To accomplish this object, one final stratagem was resorted to.  By the hands of Epeius of Panopeus, and at the suggestion of Athene, a capacious hollow wooden horse was constructed, capable of containing one hundred men.  In the inside of this horse the elite of the Grecian heroes, Neoptolemus, Odysseus, Menelaus, and others, concealed themselves while the entire Grecian army sailed away to Tenedos, burning their tents and pretending to have abandoned the siege.  The Trojans, overjoyed to find themselves free, issued from the city and contemplated with astonishment the fabric which their enemies had left behind.  They long doubted what should be done with it; and the anxious heroes from within heard the surrounding consultations, as well as the voice of Helen when she pronounced their names and counterfeited the accents of their wives.  Many of the Trojans were anxious to dedicate it to the gods in the city as a token of gratitude for their deliverance; but the more cautious spirits inculcated distrust of an enemy’s legacy.  Laocoon, the priest of Poseidon, manifested his aversion by striking the side of the horse with his spear.

The sound revealed that the horse was hollow, but the Trojans heeded not this warning of possible fraud.  The unfortunate Laocoon, a victim to his own sagacity and patriotism, miserably perished before the eyes of his countrymen, together with one of his sons:  two serpents being sent expressly by the gods out of the sea to destroy him.  By this terrific spectacle, together with the perfidious counsels of Simon—­a traitor whom the Greeks had left behind for the special purpose of giving false information—­the Trojans were induced to make a breach in their own walls, and to drag the fatal fabric with triumph and exultation into their city.

The destruction of Troy, according to the decree of the gods, was now irrevocably sealed.  While the Trojans indulged in a night of riotous festivity, Simon kindled the fire-signal to the Greeks at Tenedos, loosening the bolts of the wooden horse, from out of which the enclosed heroes descended.  The city, assailed both from within and from without, was thoroughly sacked and destroyed, with the slaughter or captivity of the larger portion of its heroes as well as its people.  The venerable Priam perished by the hand of Neoptolemus, having in vain sought shelter at the domestic altar of Zeus Herceius.  But his son Deiphobus, who since the death of Paris had become the husband of Helen, defended his house desperately against Odysseus and Menelaus, and sold his life dearly.  After he was slain, his body was fearfully mutilated by the latter.