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.
[3]THE CYCLOPS.
The hero Ulysses was about to sail home to Greece, after the great city of Troy had been taken, having wandered farthest and suffered most of all in the long Trojan war.