And deadlie foes, beseege the same in vaine:
Yet, in the walles if pining famine rise,
Or else some impe of Sinon, there remaine.
What can preuaile your bulwarkes? and your towers,
When, all your force, your inwarde foe deuoures.”
In fact, Sinon seems to have been the accepted representative of treachery in every form; for when Camillus, at the siege of Faleria, rewarded the Schoolmaster as he deserved for attempting to give up his scholars into captivity, the occurence is thus described in the Choice of Emblemes, p. 113,—
“With that, hee caus’de this Sinon to bee stripte,
And whippes, and roddes, vnto the schollers gaue:
Whome, backe againe, into the toune they whipte.”
Shakespeare is even more frequent in his allusions to this same Sinon. The Rape of Lucrece, published in 1594, speaks of him as “the perjured Sinon,” “the false Sinon,” “the subtle Sinon,” and avers (vol. ix. p. 537, l. 1513),—