Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/83

 of his son's blood, wreathed his left hand in his hair, and with his right flashed forth and sheathed in his side the sword to the hilt. Such was the end of Priam's fortunes, such the fatal lot that fell upon him, with Troy blazing and Pergamus in ruins before his eyes—upon him, once       5 the haughty ruler of those many nations and kingdoms, the sovereign lord of Asia! There he lies on the shore, a gigantic trunk, a head severed from the shoulders, a body without a name.

"Now, for the first time grim horror prisoned me round    10 —I was wildered—there rose up the image of my dear father, as I saw the king, his fellow in age, breathing out his life through that ghastly wound. There rose up Creusa[o] unprotected, my house, now plundered, and the chance to which I had left my little Iulus. I cast my eyes back and     15 look about to see what strength there is round me. All had forsaken me, too tired to stay; they had leapt to the ground, or dropped helplessly into the flames. And now I was there alone. When lodged in the temple of Vesta, and crouching mutely in its darkest recess, the daughter of     20 Tyndareus[o] meets my eye; the brilliant blaze gives light to my wandering feet and ranging glance. Yes, she in her guilty fears, dreading at once the Teucrians whom the overthrow of Pergamus had made her foes, and the vengeance of the Danaans, and the wrath of the husband she              25 abandoned—she, the common fiend of Troy and of her country, had hid herself away, and was sitting in hateful solitude at the altar. My spirit kindled into flame—a fury seized me to avenge my country in its fall, and to do justice on a wretch. 'So she is to see Sparta and her        30 native Mycenæ again in safety, and is to move as a queen in a triumph of her own? She is to look upon her lord and her old home, her children and her parents, with a crowd of our Trojan ladies and Phrygian captives to wait on her? Shall it be for this that Priam has died by the      35 sword, that Troy has been burnt with fire, that the Dardan shore has gushed so oft with the sweat of blood? No, never—for though there are no proud memories to be