During negotiations in February 2015 over the Greek debt crisis, a German official was widely quoted referring to the latest Greek offer as a “Trojan horse” designed to sabotage the latest bailout package.  The recent economic debacle and the threat of a “Grexit” from the Eurozone produced a veritable outbreak of tropes in the classical style: Greece was called Europe's “Achilles heel,” its collapse a “modern Greek tragedy,” its prospects for recovery judged “Sisyphean,” etc.  What are the effects of these classicizing clichés, and in particular the figure of the Trojan horse, on the debate over European unity and identity, past, present, and future?  A closer examination of these hellenotropes suggest they constitute important weapons for conceptualizing and, by the same token, quarantining Greece as a form of economic, political, and cultural contagion within the European body politic.  Along the way, a revisiting of key passages in classical literature, such as book 2 of Virgil’s Aeneid, proves instructive in reminding us what is lurking inside the metaphor of the Trojan horse, and metaphors in general.