps inspired by the way ancient siege-engines were clothed with damp horse-hides to stop them being set alight.”
We are not protected from a Trojan horse today. We must be wary of a modern Trojan horse, a malicious piece of software that disguises itself as a harmless program. And, if we let it in, it lays siege to our computer, wreaking havoc and destruction.

THE OTHER PHOTO IS A DEPICTION OF THE TROJAN HORSE ON A CORINTHIAN ARYBALLOS (CA. 560 BC) FOUND IN CERVETERI, ITALY

Dr. Curmudgeon suggests “Bitter Medicine”, Dr. Eugene Eisman’s story of his experiences–from the humorous to the intense—as a young army doctor serving in the Vietnam War.
Bitter Medicine by Eugene H. Eisman, M.D. –on Amazon

Doctor Curmudgeon® is Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D., a physician-satirist. This column originally appeared on SERMO, the leading global social network for doctors.
SERMO www.sermo.com

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