CHAPTER II.
ÆNEAS RELATES THE FALL OF TROY.
It has been said that this poem is a kind of supplement to the Iliad. Æneas tells us what was not there told by Homer, but what is presupposed in his Odyssey,—the later history of the siege and capture of Troy. He relates at length the stratagem of the Wooden Horse, by which the Greeks at last outwitted their enemies. The fleet, which had seemed to sail for home, had withdrawn, and lay concealed in the harbour of Tenedos. The wooden fabric—dedicated to Minerva, as the tale went—was left standing outside the city. It was suggested to bring it within the walls, when the priest Laocoon rushed to prevent it—suspecting some such stratagem as in truth had been contrived. He even hurled his spear against its side, and might have thus made a beginning of its destruction, when behold, a prisoner was brought in. It was the treacherous Sinon; a Greek who had undertaken to play the dangerous part of a double spy. The tale he told his captors was this: that he, though a Greek, was a fugitive from Greek vengeance—especially from the
