him in the horse; and Peneleus and Meges and valiant Antiphates, and Iphidamas and Eurydamas, offspring of Pelias, and Amphidamas, armed with a bow. Last Epeius of glorious craft set foot in the thing he had himself contrived.
Then they prayed unto the grey-eyed daughter of Zeus and hasted into their vessel of the horse. And Athena mixed ambrosia and brought them the food of the gods to eat, that in their ambush all day long they might not be afflicted and their knees weighed down by unpleasant hunger. And as when with the frosts of the storm-footed clouds the snow freezes the air and besprinkles the fields and melting sends forth a great stream; and the wild beasts, cowering from the din of the mountain-cradled river, as it leaps swiftly down from a rock in headlong tumult, withdraw beneath the shelter of their hollow lair and abide there silently with shivering flanks, and, bitterly anhungered, by grievous constraint patiently await the ceasing of the rain: even so the unwearied Achaeans leapt through the carven wood and supported travail beyond enduring. And for them Odysseus, the faithful warder of the unguessed snare, closed the door of the pregnant horse, and sat himself in the head as scout; and both his yearning eyes escaped the notice of those without. And the son of Atreus bade the Achaean servants undo with well-bent mattocks the fence of stone wherewith the horse was hidden. He wished to let it be uncovered that, shining afar, it might send the message of its beauty unto all men. And at the bidding of their king they dug it up.
But when the sun, drawing on shadowy night for men, turned far-shooting dawn to the dusky-