Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/81

 their hollow depths with female lamentation; the noise strikes the golden stars above. The terror-stricken matrons are running to and fro through the spacious courts, clinging claspingly to the gates and printing them with kisses. On presses Pyrrhus with all his father's might; neither    5 barrier of oak nor yet living guard can resist him; the door gives way under the thick strokes of the battery, and the valves are torn from their hinges and brought down. Force finds its way; the Danaans burst a passage, rush in, and slaughter those they meet, and the whole    10 wide space is flooded with soldiers. With far less fury, when the river, all foam, has broken the prison of its banks and streamed with triumphant tide over the barriers set to check it, down it comes tumbling along the corn-fields, and along the whole country sweeps away herd and stall. 15 With my own eyes I saw Neoptolemus, mad with carnage, and the two Atridæ on the palace-floor. I saw Hecuba[o] and her hundred daughters-in-law, and Priam at the altar, polluting with his blood the flames he had himself made holy. Those fifty marriage-chambers, the splendid    20 promise of children's children, doors gorgeous with barbaric gold and plundered treasure, all sank in dust. Where the fire flags, the Danaans are masters.

"Perhaps, too, you may be curious to hear the fate of Priam. When he saw his city fallen and captured, the    25 doors of his palace burst open, the foe in the heart of his home's sanctuary, poor old man! helplessly and hopelessly he puts about his shoulders, trembling with age, his armour, long disused, and girds on his unavailing sword, and is going to his doom among the thick of the foe. In    30 the midst of the palace, under the naked height of the sky, stood a great altar, and by it a bay tree of age untold, leaning over the altar and enfolding the household gods in its shade. Here about the altar Hecuba and her daughters, all helpless, like doves driven headlong down     35 by a murky tempest, huddled together and clinging to the statues of the gods, were sitting. But when she saw Priam—yes, Priam—wearing the arms of his youth—*