Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/80

 "A door there was, a hidden entrance, a thoroughfare through Priam's palace, a postern which you leave in the rear; by it the hapless Andromache,[o] while yet the throne was standing, used often to repair unattended to her husband's    5 parents, and pull the boy Astyanax into his grand-sire's presence. Through it I make my way to the summit of the roof, whence the wretched Teucrians were hurling darts without avail. There was a tower standing precipitous, its roof reared high to the stars, whence could be seen all Troy, and the Danaan fleet, and the Achæan camp;     10 to this we applied our weapons, just where the lofty flooring made the joining insecure; we wrench it from its eminence, we have toppled it over—down it falls at once, a huge crashing ruin, and tumbles far and wide over the Danaan ranks. But others fill their place; while stones and every     15 kind of missile keep raining unabated.

"There in the entry, at the very gate, is Pyrrhus[o] in his glory, gleaming with spear and sword, and with all the brilliance of steel. Even as against the daylight a serpent gorged with baleful herbage, whom winter's cold of late    20 was keeping swollen underground, now, his skin shed, in new life and in the beauty of youth, rears his breast erect, and wreathes his shining scales, towering to the sun, and flashes in his mouth his three-forked tongue. With him gigantic Periphas and Automedon, his armour-bearer,     25 once Achilles' charioteer, with him the whole chivalry of Scyros press to the walls, and hurl up fire to the roof. Himself among the foremost, a two-edged axe in hand, is bursting through the stubborn door and forcing from their hinges the valves copper-sheathed; see! now he has     30 cut out a plank and delved into that stout heart of oak, and made a wide gaping window in the middle. There is seen the house within, and the long vista of the hall; there is seen the august retirement of Priam and the monarchs of past days, and armed warriors are disclosed    35 standing in the entrance.

"But the palace within is a confused scene of shrieking and piteous disorder; the vaulted chambers wail from