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56
THE ÆNEID.

Inside, the fabric is full of armed Greeks. How many there were in number has been disputed—though possibly, in a legend of this kind, the question of more or fewer is scarcely relevant. It is a question, however, which derives some interest from the fact that it was one of the difficulties which exercised the mind of the first Napoleon during his exile. Studying the siege of Troy as if it were a mere prosaic operation in modern warfare, he was struck by the improbability of the whole stratagem. How "even a single company of the Guard" could be hid in such a machine, and dragged from some distance inside the city walls, the French Emperor was unable to conceive, and regarded the story as an infringement of even a poet's licence. Napoleon was not much of a Latin scholar, and, so far as the main point of his criticism went, had depended too implicitly upon French translators. Segrais, discussing the question in a note, thought there might be perhaps some two or three hundred. Indeed most of our English translators have gone out of their way to exaggerate the number. But Virgil himself, as has been pertinently remarked by Dr Henry, only makes nine men actually come out of the horse, all of whom he mentions by name. The poet certainly does not say in so many words that these were all, but he, at least, is not answerable for a larger number. Among the nine are the young Neoptolemus, surnamed Pyrrhus—"Red-haired,"—son of the dead Achilles, and now his successor in the recognised championship of the force; Sthenelus, the friend and comrade of Diomed (for whose absence it seems hard