Part 18 (1/2)
While this dispute was hotly raging, Laoc.o.o.n, in his priestly robes, rushed into the throng. ”Fools,” he cried, ”will ye let yourselves be cheated? Are ye so slow of heart as not to detect Greek subtlety or the guile of Ulysses? The Greeks, I tell you, have not gone, and either this Horse is an engine of war to overtop our battlements, or Greek warriors are hidden in its womb.” And as he spoke he hurled a mighty spear against the Horse, and the cavernous depths reverberated with the shock, and from within there came a rattle as of clas.h.i.+ng arms. But the mult.i.tude heeded not the warning, for fate had sealed their ears.
While this was going on outside the walls, there was scarcely less excitement in the city. Certain shepherds had surprised a young Greek, and were dragging their captive before King Priam, with a hooting and jeering crowd at their heels. ”Woe is me!” cried the youth as he came into the king's presence; ”have I escaped from the Greeks, my bitter foes who sought my life, only to fall among Trojans from whom I can expect no mercy?” But the king bade him fear nothing, and tell his tale.
It was an artful tale concocted for him by Ulysses, how to the Greeks, desirous of sailing home and detained by contrary winds, an oracle had come--
”To speed you here a virgin maid was slain, Blood must be spilt to speed you home again”--
how _he_ had been pointed out by Calchas as the destined victim, and had escaped even as he was being led in bonds to the altar.
His tattered dress and bleeding wrists bore out this plausible tale.
The king ordered his captors to free him from his manacles, and a.s.suring the prisoner that he need fear nothing, begged him to tell them what was the design of the Greeks in building and leaving behind them the Wooden Horse.
Sinon (for that was the name that the pretended deserter took) first invoked on his head the direst curses if he failed to reveal to his deliverers the whole truth, and then repeated the lesson in which his cunning master Ulysses had drilled him. ”You must know,” he said, ”that all the hopes of Greece lay in the favor and protection of their patron G.o.ddess, Minerva. But the wrath of the G.o.ddess was kindled against the host, for the son of Tydeus, at the prompting of Ulysses--that G.o.dless knave who sticks at no crime--had invaded her shrine, slain her custodians, and s.n.a.t.c.hed therefrom the Palladium, the sacred image of the G.o.ddess, deeming it a charm that would bring them certain victory. And the G.o.ddess showed by visible signs her displeasure. In each encounter our forces were routed; around the carven image now set up in the camp lightnings played, and thrice amid the lightning and thunder the G.o.ddess herself was seen with spear at rest and flas.h.i.+ng targe. And Calchas, of whom we sought counsel in our terror, bade us sail back to Argos, and when in her great temple we had shriven us, with happier auspices renew the fray; but first in her honor we must erect a Wooden Horse, so huge that it could not pa.s.s your gates or be brought within your walls. Moreover, Calchas told us that if any man were rash enough to lay sacrilegious hands on the votive Horse, he would straightway be smitten by the vengeful G.o.ddess!”
And lo! even as he spoke a strange portent was seen to confirm his words. Laoc.o.o.n, the high priest of Neptune--he who had hurled his spear at the Wooden Horse--was sacrificing to the sea G.o.d a mighty bull at the altar, when far away in the offing two leviathans of the deep were seen approaching from Tenedos. They looked like battles.h.i.+ps as they plowed the waves, but as they drew nearer you could mark the blood-beclotted mane and ravenous jaws of the sea-serpent, while behind lay floating many a rood coil upon coil like some huge boa-constrictor's.
The crowd fled in terror, but the sea-serpents pa.s.sed through the midst and made straight for the altar of Neptune. First they coiled themselves round the two sons of Laoc.o.o.n, who were ministering to their father as he sacrificed, and squeezed the life out of the miserable boys. Then, as Laoc.o.o.n rushed to release his sons and sought to pierce the scaly monsters with his sacrificial knife, they wound their folds twice about his middle and twice about his neck, and high above his head they towered with blood-shot eyes and triple-forked tongues. And Laoc.o.o.n, like the bull he had immolated at the altar, bellowed aloud in his dying agony. But the sea-serpents slowly unwound themselves and glided out of sight beneath the pediment of Diana's statue.
