Another question may have been that Homer used words as metaphors and the modern world has taken these to the letter.
In the Iliad, the Greeks managed to penetrate the walled city thanks to the introduction of a command inside a large wooden horse, and when the Trojans slept, the soldiers left to open the gates of the city, thus achieving the Greek victory.
The horse, in the Greek world was the symbol of Poseidon, the god of the sea and earthquakes, so that the great wooden figure that ravaged the city could have been simply a metaphor for a seismic movement that destroyed the city.