Bulfinch's Mythology [120]
guard against it? For my part I fear the Greeks even when they offer gifts." So saying he threw his lance at the horse's side. It struck, and a hollow sound reverberated like a groan. Then perhaps the people might have taken his advice and destroyed the fatal horse and all its contents; but just at that moment a group of people appeared dragging forward one who seemed a prisoner and a Greek. Stupefied with terror he was brought before the chiefs, who reassured him, promising that his life should be spared on condition of his returning true answers to the questions asked him. He informed them that he was a Greek, Sinon by name, and that in consequence of the malice of Ulysses he had been left behind by his countrymen at their departure. With regard to the wooden horse, he told them that it was a propitiatory offering to Minerva, and made so huge for the express purpose of preventing its being carried within the city; for Calchas the prophet had told them that if the Trojans took possession of it, they would assuredly triumph over the Greeks. This language turned the tide of the people's feelings, and they began to think how they might best secure the monstrous horse and the favorable auguries connected with it, when suddenly a prodigy occurred which left no room to doubt. There appeared advancing over the sea two immense serpents. They came upon the land, and the crowd fled in all directions. The serpents advanced directly to the spot where Laocoon stood with his two sons. They first attacked the children, winding round their bodies and breathing their pestilential breath in their faces. The father, attempting to rescue them, is next seized and involved in the serpents' coils. He struggles to tear them away, but they overpower all his efforts and strangle him and the children in their poisonous folds. This event was regarded as a clear indication of the displeasure of the gods at Laocoon's irreverent treatment of the wooden horse, which they no longer hesitated to regard as a sacred object and prepared to introduce with due solemnity into the city. This was done with songs and triumphal acclamations, and the day closed with festivity. In the night the armed men who were enclosed in the body of the horse, being led out by the traitor Sinon, opened the gates of the city to their friends who had returned under cover of the night. The city was set on fire; the people, overcome with feasting and sleep, put to the sword, and Troy completely subdued.
One of the most celebrated groups of statuary in existence is that of Laocoon and his children in the embrace of the serpents. "There is a cast of it in the Boston Athenaeum; the original is in the Vatican at Rome. The following lines are from the Childe Harold of Byron:
"Now turning to the Vatican go see Laocoon's torture dignifying pain; A father's love and mortal's agony With as immortal's patience blending; vain The struggle! Vain against the coiling strain And gripe and deepening of the dragon's grasp The old man's clinch; the long envenomed chain Rivets the living links; the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang and stifles gasp on gasp."
The comic poets will also occasionally borrow a classical allusion. The following is from Swift's description of a City Shower:
"Boxed in a chair the beau impatient sits, While spouts run clattering o'er the roof by fits, And over and anon with frightful din The leather sounds; he trembles from within. So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed Pregnant with Greeks, impatient to be freed, (Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do, Instead of paying chairmen, run them through;) Laocoon struck the outside with a spear, And each imprisoned champion quaked with fear."
King Priam lived to see the downfall of his kingdom, and was slain at last on the fatal night when the Greeks took the city. He had armed himself and was about to mingle with the combatants, but was prevailed on by Hecuba, his aged queen, to take refuge with herself and his daughters as a suppliant at the altar of Jupiter. While there, his youngest
One of the most celebrated groups of statuary in existence is that of Laocoon and his children in the embrace of the serpents. "There is a cast of it in the Boston Athenaeum; the original is in the Vatican at Rome. The following lines are from the Childe Harold of Byron:
"Now turning to the Vatican go see Laocoon's torture dignifying pain; A father's love and mortal's agony With as immortal's patience blending; vain The struggle! Vain against the coiling strain And gripe and deepening of the dragon's grasp The old man's clinch; the long envenomed chain Rivets the living links; the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang and stifles gasp on gasp."
The comic poets will also occasionally borrow a classical allusion. The following is from Swift's description of a City Shower:
"Boxed in a chair the beau impatient sits, While spouts run clattering o'er the roof by fits, And over and anon with frightful din The leather sounds; he trembles from within. So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed Pregnant with Greeks, impatient to be freed, (Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do, Instead of paying chairmen, run them through;) Laocoon struck the outside with a spear, And each imprisoned champion quaked with fear."
King Priam lived to see the downfall of his kingdom, and was slain at last on the fatal night when the Greeks took the city. He had armed himself and was about to mingle with the combatants, but was prevailed on by Hecuba, his aged queen, to take refuge with herself and his daughters as a suppliant at the altar of Jupiter. While there, his youngest