Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/78

 will fit us. Trick or strength of hand, who, in dealing with an enemy, asks which? They shall arm us against themselves.' So saying, he puts on Androgeos' crested helm, and his shield with its goodly device, and fastens to his side an Argive sword. So does Rhipeus, so Dymas    5 too, and all our company, with youthful exultation, each arming himself out of the new-won spoils. On we go, mixing with the Greeks, under auspices not our own, and many are the combats in which we engage in the blindness of night, many the Danaans whom we send down to    10 the shades. They fly on all hands: some to the ships, making at full speed for safety on the shore; others, in the debasement of terror, climb once more the horse's huge sides, and hide themselves in the womb they knew so well. 15

"Alas! it is not for man to throw himself on the gods against their will!

"Lo! there was a princess of Priam's house being dragged by her dishevelled hair from the temple, from the very shrine of Minerva, Cassandra, straining her flashing    20 eyes to heaven in vain—her eyes—for those delicate hands were confined by manacles. The sight was too much for the infuriate mind of Coroebus: rushing to his doom, he flung himself into the middle of the hostile force. One and all, we follow, close our ranks, and fall on. And     25 now, first from the temple's lofty top we are overwhelmed by a shower of our own countrymen's darts, and a most piteous carnage ensues, all along of the appearance of our arms and our mistaken Grecian crests. Then the Danaans, groaning and enraged at the rescue of the maiden, rally     30 from all sides, and fall on us. Ajax, in all his fury, and the two sons of Atreus, and the whole array of the Dolopes—even as one day when the tempest is broken loose, and wind meets wind—west, and south, and east exulting in his orient steeds—there is crashing in the woods, and     35 Nereus,[o] in a cloud of foam, is plying his ruthless trident, and stirring up the sea from its very bottom. Such of the foe, moreover, as in the darkness of night we had