So at last the Greeks decided to try a trick to get into the city. They built a huge horse of wood, and inside this wooden horse they put soldiers. They placed the horse in front of the city walls and then sailed away as if at last they were giving up the war. The Trojans were told by a spy that the horse was a gift of the gods and that they ought to take it into the city. A Trojan priest named La-oc-o-on, however, told his people not to have anything to do with the horse, for he suspected a trick. But people seldom take advice when told _not_ to do what they want to do. Just then some huge snakes came out of the sea and attacked Laocoon and his two sons and, twining round them, strangled them to death. The Trojans thought this was a sign from the gods, or an omen as they would have said, that they should not believe Laocoon; so they determined to take the horse into the city against his advice. The horse was so big, however, that it would not go through the gates, and in order to get it inside of the walls they had to tear down part of the wall itself. When night fell, the Greek soldiers came out of the horse and opened the gates of the city. The other Greeks, who had been waiting just out of sight, returned and entered through the gates and the hole the Trojans had made in the wall. Troy was easily conquered then, and the city was burned to the ground, and Helen’s husband carried her back to Greece. For reason of this horse trick, we still have a saying, “Beware of the Greeks bearing gifts,” which is as much as to say, “Look out for an enemy who makes you a present.” The story of the Trojan War was told in two long poems. Some people think they are the finest poems that were ever written. One of these poems is called the “Iliad,” from the name of the city of Troy, which was also known as Ilium. The “Iliad” describes the Trojan War itself. The other poem is called the “Odyssey” and describes the adventures of one of the Greek heroes on his way home after the war was over. This Greek hero’s name was Odysseus, which gives the name Odyssey to the book, but he was also called Ulysses. These poems, the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey,” were composed by a blind Greek poet named Homer, who is supposed to have lived about two hundred years after the war; that is about 1000 B.C. Homer was a bard; that is, a singing poet who went about from place to place and sang his poems to the people. Usually a bard played on the lyre as he sang, and the people gave him something to eat or a place to sleep to pay him for his songs. Nowadays, instead of a Homer singing the “Iliad” and “Odyssey,” we have the organ-grinder and street piano playing their tunes in front of our houses.