Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

When Odysseus and Athena had devised the hollow horse, the Achaeans needed a craftsman. Epeius son of Panopeus built it—Homer’s Demodocus already sings that Epeius made the horse with Athena’s help, and that Odysseus filled it with the best of the Argives. Apollodorus and the *Little Iliad* agree: Epeius constructs the vast wooden offering; the picked fighters climb inside; the army feigns departure. Epeius is otherwise a minor figure—a boxer in some athletic notices, a water-carrier in comic later tradition—but in the sack-story he is indispensable: without his carpentry the stratagem has no body. Athena guides the design; Odysseus staffs it; Epeius’s name alone attaches to the making. After the sack he fades from the main nostoi. This short entry records the builder’s classical function so that the horse is not only Odysseus’s idea but Epeius’s work.