The line is Virgil’s, from the Aeneid, Book 2, line 49 — put in the mouth of the Trojan priest Laocoön as he warns his people against the wooden horse: “quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentis.” This exact English wording matches Allen Mandelbaum’s 1971 verse translation ↗; older public-domain versions word it slightly differently.
“I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts” Virgil, Aeneid 2.49 (trans. Allen Mandelbaum, 1971)
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? We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.
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Provenance
The source
Work
Aeneid, Book 2, line 49
Latin
quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentis
Speaker
Laocoön, Trojan priest (words written by Virgil)
Translation
Exact wording matches Allen Mandelbaum (1971); cf. Fairclough, Loeb (1916)
“Do not trust the Horse, Trojans. Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts.” — Laocoön, hurling his spear at the wooden horse (Aeneid 2.48–49).
The Latin half-line — “timeo Danaos et dona ferentis” — is one of the most quoted phrases in Latin literature and the source of the English proverb ‘beware of Greeks bearing gifts.’
The half-line is Aeneid 2.49, spoken by Laocoön; the Latin “timeo Danaos et dona ferentis” is confirmed in the Perseus Latin text ↗.
The exact English wording “I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts” appears verbatim in Allen Mandelbaum’s 1971 verse translation, per WIST’s parallel-translation page ↗.
Public-domain renderings differ by a word: Fairclough’s 1916 Loeb has “even when bringing gifts,” and the 1854 Davidson/Buckley reads “I dread the Greeks, even when they bring gifts” — also per WIST ↗.
Wikipedia ↗ traces the modern proverb ‘beware of Greeks bearing gifts’ directly to this line.
The underlying Latin is public domain, but rights attach to the exact English wording displayed, which depends on its translation. This precise string matches Allen Mandelbaum’s 1971 verse translation (in copyright; Mandelbaum d. 2011), yet it is also the natural literal rendering that circulates uncredited on reference sites, and pre-1931 public-domain versions are near-identical (Fairclough’s 1916 Loeb has “even when bringing gifts”; the 1854 Davidson/Buckley reads “I dread the Greeks, even when they bring gifts”). Because we cannot pin this exact string to a single first publication, we assert no firm status.
Fact-check
Misquote & translation notes
This one is genuinely Virgil’s — the misattribution risk is not the author but the wording. The crisp English one-liner people quote is a modern translator’s phrasing, not a single canonical rendering, and the popular proverb is a compression of Laocoön’s line rather than Virgil’s own words.
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The exact English wordingA modern literal translation (matches Mandelbaum, 1971) misquote
“I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts” is not lifted from any single famous old translation. John Dryden’s celebrated 1697 version doesn’t use the line directly (“Trust not their presents, nor admit the horse”), and public-domain renderings differ by a word (Fairclough 1916 “even when bringing gifts”; Davidson/Buckley 1854 “I dread the Greeks”). This exact string matches Allen Mandelbaum’s 1971 translation ↗.
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The popular proverb“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” paraphrase
The familiar English saying is a compression of Laocoön’s warning, not a translation of Virgil’s Latin, which reads “timeo Danaos et dona ferentis” — literally ‘I fear the Danaans, even bearing gifts,’ per Wikipedia ↗.
✓The thought and the line are authentically Virgil’s (Aeneid 2.49, spoken by Laocoön); only the English wording varies by translator, as the side-by-side translations ↗ show.
Context
Why it mattered
In Book 2 of the Aeneid, Aeneas tells Queen Dido how Troy fell. When the Greeks leave a giant wooden horse outside the walls and sail off, the priest Laocoön rushes down and hurls a spear into its flank, crying that whatever it is, he fears the Greeks even bearing gifts. The Trojans ignore him; sea-serpents soon drag Laocoön and his sons to their deaths, the horse is wheeled inside, and Troy is destroyed.
Virgil’s half-line became one of the most durable tags in the Western canon — a shorthand for suspicion of an enemy’s generosity that survives today as ‘beware of Greeks bearing gifts.’
Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Publius Vergilius Maro (70–19 BC) was Rome’s pre-eminent poet, author of the Eclogues, the Georgics, and the Aeneid, the national epic that follows the Trojan Aeneas from the ruins of Troy to the founding of the Roman line. He worked on the Aeneid for the last decade of his life under the emperor Augustus and left it unfinished at his death, reportedly asking that it be burned — a wish Augustus overrode. Laocoön’s warning about the horse comes early in Book 2, where Aeneas recounts the fall of Troy.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source — Chicago
Virgil. Aeneid, Book 2, line 49. Latin text in the Perseus Digital Library. English wording as in Allen Mandelbaum, trans., The Aeneid of Virgil (New York: Bantam Books, 1971).
MLA (9th ed.)
Virgil. The Aeneid. Translated by Allen Mandelbaum, Bantam Books, 1971.
APA (7th ed.)
Virgil. (1971). The Aeneid (A. Mandelbaum, Trans.). Bantam Books. (Original work published 19 BCE)
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-fear-the-greeks-even-when-they-bring-gifts