Forget the Trojans - We present: The Greek Horse

Poor old New York Times. Frustrating as the pathology of their faddish and morally bankrupt ideology can be, they are still an organization made up of people and heir to all the faults of man. Stripping out the fact-checkers and editors just makes the errors more apparent. The Emperor and clothes and all that. You have to feel at least a little sorry for them.

Jon Meacham had an essay, Barbara W. Tuchman, Folly and the Stream of History in their book section a couple of weeks ago. There was, apparently some awkward or misleading wording referencing the Trojan Horse and apparently they got the story (recounted in Virgil and Homer and a mainstay of Western culture) backwards. For any New York Times journalists, Wikipedia has a good summary of the original telling:

The Trojan Horse is a tale from the Trojan War about the subterfuge that the Greeks used to enter the independent city of Troy and win the war. In the canonical version, after a fruitless 10-year siege, the Greeks constructed a huge wooden horse, and hid a select force of men inside. The Greeks pretended to sail away, and the Trojans pulled the horse into their city as a victory trophy. That night the Greek force crept out of the horse and opened the gates for the rest of the Greek army, which had sailed back under cover of night. The Greeks entered and destroyed the city of Troy, ending the war.

Metaphorically a "Trojan Horse" has come to mean any trick or stratagem that causes a target to invite a foe into a securely protected bastion or place. A malicious computer program which tricks users into willingly running it is also called a "Trojan horse" or simply a "Trojan".

The main ancient source for the story is the Aeneid of Virgil, a Latin epic poem from the time of Augustus. The event is also referred to in Homer's Odyssey. In the Greek tradition, the horse is called the "Wooden Horse" (Δούρειος Ἵππος, Doúreios Híppos, in the Homeric Ionic dialect).

In contrast, the NYT had the Greeks letting in the Trojan Horse.

Having been alerted to their error, the NYT corrected it and properly made a note of the correction. Except the correction is almost as ham-fisted as the original error. They really seem to be struggling to get at the heart of what Homer and Virgil wrote.

Click to enlarge.

The New York Times just edited two classic texts at the core of Western Civilization and rewrote the English language to, apparently, give us the modern version - The Greek Horse.