Troy

These days I can’t help but think about the Trojan war, how clever the Greeks were, how, in the end, careless were the Trojans. Sure, I know, how useless and irrelevant all that seems to be, but if you are one of my friends, please indulge me for a minute.

For ten years the Greeks laid siege to Troy, doing everything in their power to breach the city’s strong walls. But the Trojans held out. Their leaders, Hector, until he was killed, Priam, their king, Laocoon, their priest, protected them with their wisdom and courage. And the Greeks lost many of their heroes, including the strongest of all, Achilles, who had been made invulnerable to any weapon—except for that one spot on his heel. Like the best of us, individuals and nations, he had an area of weakness.

Eventually, the Greeks, seeming to give up and head to their various  homes, vanished from the plain around Troy. The Trojans, of course, waking up the next day, rejoiced. After all those years of restraint and privation they could venture outside the walls once again, feast and drink and make love. They  cast off the heavy care that had kept them safe all those years. They even flung open the gates that had protected them so well. So many of them were young, full of energy, wanting their lives to go back to normal, their pleasures resurrected and renewed. And then, careless and against the warnings of wise men, they dragged that trophy, the symbol of their magnificent triumph, their victory,  that hollow horse replete with murder, into the heart of a city thus rendered helpless. The next day all the Trojan men were dead. The women, raped, and the children, taken as slaves, the city in ruins.