in his own house,
and Deiphobus was at this time the best warrior and the chief captain of
the men of Troy.

Meanwhile, the Greeks made an assault against the Trojan walls and
fought long and hardily; but, being safe behind the battlements, and
shooting through loopholes, the Trojans drove them back with loss of
many of their men. It was in vain that Philoctetes shot his poisoned
arrows, they fell back from the stone walls, or stuck in the palisades
of wood above the walls, and the Greeks who tried to climb over were
speared, or crushed with heavy stones. When night fell, they retreated
to the ships and held a council, and, as usual, they asked the advice of
the prophet Calchas. It was the business of Calchas to go about looking
at birds, and taking omens from what he saw them doing, a way of
prophesying which the Romans also used, and some savages do the same to
this day. Calchas said that yesterday he had seen a hawk pursuing a
dove, which hid herself in a hole in a rocky cliff. For a long while the
hawk tried to find the hole, and follow the dove into it, but he could
not reach her. So he flew away for a short distance and hid himself;
then the dove fluttered out into the sunlight, and the hawk swooped on
her and killed her.

The Greeks, said Calchas, ought to learn a lesson from the hawk, and
take Troy by cunning, as by force they could do nothing. Then Ulysses
stood up and described a trick which it is not easy to understand. The
Greeks, he said, ought to make an enormous hollow horse of wood, and
place the bravest men in the horse. Then all the rest of the Greeks
should embark in their ships and sail to the Isle of Tenedos, and lie
hidden behind the island. The Trojans would then come out of the city,
like the dove out of her hole in the rock, and would wander about the
Greek camp, and wonder why the great horse of tree had been made, and
why it had been left behind. Lest they should set fire to the horse,
when they would soon have found out the warriors hidden in it, a cunning
Greek, whom the Trojans did not know by sight, should be left in the
camp or near it. He would tell the Trojans that the Greeks had given up
all hope and gone home, and he was to say that they feared the Goddess
Pallas was angry with them, because they had stolen her image that fell
from heaven, and was called the Luck of Troy. To soothe Pallas and
prevent her from sending great storms against the ships, the Greeks (so
the man was to say)