Sinon, a seeming renegade who had been left behind by
the Greeks, and who had helped to deceive the Trojans by lying tales,
lighted a fire-signal for the fleet, and loosened the bolts of the
wooden horse, from whose hollow depths the hundred weary warriors
hastened to descend.

And now the triumph of the Trojans was changed to sudden woe and dire
lamentation. Death followed close upon their festivity. The hundred
warriors attacked them at their banquets, the returned fleet disgorged
its thousands, who poured through the open gates, and death held
fearful carnival within the captured city. Priam was slain at the altar
by Neoptolemus. All his sons fell in death. The city was sacked and
destroyed. Its people were slain or taken captive. Few escaped, but
among these was AEneas, the traditional ancestor of Rome. As regards
Helen, the cause of the war, she was recovered by Menelaus, and gladly
accompanied him back to Sparta. There she lived for years afterwards in
dignity and happiness, and finally died to become happily immortal in
the Elysian fields.

But our story is not yet at an end. The Greeks had still to return to
their homes, from which they had been ten years removed. And though
Paris had crossed the intervening seas in three days, it took Ulysses
ten years to return, while some of his late companions failed to reach
their homes at all. Many, indeed, were the adventures which these
home-sailing heroes were destined to encounter.

Some of the Greek warriors reached home speedily and were met with
welcome, but others perished by the way, while Agamemnon, their leader,
returned to find that his wife had been false to him, and perished by
her treacherous hand. Menelaus wandered long through Egypt, Cyprus, and
elsewhere before he reached his native land. Nestor and several others
went to Italy, where they founded cities. Diomedes also became a founder
of cities, and various others seem to have busied themselves in this
same useful occupation. Neoptolemus made his way to Epirus, where he
became king of the Molossians. AEneas, the Trojan hero, sought Carthage,
whose queen Dido died for love of him. Thence he sailed to Italy, where
he fought battles and won victories, and finally founded the city of
Rome. His story is given by Virgil, in the poem of the "AEneid." Much
more might be told of the adventures of the returning heroes, but the
chief of them all is that related of the much wandering Ulysses, as
given by Homer i