by Virgil
‘t was like an harvest burning, when wild winds
uprouse the flames; ‘t was like a mountain stream
that bursts in flood and ruinously whelms
sweet fields and farms and all the ploughman’s toil,
whirling whole groves along; while dumb with fear,
from some far cliff the shepherd hears the sound.
Now their Greek plot was plain, the stratagem
at last laid bare. Deiphobus’ great house
sank vanquished in the fire. Ucalegon’s
hard by was blazing, while the waters wide
around Sigeum gave an answering glow.
Shrill trumpets rang; Ioud shouting voices roared;
wildly I armed me (when the battle calls,
how dimly reason shines!); I burned to join
the rally of my peers, and to the heights
defensive gather. Frenzy and vast rage
seized on my soul. I only sought what way
with sword in hand some noble death to die.
When Panthus met me, who had scarce escaped
the Grecian spears, — Panthus of Othrys’ line,
Apollo’s priest within our citadel;
his holy emblems, his defeated gods,
and his small grandson in his arms he bore,
while toward the gates with wild, swift steps he flew.
“How fares the kingdom, Panthus? What strong place
is still our own?” But scarcely could I ask
when thus, with many a groan, he made reply: —
“Dardania’s death and doom are come to-day,
implacable. There is no Ilium now;
our Trojan name is gone, the Teucrian throne
Quite fallen. For the wrathful power of Jove
has given to Argos all our boast and pride.
The Greek is Iord of all yon blazing towers.
yon horse uplifted on our city’s heart
disgorges men-at-arms. False Sinon now,
with scorn exultant, heaps up flame on flame.
Others throw wide the gates. The whole vast horde
that out of proud Mycenae hither sailed
is at us. With confronting spears they throng
each narrow passage. Every steel-bright blade
is flashing naked, making haste for blood.
Our sentries helpless meet the invading shock
and give back blind and unavailing war.”
By Panthus’ word and by some god impelled,
I flew to battle, where the flames leaped high,
where grim Bellona called, and all the air
resounded high as heaven with shouts of war.
Rhipeus and Epytus of doughty arm
were at my side, Dymas and Hypanis,
seen by a pale moon, join our little band;
and young Coroebus, Mygdon’s princely son,
who was in Troy that hour because he loved
Cassandra madly, and had made a league
as Priam’s kinsman with our Phrygian arms:
ill-starred, to heed not what the virgin raved!
When these I saw close-gathered for the fight,
I thus addressed them: “Warriors, vainly brave,
if ye indeed desire to follow one
who dares the uttermost brave men may do,
our evil plight ye see: the gods are fled
from every altar and protecting fire,
which were the kingdom’s stay. Ye offer aid
unto your country’s ashes. Let us fight
unto the death! To arms, my men, to arms!
The single hope and stay of desperate men
is their despair.” Thus did I rouse their souls.
Then like the ravening wolves, some night of cloud,
when cruel hunger in an empty maw
drives them forth furious, and their whelps behind
wait famine-throated; so through foemen’s steel
we flew to surest death, and kept our way
straight through the midmost town . The wings of night
brooded above us in vast vault of shade.
But who the bloodshed of that night can tell?
What tongue its deaths shall number, or what eyes
find meed of tears to equal all its woe?
The ancient City fell, whose throne had stood
age after age. Along her streets were strewn
the unresisting dead; at household shrines
and by the temples of the gods they lay.
Yet not alone was Teucrian blood required:
oft out of vanquished hearts fresh valor flamed,
and the Greek victor fell. Anguish and woe
were everywhere; pale terrors ranged abroad,
and multitudinous death met every eye.
Androgeos, followed by a thronging band
of Greeks, first met us on our desperate way;
but heedless, and confounding friend with foe,
thus, all unchallenged, hailed us as his own :
“Haste, heroes! Are ye laggards at this hour?
Others bear off the captives and the spoil
of burning Troy. Just from the galleys ye?”
He spoke; but straightway, when no safe reply
returned, he knew himself entrapped, and fallen
into a foeman’s snare; struck dumb was he
and stopped both word and motion; as one steps,
when blindly treading a thick path of thorns,
upon a snake, and sick with fear would flee
that lifted wrath and swollen gorge of green:
so trembling did Androgeos backward fall.
At them we flew and closed them round with war;
and since they could not know the ground, and fear
had whelmed them quite, we swiftly laid them low.
Thus Fortune on our first achievement smiled;
and, flushed with victory, Cormbus cried:
“Come, friends, and follow Fortune’s finger, where
she beckons us what path deliverance lies.
Change we our shields, and these Greek emblems wear.
‘Twixt guile and valor who will nicely weigh
When foes are met? These dead shall find us arms.”
