The Trojan War (19 page)
Authors: Bernard Evslin
Thereupon Ulysses set a gigantic plan afoot, the most cunning plot he had spun in all his artful career. On a beach hidden from the sight of the walls, he ordered carpenters to build an enormous wooden horse, varnishing it to a last luster, and ornamenting it with gilded mane and hooves. It was set on solid wooden wheels, and a trapdoor was cut into its belly big enough to hold twenty men.
Then Ulysses, Diomedes, Menelaus, Little Ajax, and sixteen other of their best warriors hid themselves in the belly of the horse. They wore no armor and carried no shields, lest the clanking metal betray them; they were armed only with swords and daggers. Then the ships were rolled down to the water, and launched. Masts were stepped, sails raised, and the fleet moved out of the harbor, behind a headland, out of sight. When they were hidden from view, they moored again to wait for a signal.
When the Trojans awoke the next morning, they saw no tents on the beach, no ships, no Greeks. The camp had disappeared. Even the cattle were gone, and the fires were cold. Rejoicing with loud shouts, weeping for joy, the entire population rushed out onto the beach. No one at all was to be seen. After ten years the beach was Trojan again—the war was over! It was unbelievable, yet unbearable to believe anything else.
They marvelled when they found the giant wooden horse, and tried to guess its purpose.
“Read what is written!” cried Chryseis.
Cut into the shoulder of the horse were these words: “An offering to Poseidon by the Greeks, who, after ten years of war, sail for home again, and beseech fair skies and following winds.”
“Clearly, an offer to Poseidon,” said Chryseis wisely. “And if we take it into the city and set it in our temple we shall be the ones to earn the favor of the Earth-shaker, who has been so hostile to us.”
“Brilliant,” said Priam. “The very thing.”
“Fatal!” shrieked Cassandra. “That horse will devour Troy!”
But no one heeded
her.
Another of Priam’s advisers, a man named Laocoön, had other ideas, too.
“Hear me, O king,” he said. “Beware the Greeks, even bearing gifts. I mistrust this horse. I mistrust everything an enemy does. Let us take axes and chop it to pieces.”
He was a very large, impressive, deep-voiced man. His words made Priam hesitate, and he might have convinced the king—but Poseidon took a hand. He sent two enormous sea serpents gliding up onto the beach. They seized the two small sons of Laocoön and began to swallow them whole. Laocoön leaped upon the serpents. But they simply looped their coils about him and crushed him to death as they finished swallowing his sons.
“Let the impious take heed!” cried Chryseis. “Those serpents were sent by Poseidon to punish the sacrilegious words of Laocoön. We must honor this wooden horse dedicated to the sea-god; bedeck it with flowers, take it into the city, and set it in our temple.”
Awestruck by the fate of Laocoön, the Trojans did as Chryseis bid.
That night the fleet put into shore again. Under the command of Agamemnon the Greeks disembarked and waited on the beach. Exhausted by their rejoicing, the Trojans slept in their city. In the darkest hour of night, Ulysses crept out. Seeing no one, he tapped on the horse’s belly. Diomedes and the others slipped silently out of the trapdoor. Menelaus dashed toward the palace and Helen, followed by half the men. Ulysses led the others to the wall where they surprised and killed the drowsy sentries—then set a signal fire on top of the wall, summoning the army. Ulysses descended and swung open the huge gates, and the main body of troops entered Troy.
The old tales go to great lengths now giving the names of Trojans slaughtered in the sack of the city and the manner of their deaths. But it is sufficient to say that the men were butchered, houses looted and burned, and, finally, the women and children borne off into slavery.
Of all the Trojan princes, Aeneas was the only one to escape the massacre. Heedless of his own safety he lifted his old father, Anchises, to his shoulders, and carried him through the burning city. And the Greeks were so struck by his courage that they let him go.
He boarded a ship and sailed away into a series of strange adventures. After years of hardship and incredible danger he came to a fair land and founded a city later to be called Rome.
Cassandra was taken back to Mycenae as Agamemnon’s slave. But she was murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, on the same night that she knifed her husband in his bath. Cassandra had warned Agamemnon this would happen but he hadn’t believed her.
Paris was presumed dead after the sack of Troy. But some say he fled, and lived under other names in other lands, protected always by Aphrodite.
Helen went back to Sparta with Menelaus and lived happily there as Queen. She explained to her husband that she had been abducted by force, kept in Troy against her will, and he chose to be convinced. She kept her beauty always and was much admired by the princes of Hellas who often found occasion to visit the royal palace in Sparta.
Cressida disappears from legend after the war. It is believed that she was taken to Argos by Diomedes, but what happened to her there nobody knows.
As for Ulysses, his real troubles began after he left Troy. It took him ten years to get back to Ithaca, and his adventures were so many and so marvellous they take another book to tell.
The flames that consumed Troy burned for seven years. They burned so hotly that the Scamander turned to steam and hissed away—and Poseidon himself retreated from their awful heat, shrinking his sea. Where the beautiful waters of Troy’s harbor once flowed is now a parched and empty plain.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1971 by Bernard Evslin
cover design by Omar F. Olivera
978-1-4532-6449-2
This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
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