The old folktale of how the "wooden horse," left on the
shore by the Greeks, was recklessly dragged to the citadel by the Trojans
satisfied the unquestioning Homer. Vergil does not take the improbable
on faith. Sinon is compelled to be entirely convincing. In his speech he
uses every art of persuasion: he awakens in turn curiosity, surprise,
pity, admiration, sympathy, and faith. The passage is as curiously
wrought as any episode of Catullus or the _Ciris_. It is not, as has been
held, a result of rhetorical studies alone; it reveals rather a native
good sense tempered with a neoteric interest in psychology and a neoteric
exactness in formal composition. And yet the passage exhibits a great
advance upon the geometric formality of the _Ciris_. The incident is not
treated episodically as it might have been in Vergil's early work. The
pattern is not whimsically intricate but is shaped by an understanding
mind. While its art is as studied and conscious as that of the _Ciris_,
it has the directness and integrity of Homeric narrative. Yet Vergil
has not forgotten the startling effects that Catullus would attain by
compressing a long tale into a suggestive phrase, if only a memory of the
tale could be assumed.
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