How A Wooden Horse Won A City

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Title:     How A Wooden Horse Won A City
Author: Carolyn Sherwin Bailey [More Titles by Bailey]

Ten years the siege of Troy lasted, that mighty struggle that had been kindled by the flame of jealousy of gods and men, and ten years the Trojans resisted the Greeks. On both sides the brave fell in battle and the plain outside of the city of Troy became a waste place, full of dread and death.

The hero Achilles, while offering up a sacrifice in the temple of Apollo, was treacherously slain by a poisoned arrow from Paris' bow that pierced his heel. The Greeks made use of the arrows of Hercules in their struggle, but even these proved useless against the strong fortifications of the Trojans. There was a statue of Minerva in the city of Troy called the Palladium. It was said to have fallen from heaven and that as long as it remained in the city Troy could not be taken. So the hero, Ulysses, with a few men, entered Troy in disguise and captured this statute at the risk of their lives, carrying it back to the camp of the Greeks, but Troy still held out and the tenth year of the war drew near a close full of wretchedness and famine.

It seemed as if the spell of Helen's beauty, as she leaned from one of the towers of King Priam's castle to cheer the Trojans or descended to pass among their ranks, was their safety. No one, looking on her fair face, remembered hardship or felt fear, although the fated Cassandra wept alone, and was deemed mad because she saw, in her prophetic vision, the fall of the strong battlements of Troy.

At last the Greeks despaired of ever subduing Troy by force and they asked Ulysses if any plan occurred to him by which they could subdue the Trojans through strategy. Ulysses unfolded a plan to the generals, and what it was and how it succeeded is one of the strangest stories of all warfare. Acting upon his advice, the Greeks made preparation to abandon the war. Their ships that had waited with folded sails in the harbor, now drew anchor and sailed swiftly away, taking refuge behind a neighboring island. And the Trojans, seeing the encampment before their walls broken for the first time in so many years, and the plain that the enemy's tents had whitened clear, broke into joy and merrymaking such as they had not known for so long. They forgot caution and opened the gates through which the men and women and children flocked out to the plain to make merry and exult over the defeat of the Greeks.

There they saw an astounding thing. In the centre of the plain stood a great wooden image of a horse, like an idol, more prodigious than any which the Trojans had ever seen. It was so closely fitted and carved from its mammoth hoofs to its head that no one could detect the joining. A hundred men could have ridden the horse with room for more, but they would never have been able to climb up to its back. At first the people of Troy, gathering around the wooden horse, were afraid of it. Then they made up their minds about it.

"This is a trophy of war!" they exclaimed, and they were for moving it into the city to exhibit in the public square as a sign of their victory over the Greeks.

There was among them, though, a man named Laocoon, a priest of Neptune, who objected to this plan.

"Beware, men of Troy!" Laocoon warned them. "You have fought for ten years with the Greeks and know that they do not give up a fight as easily as this. How do you know but that this is a piece of trickery on the part of their dauntless leader, Ulysses? I fear the Greeks, even when they bring us gifts."

As Laocoon uttered these prophetic words, he threw his lance at the side of the wooden horse and it rebounded with a hollow sound. At that, perhaps the Trojans might have taken his advice and destroyed the horse there where it stood, but suddenly a man, who appeared to be a prisoner and a Greek, was dragged out from the crowd.

He said that he was a Greek, Sinon by name, who had brought upon himself the malice of Ulysses and so had been left behind by the Greeks. He feigned terror, and the Trojans, falling into the trap, reassured Sinon, the spy, and told him that his life would be spared if he would disclose to the chiefs of Troy the secret of the wooden horse.

"It is an offering to Minerva," Sinon explained. "The Greeks made it so huge in order that you would never be able to carry it inside the gates of Troy."

Sinon's words turned the tides of the people's feelings. They were just planning how they might best start the work of moving the giant horse when something happened which completely reassured them. Two immense serpents appeared advancing directly toward them over the sea. Side by side they moved toward the shore, their great heads erect, their burning eyes full of blood and fire and licking their hissing mouths with their quivering tongues. And these serpents came directly to the spot where Laocoon stood with his two sons.

They attacked the boys first, winding round their bodies and breathing their poisonous breath into their faces. Laocoon, trying to rescue his sons, was drawn into the serpent's coils and all three were strangled. Then the creatures moved on, threatening to glide into the city of Troy.

"It is an omen of the displeasure of the gods with us for having even doubted the sacred character of the wooden horse," the Trojans said. "Laocoon has been punished for his lack of reverence in despising it."

So they gave themselves up again to wild joy and reckless merrymaking. They wreathed the horse with garlands of flowers and dragged it, all lending a hand, across the plain and close to the gates of the city so that they could widen them in the morning and push it through; and they went home with great shouts like those of a victoriously returning army.

That night a door, cunningly set and concealed in the side of the wooden horse, was opened by Sinon, the spy. Out of the door came the hero Ulysses, King Menelaus, and a band of picked Greek generals, for the Greeks had made the wooden horse hollow so that a hundred men might be hidden inside for a long time with their arms and provisions and come to no harm. These men opened the gates of Troy, a city sunk in darkness and sleep, and through the gates went the Grecian army which had returned in the ships and crossed the plain silently in the cover of the night.

So the prophecy of Laocoon and of the sad Cassandra was proved true, for there was not a Trojan on guard. King Priam and his noblest warriors were killed, Cassandra was taken captive, and the city was set on fire with torches and burned to the ground.

Then the Greeks set sail for their own country which they had not seen for so many years, and they took the beautiful Helen with them, awakened at last from the spell which Venus had cast upon her, and sorrowing for all the suffering she had caused.

But the glory of the old Trojan days was gone forever. Men search to-day the ruins of ancient Troy that lie hidden like bright jewels in the depths of the ancient mountains. There is little left but the memory of the apple of Discord that caused the destruction of the city and the heroes and the citadel of Troy's old power.

[The end]
Carolyn Sherwin Bailey's short story: How A Wooden Horse Won A City

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