These passages describe the taking of Troy or look back on it. Homer, Euripides, Virgil and Ovid share the wooden horse, the sack of the city, Priam’s death and the women led away as captives; Livy begins Rome’s history from the same moment. Herodotus, following Egyptian priests, argues that Helen was never in Troy and that the city’s ruin was a punishment from the gods. Augustine remembers the story as a schoolboy’s favourite reading and counts his love of it a sin.
Chosen by hand, not counted: a passage is here when it is plainly about the topic, and the list is not every mention. Each is shown in the order the books were written, and each links to the section it is in.
Demodocus sings of the wooden horse and the sack of Troy, and Ulysses weeps to hear it.
… Now, however, change your song and tell us of the wooden horse which Epeus made with the assistance of Minerva, and which Ulysses got by stratagem into the fort of Troy after freighting it with the men who afterwards sacked the city. … Book 8 →Herodotus argues Helen was never in Troy, and the city fell because the gods willed its punishment.
Thus the priests of the Egyptians told me; and I myself also agree with the story which was told of Helen, adding this consideration, namely that if Helen had been in Ilion she would have been given up to the Hellenes, whether Alexander consented or no; … Book 2 →Poseidon surveys the ruined city: the wooden horse, Priam dead at the altar, the women allotted as slaves.
… Down from Parnassus' rock The Greek Epeios came, of Phocian seed, And wrought by Pallas' mysteries a Steed Marvellous, big with arms; and through my wall It passed, a death-fraught image magical. The groves are empty and the sanctuaries Run red with blood. Unburied Priam lies By his own hearth, on God's high altar-stair, And Phrygian gold goes forth and raiment rare To the Argive ships; … Play 3 →Aeneas tells Dido of the wooden horse and Troy’s last night.
… By destiny compell’d, and in despair, The Greeks grew weary of the tedious war, And by Minerva’s aid a fabric rear’d, Which like a steed of monstrous height appear’d: The sides were plank’d with pine; they feign’d it made For their return, and this the vow they paid. … Book 2 →Livy begins with Troy taken and the Greeks sparing only Aeneas and Antenor.
Now first of all it is sufficiently established that, Troy having been taken, the utmost severity was shown to all the other Trojans; but that towards two, Æneas and Antenor, the Greeks forbore all the rights of war, both in accordance with an ancient tie of hospitality, and because they had ever been the advisers of peace, and of the restoration of Helen--then that Antenor after various vicissitudes came into the … Livy I 1 →Troy and Priam fall together; the Trojan women are dragged to the ships, Hecuba from Hector’s tomb.
… Troy and Priam fell together; the wretched wife of Priam lost after every thing else her human form, and alarmed a foreign air with her barkings. Where the long Hellespont is reduced into a narrow compass, Ilion was in flames; nor had the flames yet ceased; and the altar of Jove had drank up the scanty blood of the aged Priam. … Book 13 →Augustine recalls loving the wooden horse and the burning of Troy as school reading, and calls it vanity.
… I sinned, then, when as a boy I preferred those empty to those more profitable studies, or rather loved the one and hated the other. "One and one, two"; "two and two, four"; this was to me a hateful singsong: "the wooden horse lined with armed men," and "the burning of Troy," and "Creusa's shade and sad similitude," were the choice spectacle of my vanity. … Book 1 →