Trojans; for thou hast escaped the unkindly violence of the Achaeans. Evermore thou shalt be our friend nor shall sweet desire seize thee for thy fatherland or for thy halls of many possessions. But come, declare thou to me what marvel is this, the horse, a portent of unappeasable terror. And declare thy name and lineage and whence the ships brought thee.ä
Then the hero of many devices took heart and said: ãThese things also will I declare: thou biddest me who am myself willing. Argos is my city and the name give to me is Sinon, and my grey-haired sire they call Aesimus; and the famous horse was invented for the Argives by Epeius. If you allow it to abide here in its place, it is decreed that the spear of the Achaeans shall capture Troy; but if Athena receive it a holy offering in her shrine, they shall flee away with their task unaccomplished. But come, cast it about with entwining chains and draw to the great acropolis the horse of golden reins, and Athena, guardian of the city, be our guide, eager to win the carven offering, even she!ä
So he spake, and the king bade him take and don on a cloak and a tunic.a And they bound the horse with chains of oxhide and drew it with well-plaited ropes over the plain, mounted on its swift wheels and filled with chieftains; and before it flutes and lyres made shrill minstrelsy together. Wretched generation of heedless mortals! for whom a mist which they cannot pierce enwraps the future. By reason of empty joy many men many times stumble unwittingly on destruction: even as at that time ruinous doom for the Trojans rioted on its own way
a Cf. Hesiod, W. 536 f.