Aug 3– From "The Aenied" by Virgil (19 BC) translated by John Dryden

Virgil was in this show. He's the bird.

Aug 3– From The Aenied by Virgil (19 BC) translated by John Dryden

Summary: The Greeks jump out of a wood horse and kill everyone because they're losing the war.

Commentary: We get one of the few direct accounts of the Trojan Horse (why is it the Trojan Horse? Shouldn't it be the Achaean Horse?) here. There's a few spots in T5FSOB where we get multiple versions of the same story (Faust comes to mind). It'd be cool to see them clustered a little more, as opposed to weeks or months apart when it's hard to compare them. It's interesting how little "first hand" information we have on the horse. It's not in The Iliad at all, and only briefly mentioned in The Odyssey. I think this passage is actually the longest description:

 

And armed hosts, an unexpected force,

Break from the bowels of the fatal horse.

Within the gates, proud Sinon throws about

The flames; and foes for entrance press without,

With thousand others, whom I fear to name,

More than from Argos or Mycenae came.

To sev’ral posts their parties they divide;

Some block the narrow streets, some scour the wide:

The bold they kill, th’ unwary they surprise;

Who fights finds death, and death finds him who flies.

The warders of the gate but scarce maintain

Th’ unequal combat, and resist in vain.’

[...]

And some, oppress’d with more ignoble fear,

Remount the hollow horse, and pant in secret there.

“But, ah! what use of valour can be made,

When heav’n’s propitious pow’rs refuse their aid!

Behold the royal prophetess, the fair

Cassandra, dragg’d by her dishevel’d hair,

Whom not Minerva’s shrine, nor sacred bands,

In safety could protect from sacrilegious hands:

It's  still not very much. A lot of mythology is really like that. You think there'd be a whole novel about Medusa, but she gets a line here, a paragraph there in a half dozen places.