Is the Trojan horse in the Iliad?

No. The Iliad ends before the sack. The horse appears in the Odyssey as a song performed by the bard Demodocus (8.499–520) and in Menelaus' and Odysseus' recollections (4.271–289; 11.523–532), and it was narrated at length in the lost poems of the Epic Cycle.

Does archaeology confirm the sack of Troy?

Archaeology confirms that Troy VIIa was destroyed by fire and violence in the 12th century BCE. It cannot confirm who destroyed it or why, and no artefact links that destruction to the events the poems describe.

All episodes

The wooden horse and the fall of Troy

Odyssey 8.499–520Odyssey

The best-known episode of the war is not narrated in either poem: the Odyssey has a bard sing it in twenty lines. Its location is the most secure in the atlas, and its historicity the least.

In the poem

In Book 8 of the Odyssey, at the Phaeacian court, Demodocus sings of the horse standing on the Trojan acropolis, of the debate among the Trojans about what to do with it, and of the Greeks pouring out to sack the city. Odysseus, still unnamed among his hosts, weeps and gives himself away.

The full narrative belonged to other poems of the Epic Cycle — the Little Iliad and the Iliou Persis — which survive only in summary. The Iliad ends with Hector's funeral; the sack is always told at a slant.

Why it matters for the atlas

It anchors the war to a specific acropolis, so the geography is not in doubt. What it cannot do is date the event or confirm it: the episode's confidence score is limited by the text (a song within a poem) and by the archaeology (a destruction layer that fits a sack, and many other things).

Competing theories

The horse as a siege engine or a ship
Speculative
The suggestion that the horse rationalises a battering ram under a hide roof, or a ship with a horse figurehead. It is old, popular and unfalsifiable: nothing in the archaeology of Troy speaks to it either way.
Troy (Ilios)
- Primary textIliou Persis and Little Iliad (Epic Cycle)
- ScholarshipJoachim Latacz, Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery (2004)
The destruction layer of Troy VIIa
Proposed by: Carl W. Blegen (1958); Manfred Korfmann (1988–2005) · Modern
Plausible
Troy VIIa ends in fire and violence in the 12th century BCE, with signs of crowding and hasty storage inside the walls. That a city was destroyed is evidence; that a coalition led by a Mycenaean high king destroyed it is inference.
Troy (Ilios)
- ArchaeologyCarl W. Blegen et al., Troy: Excavations Conducted by the University of Cincinnati 1932–1938
- ArchaeologyManfred Korfmann, Troia/Wilusa excavation reports, Studia Troica (1988–2005)

What is disputed

Whether the horse is a memory, a metaphor, a rationalised siege engine, or a folktale motif attached to a real siege. The atlas scores the episode 7/12 — high geographic confidence, low scholarly agreement about what actually happened.

Questions

Is the Trojan horse in the Iliad?: No. The Iliad ends before the sack. The horse appears in the Odyssey as a song performed by the bard Demodocus (8.499–520) and in Menelaus' and Odysseus' recollections (4.271–289; 11.523–532), and it was narrated at length in the lost poems of the Epic Cycle.
Does archaeology confirm the sack of Troy?: Archaeology confirms that Troy VIIa was destroyed by fire and violence in the 12th century BCE. It cannot confirm who destroyed it or why, and no artefact links that destruction to the events the poems describe.

Sources

Primary textHomer, Odyssey 8.499–520
Primary textIliou Persis and Little Iliad (Epic Cycle)
ArchaeologyCarl W. Blegen et al., Troy: Excavations Conducted by the University of Cincinnati 1932–1938
ArchaeologyManfred Korfmann, Troia/Wilusa excavation reports, Studia Troica (1988–2005)
ScholarshipJoachim Latacz, Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery (2004)