under shelter of their ancient faith. For if hand of yours should wrong Minerva’s offering, then utter destruction – may the gods turn rather on himself that augury! – would fall on Priam’s empire and the Phrygians; but if by your hands it climbed into your city, Asia would even advance in mighty war to the walls of Pelops, and such would be the doom awaiting our offspring!

’

“Through such snares and craft of forsworn Sinon the story won belief, and we were ensnared by wiles and forced tears – we whom neither the son of Tydeus nor Achilles of Larissa laid low, not ten years, not a thousand ships!

“Hereupon another portent, more fell and more frightful by far, is thrust upon us, unhappy ones, and confounds our unforeseeing souls. Laocoön,