Greek Gift Sacrifice

Wikipedia states outright that the etymology of the phrase Greek gift in this context is not entirely clear, which is the honest starting point. The obvious reading is the Trojan Horse, with Laocoon's warning in Virgil's Aeneid, Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes, usually rendered as I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts. Wikipedia notes, however, that The Oxford Companion to Chess suggests a rival explanation: that the sacrifice often occurred in the games of Gioachino Greco, whose surname supplies the pun. The tactic itself, the bishop sacrifice Bxh7+ or ...Bxh2+ against a castled king, is also called the classical bishop sacrifice, and Vukovic devotes chapter 6 of The Art of Attack in Chess to it, with Colle-O'Hanlon, Nice 1930 and Lasker-Bauer, Amsterdam 1889 as standard examples. On the early history, the Chess Skills blog notes that Greco appears to have learned the idea from Alessandro Salvio, who published lines using the sacrifice in his Trattato dell Inventione et Arte Liberale del Gioco Degli Scacchi (1604), and that Jon Edwards in Sacking the Citadel (2011) suggests Giulio Cesare Polerio may have discovered it first.

First documented: 1604 for the earliest published lines using the sacrifice, per Salvio's Trattato as reported by the Chess Skills blog; the phrase Greek gift itself is undated — Alessandro Salvio, Trattato dell Inventione et Arte Liberale del Gioco Degli Scacchi (1604), for the tactic; no dated source located for the phrase