ORATION I.

In a public assembly, held July 7, in the year 1609.

Most magnificent Prorector, noble Barons and Lords, magnificent, most noble, reverend, most learned, most excellent, and most renowned men, and you, most select young men: that most extensive and opulent kingdom of the Trojans—and within it, Troy itself, the "city of secrets," as it seemed to the Chorus in the poet A reference to the Troades by Euripides.—when it was already beginning to collapse by its own weight under I know not what fate, and was threatening "utter destruction" from all sides, was not only attacked by enemy wars and open conflict by Achilles, Agamemnon, and the other leaders of Greece, and besieged for the tenth year; but it was also overwhelmed by the clandestine counsels and machines of Ulysses and Sinon, and was finally razed to the ground. Indeed, the Greeks, as Virgil sings:

They build a horse the size of a mountain, by the divine art of Pallas.
And they fill its huge caverns and womb
with armed soldiers,
and persuade them to bring it within the Trojan walls. But the Trojans, although Laocoon—to whom these gifts of the Greeks were suspect, for they were truly "gifts that are no gifts" A classic reference to the Aeneid (II, 49), where Laocoon warns that gifts from enemies are dangerous.—shouted with a loud voice:
Do not trust the horse, Teucrians.
Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks, even those bearing gifts,
and even Cassandra herself, by the command of God, indicated the coming calamity:
Yet, blind, with walls divided,
they all set to the work, and place
rolling wheels under its feet, and fasten hempen bonds to its neck.