In Greek mythology’s Trojan War, Odysseus devised the plan for the wooden horse.
After years of fighting, the Greeks supposedly built a huge wooden horse and left it outside Troy, pretending to sail away. Greek warriors concealed themselves inside it while the rest of the army hid nearby. The Trojans brought the horse within their defenses, and the hidden soldiers opened the gates at night.
Ancient traditions do not all tell the episode in exactly the same way. Homer’s Iliad ends before the horse is used, while later epic and literary works develop the famous stratagem. Virgil’s Aeneid gives the episode especially influential form through the account of the Trojan priest Laocoön and the Greek warrior Sinon.
Odysseus is associated with the plan because the horse represents his characteristic qualities: intelligence, deception, patience, and tactical ingenuity.