1733. A sally into the Trojan War
© Bruce Goodman 15 February 2020




One of the things that Homer apparently failed to mention in his epic was what happened to this guy called Antimachus. As soon as Antimachus got into the Trojan Horse with the other soldiers he realized he wanted to take a leak. In fact it wasn’t an omission on Homer’s part, but a copyist’s error. The copyist’s error may even have been intentional.

Not having a toilet within the Trojan Horse was an oversight of the designer. As the day went on Antimachus got more and more desperate. Eventually he wet his pteruges. It dribbled down into his greaves – which incidentally are now in the British Museum although slightly rusted. All this happened at the same time as the Horse was being pulled through the gates of Troy.

As Homer supposedly wrote, although not in English:

Blood ran in torrents, drenched was all the earth.

It’s clear that over the ages some idiot changed the first word of the line from “Pee” to “Blood”. Oh how prudish has the world become. Next thing these substandard historians will rewrite history by knocking down statues of the heroes of yore. You watch!

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