Into this
hiding-place went Odysseus, Menelaus, and the other chiefs, fully
armed, and when the door was shut upon them, the rest of the Grecian
army broke camp and went away.
Meanwhile, in Troy, the people had seen the departure of the ships, and
the news had spread like wildfire. The great enemy had lost
heart,--after ten years of war! Part of the army had gone,--the rest
were going. Already the last of the ships had set sail, and the camp
was deserted. The tents that had whitened the plain were gone like a
frost before the sun. The war was over!
The whole city went wild with joy. Like one who has been a prisoner for
many years, it flung off all restraint, and the people rose as a single
man to test the truth of new liberty. The gates were thrown wide, and
the Trojans--men, women, and children--thronged over the plain and
into the empty camp of the enemy. There stood the Wooden Horse.
No one knew what it could be. Fearful at first, they gathered around
it, as children gather around a live horse; they marvelled at its
wondrous height and girth, and were for moving it into the city as a
trophy of war.
At this, one man interposed,--Laocooen, a priest of Poseidon. "Take
heed, citizens," said he. "Beware of all that comes from the Greeks.
Have you fought them for ten years without learning their devices? This
is some piece of treachery."
But there was another outcry in the crowd, and at that moment certain
of the Trojans dragged forward a wretched man who wore the garments of
a Greek.
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