Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/79

 driven routed through, the gloom—thanks to our stratagem—and scattered the whole city over, rally again: they are the first to recognize the imposture of shield and weapon, and to mark the different sound of our speech. All is over—we are overwhelmed by numbers: first of        5 all, Coroebus is stretched low; his slayer Peneleos, his place of death the altar of the Goddess of Arms; slain, too, is Rhipeus, the justest and most righteous man in Troy—but heaven's will is not ours—down go Hypanis and Dymas both, shot by their friends; nor could all       10 your acts of piety, good Panthus, shield you in your fall; no, nor the fillet of Apollo on your brow. Ye ashes of Ilion, and thou, funeral fire of those I loved, witness ye that in your day of doom I shrank from no Danaan dart, no hand-to-hand encounter; nay, that had my fate been      15 to fall, my hand had earned it well. We are parted from the rest, Iphitus, Pelias, and I. Iphitus, a man on whom years were already pressing; Pelias, crippled by a wound from Ulysses—all three summoned by the shouting to Priam's palace. 20

"Here, indeed, the conflict was gigantic—just as if the rest of the war were nowhere—as if none were dying in the whole city beside: even such was the sight we saw—the war-god raging untamed, the Danaans streaming up to the roof, the door blockaded by a long penthouse of shields.     25 The scaling ladders are clasping the walls; close to the very door men are climbing, with their left hands presenting the buckler to shelter them from darts, while with their right they are clasping the battlements. The Dardans, on their part, are tearing up from the palace turret and      30 roof—such the weapons with which, in their dire extremity, in the last death-struggle, they make ready for their defence—gilded rafters, the stately ornaments of elder days, they are hurling down; while others, their swords drawn, are stationed at the doors at the bottom, and          35 guarding them in close array. The fire revived within me, to bring succour to the royal roof, and relieve those brave men, and breathe new daring into the vanquished.