Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/73

 and black poison, and raising all the while dreadful cries to heaven—like the bellowing, when a wounded bull darts away from the altar, dashing off from his neck the ill-aimed axe. But the two serpents escape glidingly to the temple top, making for the height where ruthless Tritonia     5 is enthroned, and there shelter themselves under the goddess's feet and the round of her shield. Then, indeed, every breast is cowed and thrilled through by a new and strange terror—every voice cries that Laocoon has been duly punished for his crime, profaning the sacred wood     10 with his weapon's point, and hurling his guilty lance against the back of the steed. Let the image be drawn to her temple, and let prayer be made to the goddess, is the general cry—we break through the walls and open the town within. All gird them to the work, putting     15 wheels to run easily under its feet, and throwing lengths of hempen tie round its neck. It scales the walls, that fateful engine, with its armed brood—boys and unwedded girls, standing about it, chant sacred hymns, delighted to touch the rope. In it moves, rolling with threatening brow  20 into the heart of the city. O my country! O Ilion, home of the gods! O ye, Dardan towers, with your martial fame! Yes—four times on the gateway's very threshold it stopped, four times the arms rattled in its womb. On, However, we press, unheeding, in the blindness of our     25 frenzy, and lodge the ill-starred portent in our hallowed citadel. Even then Cassandra[o] unseals to speak of future fate those lips which by the god's command no Trojan ever believed—while we, alas! we, spend the day that was to be our last in crowning the temples of the gods     30 with festal boughs the whole city through.

"Meantime round rolls the sky, and on comes night from the ocean, wrapping in its mighty shade earth and heaven and Myrmidon wiles: through the city the Trojans are hushed in careless repose, their tired limbs in the arms of     35 sleep. Already was the Argive host on its way from Tenedos, through the friendly stillness of the quiet moon, making for the well-known shore, when see! the royal