*[Footnote: Tydides was Diomedes, son of Tydeus. The termination
-ides means son of; thus Pelides is Achilles, son of Peleus.]
*[Footnote: There was in a temple of Troy an image of Minerva, or
Pallas, called the palladium, which was supposed to have fallen
from the sky. The Greeks learned of a prophecy which declared that
Troy could never be taken while the palladium remained within its
walls, and Ulysses and Diomedes were entrusted with the task of
stealing it. In disguise they entered the city one night, procured
the sacred image and bore it off to the Grecian camp.]
*[Footnote: Minerva, supposedly angered at the desecration of her
statue.]
Such tale of pity, aptly feigned,
Our credence for the perjurer gained,
And tears, wrung out from fraudful eyes,
Made us, e'en us, a villain's prize,
'Gainst whom not valiant Diomede,
Nor Peleus' Larissaean* seed,
Nor ten years' fighting could prevail,
Nor navies of a thousand sail.
*[Footnote: Achilles. Larissa was a town in Thessaly, of which
Peleus, the father of Achilles, was king.]
[Illustration: LAOCOÖN Statuary Group in The Vatican, Rome]
But ghastlier portents lay behind,
Our unprophetic souls to bind.
Laocoön, named as Neptune's priest,
Was offering up the victim beast,
When lo! from Tenedos—I quail,
E'en now, at telling of the tale—
Two monstrous serpents stem the tide,
And shoreward through the stillness glide.
Amid the waves they rear their breasts,
And toss on high their sanguine crests:
The hind part coils along the deep,
And undulates with sinuous sweep.
The lashed spray echoes: now they reach
The inland belted by the beach,
And rolling bloodshot eyes of fire,
Dart their forked tongues, and hiss for ire.
We fly distraught: unswerving they
Toward Laocoön hold their way;
First round his two young sons they wreathe,
And grind their limbs with savage teeth:
Then, as with arms he comes to aid,
The wretched father they invade
And twine in giant folds: twice round
His stalwart waist their spires are wound,
Twice round his neck, while over all
Their heads and crests tower high and tall.
He strains his strength their knots to tear,*
While gore and slime his fillets smear,
And to the unregardful skies
Sends up his agonizing cries:
A wounded bull such moaning makes,
When from his neck the axe he shakes,
Ill-aimed, and from the altar breaks.
The twin destroyers take their flight
To Pallas' temple on the height;
There by the goddess' feet concealed
They lie, and nestle 'neath her shield.
At once through Ilium's hapless sons
A shock of feverous horror runs:
All in Laocoön's death-pangs read
The just requital of his deed,
Who dared to harm with impious stroke
Those ribs of consecrated oak.
"The image to its fane!" they cry:
"So soothe the offended deity."
Each in the labour claims his share:
The walls are breached, the town laid bare:
Wheels 'neath its feet are fixed to glide,
And round its neck stout ropes are tied:
So climbs our wall that shape of doom,
With battle quickening in its womb,
While youths and maidens sing glad songs,
And joy to touch the harness-thongs.
It comes, and, glancing terror down,
Sweeps through the bosom of the town.
O Ilium, city of my love!
O warlike home of powers above!
Four times 'twas on the threshold stayed:
Four times the armour clashed and brayed.
Yet on we press with passion blind,
All forethought blotted from our mind,
Till the dread monster we install
Within the temple's tower-built wall.
E'en then Cassandra's* prescient voice
Forewarned us of our fatal choice—
That prescient voice, which Heaven decreed
No son of Troy should hear and heed.
We, careless souls, the city through,
With festal boughs the fanes bestrew,
And in such revelry employ
The last, last day should shine on Troy.
*[Footnote: The death of Laocoön and his sons has always been a
favorite subject in art and in poetry. (See illustration.)]
*[Footnote: Cassandra was a daughter of Priam, king of Troy. She had
been loved by Apollo, who bestowed on her the gift of prophecy; but
she had angered him by failing to return his love, and he, unable
to take back the gift, decreed that her prophecies should never be
believed. All through the siege she had uttered her predictions and
always they proved true; but no one ever paid heed to her warnings.]
Meantime Heaven shifts from light to gloom,
And night ascends from Ocean's womb,
Involving in her shadow broad
Earth, sky, and Myrmidonian* fraud:
And through the city, stretched at will,
Sleep the tired Trojans, and are still.
*[Footnote: Here Myrmidonian means simply Grecian.]
And now from Tenedos set free
The Greeks are sailing on the sea,
Bound for the shore where erst they lay,
Beneath the still moon's friendly ray:
When in a moment leaps to sight
On the king's ship the signal light,
And Sinon, screened by partial fate,
Unlocks the pine-wood prison's gate.
The horse its charge to air restores,
And forth the armed invasion pours.
Thessander,* Sthenelus, the first,
Slide down the rope: Ulysses curst,
Thoas and Acamas are there,
And great Pelides' youthful heir,
Machaon, Menelaus, last
Epeus, who the plot forecast.
They seize the city, buried deep
In floods of revelry and sleep,
Cut down the warders of the gates,
And introduce their banded mates.*
*[Footnote: These are all Grecian heroes.]
*[Footnote: After the Greeks entered the gates the chief Trojan
citizens were put to death, and the city was set on fire, Aeneas,
with his little son and his aged father, escaped and took ship
for Italy, accompanied by a band of followers.]