heard the whole firmament over. In our perplexity we send Eurypylus to inquire of Phoebus's oracle, and this is the gloomy message that he brings back from the shrine: With blood it was ye appeased the winds, even with a maiden's slaughter, when first ye came, Danaans, to the shore of Ilion. With blood it is ye must buy your return, and propitiate heaven by the life of an Argive!' Soon as the news reached the public ear, every mind was cowed, and a cold shudder thrilled the depths of every heart. For whom has Fate a summons? Whom does Apollo demand as his prey? And now the Ithacan, with boisterous vehemence, drags forward the prophet Calchas, insists on knowing what that announcement of heaven's will may mean; and many even then were the prophetic mouths that warned me of the trickster's cruel villany, and many the eyes that silently foresaw the future. Ten days the seer holds his peace, and keeps his tent, refusing to utter a word that should disclose any name or sacrifice any life. At last, goaded by the Ithacan's vehement clamour, he breaks into a concerted utterance, and dooms me to the altar. All assented, well content that the danger which each feared for himself should be directed to the extinction of one poor wretch. And now the day of horror was come; all was being ready for my sacrifice-the salt cakes for the fire, and the fillet to crown my brow-when I escaped, I own it, from death, and broke my bonds, and hid myself that night in a muddy marsh in the covert of the rushes, while they should be sailing, in the faint hope that they had sailed. My old country, I never expect to see it again, nor my darling children, and the father I have longed so for! No! they are likely to visit them with vengeance for my escape, and expiate this guilt of mine by taking their poor lives. O! by the gods above, and the powers that know when truth is spoken, if there is yet abiding anywhere among men such

a thing as unsullied faith, I conjure you, have pity on this weight of suffering, have pity on a soul that is unworthily borne down!"

'Such a tearful appeal gains him his life, and our compassion too. Priam himself is first to bid them relieve the man of his manacles and the chains that bound him, and addresses him in words of kindness, "Whoever you are, from this time forth have done with the Greeks, and forget them. I make you my man, and bid you answer truly the questions I shall put. What do they mean by setting up this huge mountain of a horse? Who was the prompter of it? What is their object? Some religious offering, or some engine of war?"

'Thus Priam: the prisoner, with all his Pelasgian craft and cunning about him, raised his unfettered hands to the stars :

"You, eternal fires, with your inviolable majesty, be my witnesses; you, altars and impious swords, from which I fled; and you, hallowed fillets, which I wore for the sacrifice! I am free to break all the sacred ties that bound me to the Greeks. I am free to treat them as my foes, and disclose all their secrets to the light of day, all the claims of the land of my birth notwithstanding. Only do thou abide by thy plighted word, and preserve faith with thy preserver, land of Troy, if he tells thee true, and makes thee large returns.

"The strength of the Danaan hopes, and the soul of their confidence in the war they plunged into, has ever been the aid of Pallas. From the time when Tydeus' impious son and Ulysses, that coiner of villany, dared to drag away from her hallowed temple the fateful Palladium, slaughtering the guards who watched the citadel's height, thenceforth there was an ebb and a backsliding in the Danaan hopes, their forces shattered, the goddess estranged. Nor were the portents dubious that betokened Tritonia's change of mood. Scarce was the image lodged in the camp, when flashing fire glowed

in her uplifted eyes, and salt sweat trickled over her frame, and thrice of herself she leaped from the ground, marvellous to relate, shield and quivering lance and all. Forthwith Calchas sounds the note for flight over the perilous deep, for that Pergamus can never be razed by Argive steel, unless they' go to Argos for fresh omens, and bring back the divine aid which their crooked keels bore with them aforetime over the sea. And now this their voyage home to Mycenae is to get new forces and gods to sail with them; they will recross the deep, and come upon you unforeseen. Such is Calchas' scanning of the omens. As for this image, he warned them to set it up in exchange for the Palladium, and, in expiation of injured deity, to atone for their fatal crime. Calchas, however, bade them raise it to the vast height you see, knitting plank to plank, till it was brought near to heaven, that it might not be admitted at the gates or dragged within the walls, and thus restore to the people the bulwark of their old worship. For if your hand should profane Minerva's offering, then (said: he) a mighty destruction-may the gods turn the omen on his head ere it falls on yours!-would come on the empire of Priam and the Phrygian nation; but if these hands of yours should help it to scale your city's height, Asia would roll the mighty tide of invasion on the walls of Pelops, and our posterity would have to meet the fate he threatened."

