“In response to these tears, we spared him, and even pitied him. Priam first spoke friendly words to order his shackles and bonds removed, saying: ‘Whoever you are, now forget your lost Greeks; you will be one of us. Now tell me truly, what did they set up this huge image of an enormous horse for? Who made it? What were they trying to do? A religious purpose, or is it a weapon of war?’ Sinon, versed in Greek tricks and subtlety, Stretched his hands, freed from their bonds, to the heavens, saying: ‘You eternal stars, with your inviolable majesty, I call you to witness, and you, the altars and the blades with which the crime was to be done, and you fillets of the Gods, which I wore as the victim, that it is lawful to break the sacred oaths of the Greeks, to hate them, and disclose what they conceal; nor am I bound by any laws of my homeland. Only keep your promises and keep faith with your preserver, if I give a great gift in return by disclosing the truth. The Greeks’ hopes, and confidence in starting the war, always depended on help from Athena. But from that day when Ajax, and Ulysses the inventor of crimes, coming to tear the sacred Palladium from the holy temple and having killed the sentries at the top of the citadel, seized the sacred image and dared to contaminate the virgin fillets of the Goddess with bloody hands, the hopes of the Greeks ran out, fell back and were reversed. Their strength was broken, the mind of the Goddess was turned away, and she made that plain by unambiguous signs. The image was scarcely in the camp, when dazzling flames burned from its upturned eyes, salt sweat flowed over its limbs and, a wonder! Three times it flashed up from the ground, bearing its shield and brandished spear! Right away, Calchas prophesied that we must flee by sea, and that Troy could not fall to Greek arms unless they sought fresh omens from Argos and brought back the holy idol which they had borne with them over the sea in their curved ships. Now that they have sailed for their ancestral Mycenae, they are re-arming and seeking new divine favour, and will return over the sea when you do not expect. Thus Calchas set out the omens, and at his warning they set up this effigy in place of the Palladium and to expiate their grave sacrilege and the insult to the Goddess’s divinity. Calchas told them to make this bulk of jointed timbers huge, and rear it sky-high so that it could not fit your gates or be brought into the city, giving holy protection to the people as of old. For if Trojan hands should desecrate Minerva’s gift, it would bring great disaster to the realm of Priam and the Phrygians – may the gods turn the prophecy on their own heads! But should it mount into your city, brought by your own hands, Troy would come beyond Asia to the Greeks’ walls with a mighty war, and that would be the fate awaiting their descendants.’ Through such trickery, and the arts of perjured Sinon, it was believed, and men were snared whom neither Ajax, nor Achilles, nor ten years, nor a thousand ships, had overcome.”