If I don’t get this posted, it will keep me up all night…
I keep reading that Sinon, that non-Homeric character played by Eliot Page, is crucial to understanding Odysseus’s guilt. Sinon, after he’s dead (above), complains that Odysseus deceived him and set him up to be killed. Odysseus argues that he was necessary collateral damage, which by any standard of warfare, especially ancient warfare, is exactly right, but never mind that: I can’t imagine how the deception of Sinon was achieved. His fellow colleagues were building a huge wooden horse on the beach. It took a long time. Odysseus and the other Greek soldiers had to climb into the horse. Where was Sinon when this was happening?
How was all of the noisy and complex operation kept from Sinon? When did Odysseus communicate the “This horse is a gift from the gods so be sure to tell the Trojans that” lie to him? Then what, he told Sinon to close his eyes and count to ten, and when Sinon opened his eyes, he didn’t suspect that his general had climbed into the wooden horse? Or did wily Odysseus leave a note for Sinon on the beach that said, “Hey, sorry, I’ve left with the rest of the ships, but I saw a big wooden horse on the beach. My guess is that it’s a gift from Poseidon. Hang around and tell the Trojans. Good luck!”?
The classic myth about Sinon is that he was a willing martyr to the cause, and stayed behind to assist in the deadly deception of the Trojans. That makes sense, but Nolan’s rewrite seems impossible.
It’s like the mystery of the Mary Celeste! No matter how I try, I can’t construct a plausible sequence where the Greeks fake leaving, everyone climbs into a wooden horse that was assembled on the beach, and Odysseus lies successfully to the sole remaining Greek soldier about the provenance of the horse.
Ethics Alarms 
This reminds me of the question I occasionally see on Quora — basically it goes “Could Robert E Lee have just taken Philadelphia instead of fighting at Gettysburg?”
Well, sure. Of course, first you have to do a lot of hand waving to get his army over the Susquehanna River, then you have to do a lot more hand waving to get it up to Philadelphia. From there taking the city is the proverbial piece of cake.
But have you ever heard of what happened after the battles of Lexington and Concord? The Union might only have militia north of the Susquehanna, but as Joseph Stalin once observed, “Quantity has a quality of its own.”
Then there would be that pesky Army of the Potomac. Not to mention a couple fellows with matches hanging out on the bridges over the Susquehanna.
But if you can believe all that before breakfast, sure Bobby Lee could have snatched up Philadelphia. What could go wrong?
Before Gettysburg, Lee stopped at Chambersburg because many of his troops had no shoes and were walking barefoot. There weren’t enough shoes in Chambersburg to equip all his troops who needed them, so he burned the town. It seems his army may not have been equipped well enought to make it to Philly even without worrying about Northern troops.
Well, Chambersburg was actually burned in July 1864 by a Confederate column sent out by General Early during his raid towards Washington. The Confederates demanded $100,000 in gold or $500,000 in cash or they would burn the town, and they did.
Shoes are one of the enduring myths of Gettysburg. While the ANV was perpetually short on supplies, the idea that they went to Gettysburg for shoes was not raised until 1877, when Henry Heth wrote his memoirs.
Gettysburg was the junction of a number of roads. The Confederates approached from the north and west, while the Union army came in from the south and east. It started as a meeting engagement between Confederate infantry and Union cavalry, with both sides feeding troops into the battle as fast as they could march.
One item of note: One of the first orders that Meade issued after taking command of the Army of the Potomac was to requisition 50,000 pairs of shoes for his army. Unlike most Civil War battles, the Union army at Gettysburg had outmarched its supplies. They lost thousands of horses during and after the battle for want of food for them.