Surely,
it was sacred to the gods; he had spoken blasphemy, and had perished
before their eyes. They flung his warning to the winds. They wreathed
the horse with garlands, amid great acclaim; and then, all lending a
hand, they dragged it, little by little, out of the camp and into the
city of Troy. With the close of that victorious day, they gave up every
memory of danger and made merry after ten years of privation.
That very night Sinon the spy opened the hidden door of the Wooden
Horse, and in the darkness, Odysseus, Menelaus, and the other chiefs
who had lain hidden there crept out and gave the signal to the Grecian
army. For, under cover of night, those ships that had been moored
behind the island had sailed back again, and the Greeks were come upon
Troy.
Not a Trojan was on guard. The whole city was at feast when the enemy
rose in its midst, and the warning of Laocooen was fulfilled.
Priam and his warriors fell by the sword, and their kingdom was
plundered of all its fair possessions, women and children and treasure.
Last of all, the city itself was burned to its very foundations.
Homeward sailed the Greeks, taking as royal captives poor Cassandra and
Andromache and many another Trojan. And home at last went Fair Helen,
the cause of all this sorrow, eager to be forgiven by her husband, King
Menelaus. For she had awakened from the enchantment of Venus, and even
before the death of Paris she had secretly longed for her home and
kindred.
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