Which Elite Greek Warriors Hid Inside the Trojan Horse and Was Achilles Really Among Them?

The Trojan Horse remains one of the most iconic tricks in Greek mythology, and thanks to Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey‘ storming theaters this summer, fans are once again digging into the ancient lore behind that fateful wooden beast. With Matt Damon’s Odysseus front and center in Nolan’s epic, curiosity about who actually crouched inside that horse, and whether Achilles was among them, has hit a fever pitch.

The timing couldn’t be better for a refresher on the legend. Between the film’s marketing push and endless fan theories swirling online, audiences are eager to separate the myth from the movie.

The Original Warriors Inside the Trojan Horse

According to ancient sources, the raiding party hidden within the Trojan horse included Odysseus, Menelaus, Diomedes, Ajax the Lesser, and Neoptolemus. These men were considered among the bravest and most cunning of the Achaean forces, chosen specifically for their nerve under pressure.

The stratagem was devised by Odysseus, and the horse itself was constructed by a craftsman named Epeius. Once completed, the horse concealed a team of Greek warriors within, among them Odysseus and Menelaus, while the rest of the army pretended to withdraw from the battlefield, leaving the horse behind.

The exact headcount has always been murky. Homer’s Odyssey names twelve of the Achaeans’ most important heroes as being inside, including Diomedes, Agamemnon, Menelaus, Idomeneus, Philoctetes, Odysseus, and Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, though Homer never gives a specific total. Other ancient writers weighed in with wildly different numbers over the centuries.

Trojan Horse Numbers According to Ancient Sources

The debate over exactly how many warriors squeezed into that hollow wooden frame has raged since antiquity. Apollodorus claimed there were 50 warriors hidden inside, while the Byzantine scholar Tzetzes named 23 soldiers individually, and Quintus Smyrnaeus identified 29 warriors in his own account.

Some later traditions settled on a rounder figure. It became common to name 40 heroes as being inside the Trojan Horse, with Odysseus described as King of Ithaca and inheritor of the armour of Achilles, and the most cunning of all the Achaean heroes.

Beyond the marquee names, plenty of secondary figures make the list depending on the source consulted. In addition to Odysseus, Menelaus, Diomedes, and Neoptolemus, warriors like Acamas, Sthenelus, and Thoas were also said to be crammed inside, with Odysseus persuading the bravest and most skillful Greek fighters at Troy to climb fully armed into the horse’s belly.

Even the horse’s builder got in on the action. Epeius joined the party as well despite being hesitant and scared, since he was the only one who knew how to operate the trap door.

Was Achilles Actually Inside the Horse?

Here’s where mythology and Nolan’s film actually diverge from popular assumption. Achilles was already dead by the time the Trojan Horse plot unfolded, so he was never physically inside it.

That hasn’t stopped fans from wondering about a version where he somehow appears. The Odyssey relates that Helen identified the horse as an ambush and tested the concealed warriors by imitating the voices of their wives, and the death of Achilles, the greatest Greek warrior of the war, is not described in Homeric works at all. Some later sources fill in that gap differently than others.

In Arctinus’s Aethiopis, Achilles is said to have been killed by Paris of Troy, well before the horse was ever built. So while his legend looms large over the entire Trojan War saga, his story ends before the horse trick even becomes necessary.

How Nolan’s ‘Odyssey’ Handles the Achilles Question

Fans hunting for an Achilles cameo in ‘The Odyssey’ walked away disappointed, and that appears to be intentional on Nolan’s part. Now that The Odyssey has been released, it is officially confirmed that Achilles is not in the movie, and theories that Elliot Page played the hero proved to be false, with no secret casting of Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, or other Nolan regulars in the role.

There was a real opportunity for Nolan to sneak him in anyway. Even without flashbacks to the Trojan War, the film could have included Achilles through his underworld poem role rather easily, since Odysseus speaks to shades in the underworld, one of which is Achilles. Nolan does include a sequence of Damon’s character conversing with dead soldiers like Sinon and Agamemnon in the underworld, so an Achilles cameo could have worked there too.

Instead, Nolan built his ensemble around the survivors and schemers of the war’s aftermath. Matt Damon stars as Odysseus, with Anne Hathaway playing his wife Penelope back in Ithaca and Tom Holland as their son Telemachus, alongside Zendaya as Athena, Samantha Morton as Circe, and Charlize Theron as Calypso. Given Achilles’ limited role in the actual ‘Odyssey’ text, it makes sense that Nolan may have never even considered including the character in his adaptation.

Whether you’re Team Achilles-should-have-cameoed or Team Nolan-made-the-right-call by keeping the story locked on Odysseus’s journey home, the mythology clearly leaves room for debate, so who do you think deserved one more scene before the credits rolled on ‘The Odyssey’?