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 Trojans (so the man was to
say) had built this wooden horse as an offering to the Goddess. The
Trojans, believing this story, would drag the horse into Troy, and, in
the night, the princes would come out, set fire to the city, and open the
gates to the army, which would return from Tenedos as soon as darkness
came on.

The prophet was much pleased with the plan of Ulysses, and, as two birds
happened to fly away on the righ