With this, he dons Androgeos’ crested helm
and beauteous, blazoned shield; and to his side
girds on a Grecian blade. Young Rhipeus next,
with Dymas and the other soldiery,
repeat the deed, exulting, and array
their valor in fresh trophies from the slain.
Now intermingled with our foes we moved,
and alien emblems wore; the long, black night
brought many a grapple, and a host of Greeks
down to the dark we hurled. Some fled away,
seeking their safe ships and the friendly shore.
Some cowards foul went clambering back again
to that vast horse and hid them in its maw.
But woe is me! If gods their help withhold,
‘t is impious to be brave. That very hour
the fair Cassandra passed us, bound in chains,
King Priam’s virgin daughter, from the shrine
and altars of Minerva; her loose hair
had lost its fillet; her impassioned eyes
were lifted in vain prayer, — her eyes alone!
For chains of steel her frail, soft hands confined.
Coroebus’ eyes this horror not endured,
and, sorrow-crazed, he plunged him headlong in
the midmost fray, self-offered to be slain,
while in close mass our troop behind him poured.
But, at this point, the overwhelming spears
of our own kinsmen rained resistless down
from a high temple-tower; and carnage wild
ensued, because of the Greek arms we bore
and our false crests. The howling Grecian band,
crazed by Cassandra’s rescue, c
harged at us
from every side; Ajax of savage soul,
the sons of Atreus, and that whole wild horde
Achilles from Dolopian deserts drew.
‘T was like the bursting storm, when gales contend,
west wind and South, and jocund wind of morn
upon his orient steeds — while forests roar,
and foam-flecked Nereus with fierce trident stirs
the dark deep of the sea. All who did hide
in shadows of the night, by our assault
surprised, and driven in tumultuous flight,
now start to view. Full well they now can see
our shields and borrowed arms, and clearly note
our speech of alien sound; their multitude
o’erwhelms us utterly. Coroebus first
at mailed Minerva’s altar prostrate lay,
pierced by Peneleus, blade; then Rhipeus fell;
we deemed him of all Trojans the most just,
most scrupulously righteous; but the gods
gave judgment otherwise. There Dymas died,
and Hypanis, by their compatriots slain;
nor thee, O Panthus, in that mortal hour,
could thy clean hands or Phoebus, priesthood save.
O ashes of my country! funeral pyre
of all my kin! bear witness that my breast
shrank not from any sword the Grecian drew,
and that my deeds the night my country died
deserved a warrior’s death, had Fate ordained.
But soon our ranks were broken; at my side
stayed Iphitus and Pelias; one with age
was Iong since wearied, and the other bore
the burden of Ulysses’ crippling wound.
Straightway the roar and tumult summoned us
to Priam’s palace,where a battle raged
as if save this no conflict else were known,
and all Troy’s dying brave were mustered there.
There we beheld the war-god unconfined;
The Greek besiegers to the roof-tops fled;
or, with shields tortoise-back, the gates assailed.
Ladders were on the walls; and round by round,
up the huge bulwark as they fight their way,
the shielded left-hand thwarts the falling spears,
the right to every vantage closely clings.
The Trojans hurl whole towers and roof-tops down
upon the mounting foe; for well they see
that the last hour is come, and with what arms
the dying must resist. Rich gilded beams,
with many a beauteous blazon of old time,
go crashing down. Men armed with naked swords
defend the inner doors in close array.
Thus were our hearts inflamed to stand and strike
for the king’s house, and to his body-guard
bring succor, and renew their vanquished powers.
A certain gate I knew, a secret way,
which gave free passage between Priam’s halls,
and exit rearward; hither, in the days
before our fall, the lone Andromache
was wont with young Astyanax to pass
in quest of Priam and her husband’s kin.
This way to climb the palace roof I flew,
where, desperate, the Trojans with vain skill
hurled forth repellent arms. A tower was there,
reared skyward from the roof-top, giving view
of Troy’s wide walls and full reconnaissance
of all Achaea’s fleets and tented field;
this, with strong steel, our gathered strength assailed,
and as the loosened courses offered us
great threatening fissures, we uprooted it
from its aerial throne and thrust it down.
It fell with instantaneous crash of thunder
along the Danaan host in ruin wide.
But fresh ranks soon arrive; thick showers of stone
rain down, with every missile rage can find.
Now at the threshold of the outer court
Pyrrhus triumphant stood, with glittering arms
and helm of burnished brass. He glittered like
some swollen viper, fed on poison-leaves,
whom chilling winter shelters underground,
till, fresh and strong, he sheds his annual scales
and, crawling forth rejuvenate, uncoils
his slimy length; his lifted gorge insults
the sunbeam with three-forked and quivering tongue.
Huge Periphas was there; Automedon,
who drove Achilles’ steeds, and bore his arms.