This seemed to all a sign from heaven to confirm what Sinon had told them. No more doubt was possible, and a universal clamor arose: ”To the Horse! to the Horse!” Out rushed the crowd; ropes were fastened to its neck and legs, and soon half the city was tugging at them might and main, while the sappers made a breach in the walls to let it in, and by help of levers and pulleys it mounted the steep escarpment, and as it pa.s.sed down the street a joyous troop of boys and girls followed, struggling to take hold of the taut ropes and chanting s.n.a.t.c.hes of paeans and songs of victory.
Thus did the G.o.ds send on the Trojans a strong delusion that they should believe a lying tale; and what ten long campaigns and a thousand bra.s.s-beaked s.h.i.+ps, what all the might of Agamemnon, king of men, and the prowess of Achilles, G.o.ddess-born, had failed to accomplish, was brought to pa.s.s by the guile and craft of one man.
THE SACK OF TROY
BY F. STORR
The Wooden Horse was set up in the citadel, and after a night of feasting and carousal, the Trojan warriors had all retired to rest from their labors, and deep slumber sealed their weary eyes, for now they feared no nightly alarms, no reveille before break of day.
But with night-fall the Greek fleet at Tenedos had loosed their moorings, and were making full sail for the Trojan sh.o.r.e.
When all slept the traitor Sinon slipped out from the turret of the palace where the king had a.s.signed him a lodging, and crouching in the shadow climbed the hill of the citadel. There stood the Wooden Horse, weird and ghostly in the moonlight, not a sentinel to guard it.
Leaning on the parapet he watched the white sails of the fleet as it sped landward, and soon he saw the preconcerted signal--a flaming torch at the masthead of the admiral s.h.i.+p. Then by the ropes still left hanging from the Horse's neck, he swarmed up and opened a secret panel in the side. One by one the mailed warriors let themselves down: first Ulysses, the arch-plotter, then Neoptolemus, Achilles' son, Menelaus, Epeos, the architect of the Horse, and other chieftains too many to name. They made straight for the city gates, and despatching the sentinels before any had time to give the alarm, let in the serried battalions who were waiting outside.
Like the rest of the Trojan warriors aeneas slept, but his sleep was disturbed by a vision of the night. At his bedside stood a ghostly form. His visage was marred, his locks and beard were clotted with gouts of blood, his breast was slashed and scarred, and his feet were pierced and livid with the marks of cords. Yet, though thus defaced and maimed, aeneas knew at once the G.o.dlike Hector, and cried to him, ”Light of Troy, our country's hope and stay, thou com'st much looked for. Where hast thou tarried this long, long while? Why is thy visage thus marred? What mean those hideous scars?”
The ghost answered nothing but gazed down on aeneas with sad, lack-l.u.s.ter eyes. Only as it vanished it spoke. ”Fly, G.o.ddess-born; save thyself from the flames. The foe is within the gates. Troy topples to its fall. Could faith and courage have availed, this right hand had saved it. To thee Troy now commends her household G.o.ds. Take them with thee in thy flight, and with them to guide and guard thee found beyond the seas a new and mightier Troy.”
The ghost had vanished; but when aeneas woke he found at his bedside the household G.o.ds and the fillets of Vesta and her fire that is never quenched.
From without there came a confused sound of hurrying feet, the tramp of armed men, the clash of arms, and mingled shouts and groans. He climbed to the roof to see what it all meant. Volumes of smoke like a mountain torrent were rolling over the city, and from the murk there leapt tongues of flame. In desperate haste he donned his arms and went forth, bewildered and not knowing which way to turn. At his threshold he met Panthus, high priest of Apollo and custodian of the citadel, and asked him what was happening.
”All is over,” cried the priest; ”the G.o.ds have deserted us; Greece has triumphed; Troy is no more--a name, a city of the past.”
Horror-stricken but undeterred, aeneas hurried on to where the fray seemed the hottest, and gathering round him some score of trusty comrades, he thus addressed them: ”Friends and brothers in arms, all is not lost; let us take courage from despair, and at worst die like men with our b.r.e.a.s.t.s to the foe.”
They all rushed into the mellay, and at first fortune favored the brave. Androgeus, the captain of a picked corps of Greeks, hailed them; and mistaking them in the darkness for fellow-countrymen, twitted them on their tardiness, and bade them hurry on to share in the loot. Too late he perceived his mistake. Before they had time to unsheath a sword or unbuckle a s.h.i.+eld, aeneas and his comrades were on them and not one escaped.