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 304 HISTORY OF GREECE. The destruction of Troy, according to the decree of the gods, was now irrevocably sealed. While the Trojans indulged in a night of riotous festivity, Sinon kindled the fire-signal to the Greeks at Tenedos, loosening the bolts of the wooden horse, from out of which the enclosed heroes descended. The city, assailed both from within and from without, was thoroughly sacked and de- stroyed, with the slaughter or captivity of the larger portion of its heroes as well as its people. The venerable Priam perished by the hand of Neoptolemus, having in vain sought shelter at the domestic altar of Zeus Herkeios ; but his son Deiphobus, who since the death of Paris had become the husband of Helen, de- fended his house desperately against Odysseus and Menelaus, and sold his life dearly. After he was slain, his body was fearfully mutilated by the latter. 1 - Thus was Troy utterly destroyed the city, the altars and temples, 2 and the population. .^Eneas and Antenor were permit- ted to escape, with their families, having been always more favorably regarded by the Greeks than tlie remaining Trojans. According to one version of the story, they had betrayed the of Virgil, and his sympathy with the Trojans, lias induced him to omit it. Euphorion ascribed the proceedings of Sinon to Odysseus : he also gave a different cause for the death of Laocoon (Fr. 3.J-36. p. 55, cd. Diintz., in toe Fragments of Epic Poets after Alexander the Great). Sinon is traipse 'Odvaaeuf in Pausan. x. 27, 1. 1 Odyss. viii. 515; Argument of Arktinas, ut sup.; Euripid. Hecub. 903, Virg. JEn. vi. 497 ; Quint. Smyrn. xiii. 35-229 ; Lesches ap. Pausan. x. 27, 2; Diktys, v. 12. Ibykus and SimonidC-s also represented Deiphobus as the uvTcpaaTjjf 'EAev^f (Schol. Horn. Iliad, xiii. 517). The night-battle in the interior of Troy was described with all its fearful details both by Lesches and Arktinus : the ' 1/iiov Hepaif of the latter seems to have been a separate poem, that of the former constituted a portion of the Ilias Minor (see Welcker, Der Epische Kyklus, p. 215): the 'I/Uov Tlepcnc by the lyric poets Sakadas and Stesichorus probably added many new inci- dents. Polygnotus had painted a succession of the various calamitous scenes, drawn from the poem of Lesches, on the walls of the lesche at Delphi, with the name written over each figure (Pausan. x. 25-26). Hellanikus fixed the precise day of the month on which the capture took place (Hellan. Fr. 143-144), the twelfth day of Thargelion. Bcj/zot (P aiaroi /cat tfeuv idpv/tara, Kal aireppa irdarif kZ
 * vF,schyi. Agamemn. 527.