Then Scyros’ island-warriors assault
the palaces, and hurl reiterate fire
at wall and tower. Pyrrhus led the van;
seizing an axe he clove the ponderous doors
and rent the hinges from their posts of bronze;
he cut the beams, and through the solid mass
burrowed his way, till like a window huge
the breach yawned wide, and opened to his gaze
a vista of long courts and corridors,
the hearth and home of many an ancient king,
and Priam’s own; upon its sacred bourne
the sentry, all in arms, kept watch and ward.
Confusion, groans, and piteous turmoil
were in that dwelling; women shrieked and wailed
from many a dark retreat, and their loud cry
rang to the golden stars. Through those vast halls
the panic-stricken mothers wildly roved,
and clung with frantic kisses and embrace
unto the columns cold. Fierce as his sire,
Pyrrhus moves on; nor bar nor sentinel
may stop his way; down tumbles the great door
beneath the battering beam, and with it fall
hinges and framework violently torn.
Force bursts all bars; th’ assailing Greeks break in,
do butchery, and with men-at-arms possess
what place they will. Scarce with an equal rage
a foaming river, when its dykes are down,
o’erwhelms its mounded shores, and through the plain
rolls mountain-high, while from the ravaged farms
its fierce flood sweeps along both flock and fold.
My own eyes looked on Neoptolemus
frenzied with slaughter, and both Atreus’ sons
upon the threshold frowning; I beheld
her hundred daughters with old Hecuba;
and Priam, whose own bleeding wounds defiled
the altars where himself had blessed the fires;
there fifty nuptial beds gave promise proud
of princely heirs; but all their brightness now,
of broidered cunning and barbaric gold,
lay strewn and trampled on. The Danaan foe
stood victor, where the raging flame had failed.
But would ye haply know what stroke of doom
on Priam fell? Now when his anguish saw
his kingdom lost and fallen, his abode
shattered, and in his very hearth and home
th’ exulting foe, the aged King did bind
his rusted armor to his trembling thews, —
all vainly, — and a useless blade of steel
he girded on; then charged, resolved to die
encircled by the foe. Within his walls
there stood, beneath the wide and open sky,
a lofty altar; an old laurel-tree
leaned o’er it, and enclasped in holy shade
the statues of the tutelary powers.
Here Hecuba and all the princesses
took refuge vain within the place of prayer.
Like panic-stricken doves in some dark storm,
close-gathering they sate, and in despair
embraced their graven gods. But when the Queen
saw Priam with his youthful
harness on,
“What frenzy, O my wretched lord,” she cried,
“Arrayed thee in such arms? O, whither now?
Not such defences, nor such arm as thine,
the time requires, though thy companion were
our Hector’s self. O, yield thee, I implore!
This altar now shall save us one and all,
or we must die together.” With these words
she drew him to her side, and near the shrine
made for her aged spouse a place to cling.
But, lo! just ‘scaped of Pyrrhus’ murderous hand,
Polites, one of Priam’s sons, fled fast
along the corridors, through thronging foes
and a thick rain of spears. Wildly he gazed
across the desolate halls, wounded to death.
Fierce Pyrrhus followed after, pressing hard
with mortal stroke, and now his hand and spear
were close upon: — when the lost youth leaped forth
into his father’s sight, and prostrate there
lay dying, while his life-blood ebbed away.
Then Priam, though on all sides death was nigh,
quit not the strife, nor from loud wrath refrained:
“Thy crime and impious outrage, may the gods
(if Heaven to mortals render debt and due)
justly reward and worthy honors pay!
My own son’s murder thou hast made me see,
blood and pollution impiously throwing
upon a father’s head. Not such was he,
not such, Achilles, thy pretended sire,
when Priam was his foe. With flush of shame
he nobly listened to a suppliant’s plea
in honor made. He rendered to the tomb
my Hector’s body pale, and me did send
back to my throne a king.” With this proud word
the aged warrior hurled with nerveless arm
his ineffectual spear, which hoarsely rang
rebounding on the brazen shield, and hung
piercing the midmost boss,- but all in vain.
Then Pyrrhus: “Take these tidings, and convey
message to my father, Peleus’ son!
tell him my naughty deeds! Be sure and say
how Neoptolemus hath shamed his sires.
Now die!” With this, he trailed before the shrines
the trembling King, whose feet slipped in the stream
of his son’s blood. Then Pyrrhus’ left hand clutched
the tresses old and gray; a glittering sword
his right hand lifted high, and buried it
far as the hilt in that defenceless heart.
So Priam’s story ceased. Such final doom
fell on him, while his dying eyes surveyed
Troy burning, and her altars overthrown,
though once of many an orient land and tribe
the boasted lord. In huge dismemberment