'Such was the stratagem-the cursed art of perjured Sinon -that gained credence for the tale; and such the victory won over us by wiles and constrained tears-over us, whom not Tydeus' son, nor Achilles of Larissa, nor ten years of war subdued, nor a fleet of a thousand sail.

'And now another object, greater and far more terrible, is forced on my poor countrymen, to the confusion of their unprophetic souls. Laocoon, drawn by lot as Neptune's priest, was sacrificing a mighty bull at the wonted altar-when

behold from Tenedos, over the still deep-I shudder as I recount the tale-two serpents coiled in vast circles are seen breasting the sea, and moving side by side towards the shore. Their breasts rise erect among the waves; their manes, of blood-red hue, tower over the water, the rest of them floats behind on the main, trailing a huge undulating length; the brine foams and dashes about them; they are already on shore, in the plain-with their glowing eyes bloodshot and fiery, and their forked tongues playing in their hissing mouths. We fly all ways in pale terror: they, in an unswerving column, make for Laocoon, and first each serpent folds round one of his two sons, clasping the youthful body, and greedily devouring the poor limbs. Afterwards, as the father comes to the rescue, weapon in hand, they fasten on him and lash their enormous spires tight round him—and now twice folded round his middle, twice embracing his neck with their scaly length, they tower over him with uplifted head and crest. He is straining with agonising clutch to pull the knots asunder, his priestly fillets all bedewed with gore and black poison, and raising all the while dreadful cries to heaven-like the bellowing, when a wounded bull darts away from the altar, dashing off from his neck the ill-aimed axe. But the two serpents escape glidingly to the temple top, making for the height where ruthless Tritonia is enthroned, and there shelter themselves under the goddess's feet and the round of her shield. Then, indeed, every breast is cowed and thrilled through by a new and strange terror-every voice cries that Laocoon has been duly punished for his crime, profaning the sacred wood with his weapon's point, and hurling his guilty lance against the back of the steed. Let the image be drawn to her temple, and let prayer be made to the goddess, is the general cry-we break through the walls and open the town within. All gird them to the work, putting wheels to run easily under its feet,

and throwing lengths of hempen tie round its neck. It scales the walls, that fateful engine, with its armed brood-boys and unwedded girls, standing about it, chant sacred hymns, delighted to touch the rope. In it moves, rolling with threatening brow into the heart of the city. O my country! O Ilion, home of the gods! O ye, Dardan towers, with your martial fame! Yes-four times on the gateway's very threshold it stopped, four times the arms rattled in its womb. On, however, we press, unheeding, in the blindness of our frenzy, and lodge the ill-starred portent in our hallowed citadel. Even then Cassandra unseals to speak of future fate those lips which by the god's command no Trojan ever believed-while we, alas! we, spend the day that was to be our last in crowning the temples of the gods with festal boughs the whole city through.

X

'Meantime round rolls the sky, and on comes night from the ocean, wrapping in its mighty shade earth and heaven and Myrmidon wiles: through the city the Trojans are hushed in careless repose, their tired limbs in the arms of sleep.. Already was the Argive host on its way from Tenedos, through the friendly stillness of the quiet moon, making for the wellknown shore, when see the royal ship mounts its fire signal, and Sinon, sheltered by heaven's partial decree, stealthily sets at large the Danaans, hid in that treacherous womb, and opens the pine-wood door: they as the horse opens are restored to upper air, and leap forth with joy from the hollow timber, Thessander and Sthenelus leading the way, and the dreaded Ulysses, gliding down the lowered rope, and Achamas and Thoas, and Neoptolemus of Peleus' line, and first Machaon, and Menelaus, and the framer of the cheat himself, Epeus. They rush on the town as it lies drowned in sleep and revelry. The watchers are put to the sword, the gates thrown open, and all are welcoming their comrades, and uniting with the conspiring bands.

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