Lines 1–56
The wooden horse and Laocoön’s warning
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Lesson
Section 1 — Lines 1–13 — Aeneas begins his storySilence falls over Dido’s hall. Aeneas protests that the queen is asking him to reopen an unspeakable grief — and begins anyway.
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Lesson
Section 2 — Lines 14–24 — The horse is builtBeaten back by war and by fate, the Greek leaders build a horse the size of a mountain, hide picked men in its belly, and take the fleet out of sight behind Tenedos.
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Lesson
Section 3 — Lines 25–39 — The Trojans pour out; the horse debatedBelieving the Greeks gone, the Trojans throw open the gates and wander the abandoned camp. The horse divides them: Thymoetes urges it inside the walls, Capys and others want it destroyed.
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Lesson
Section 4 — Lines 40–49 — Laocoön’s warningLaocoön comes running down from the citadel to ask what madness this is — the Greeks are never more dangerous than when they are giving something away.
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Lesson
Section 5 — Lines 50–56 — The spear in the horse’s flankHe hurls his spear into the belly of the horse; it sticks quivering and the hollow caverns groan. Had the gods and the Trojans’ own minds been otherwise, Troy would be standing still.
Lines 195–253
The serpents, and the horse brought in
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Lesson
Section 6 — Lines 195–207 — The lie believed; the serpents comeSinon’s trick works where ten years and a thousand ships had failed. Laocoön, chosen by lot as priest of Neptune, is sacrificing a bull when two serpents come over the calm sea from Tenedos.
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Lesson
Section 7 — Lines 208–219 — Laocoön and his sons seizedThey make for Laocoön, take his two small sons first, then the father himself as he comes to help — twice round his waist, twice round his neck, their heads towering above him.
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Lesson
Section 8 — Lines 220–233 — The death of LaocoönHe strains at the coils, bellowing like a wounded bull that has shaken off the axe. The serpents escape to the citadel of the goddess, and the Trojans decide the priest had it coming.
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Lesson
Section 9 — Lines 234–245 — The horse brought inThe walls are breached and the city laid open. Boys and unmarried girls sing round the horse as it is hauled in, four times sticking on the threshold — and four times the armour clashing inside.
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Lesson
Section 10 — Lines 246–253 — Cassandra; night fallsCassandra opens her mouth to the future and is not believed. The Trojans garland the shrines on what is to be their last day; night comes up out of the ocean, and the city sleeps.