The Aeneid (13 page)

                I went where I was driven by the words of Panthus and the
                will of the gods, into the fighting and the flames, where the grim
                Fury of war called me, where I could hear the din of battle
                
and the shouts rising to heaven. I came across Rhipeus in the
340         moonlight and Epytus, huge in his armour, and they threw in
                their lot with me. Hypanis and Dymas too came to my side, and
                so did Coroebus, son of Mygdon. He had happened to come to
                Troy just in these last few days, burning with mad love for
                Cassandra, and was fighting as son-in-law on the side of Priam
                and the Trojans. It was his misfortune not to heed the advice his
                bride had given him in her prophetic frenzy.

                When I saw them standing shoulder to shoulder and spoiling
                for battle, I addressed them in these words: ‘You are the bravest
350         of all our warriors, and your bravery is in vain. If your desire is
                fixed to follow a man who fights to the end, you see how things
                stand with us. All the gods on whom this empire once depended
                have left their shrines and their altars. You are rushing to defend
                a burning city. Let us die. Let us rush into the thick of the
                fighting. The one safety for the defeated is to have no hope of
                safety.’

                These words added madness to their courage. From that
                moment, like wolves foraging blindly on a misty night, driven
                out of their lairs by a ravening hunger that gives them no rest
                and leaving their young behind to wait for them with their
                throats all dry, we ran the gauntlet of the enemy to certain
360         death, holding our course through the middle of the city, with
                the hollow blackness of dark night hanging over us. Who could
                unfold the horrors of that night? Who could speak of such
                slaughter? Who could weep tears to match that suffering? It was
                the fall of an ancient city that had long ruled an empire. The
                bodies of the dead lay through all its streets and houses and the
                sacred shrines of its gods. Nor was it only Trojans who paid
                their debts in blood; sometimes valour came back even to the
                hearts of the defeated and Greeks were cut down in their hour
                of triumph. Bitter grief was everywhere. Everywhere there was
                fear, and death in many forms.

370         The first of the Greeks to come to meet us was Androgeos,
                and he had a large contingent of men with him. Not knowing
                who we were, but thinking we were allies, he called out first to
                us: ‘Move along there, friends! Why are you so slow? What is
                keeping you back? The citadel is on fire, and everyone else is
                
pillaging and plundering. Have you just arrived from your tall
                ships?’ He spoke, and when no convincing answer came, he
                instantly realized that he had fallen amongst enemies. He was
                stupefied and started backwards without another word. He was
380         like a man going through rough briers who steps on a snake
                with all his weight without seeing it, and starts back in sudden
                panic as it raises its wrath and puffs up its blue-green neck: that
                is how Androgeos recoiled in terror at the sight of us. We fell
                upon them and surrounded them with a wall of weapons. They
                did not know the ground, and were stricken with fear, so we
                cut them down wherever we caught them. Fortune gave us a
                fair wind for our first efforts, and Coroebus, his spirits raised
                by our success, cried out: ‘Come comrades, let us take the first
                road Fortune shows us to safety, and go where she shows that
390         she approves. Let us change shields with the Greeks and put on
                their insignia. Is this treachery or is it courage? Who would ask
                in dealing with an enemy? The Greeks themselves will provide
                our armour.’

                He spoke, and then put on the plumed helmet of Androgeos
                and his richly blazoned shield, and buckled the Greek sword to
                his side. Rhipeus cheerfully followed suit, then Dymas himself
                and the whole band. Every man armed himself with the spoils
                he had just taken, and, moving through the city, we mingled
                with the Greeks and fought many battles under gods not our
                own, clashing blindly in the night, and many a Greek did we send
                down to Orcus. Some scattered towards their ships, running for
400         the safety of the shore. Some climbed back in abject fear into
                the huge horse, and hid themselves in its familiar belly.

                But no man can put trust in gods who are opposed to him.
                Suddenly there was Cassandra, the maiden daughter of Priam,
                being dragged from the temple of Minerva, from her very sanctuary,
                with hair streaming and her burning eyes raised in vain to
                heaven, but only her eyes – they had tied her gentle hands.
                Coroebus could not endure the sight of this, but a wild frenzy
                took him and he hurled himself into the middle of the enemy to
                his death. We all went after him and ran upon their spears where
410         they were thickest. First we were attacked by our own men and
                overwhelmed by their missiles thrown from the high gable of
                
the temple roof, and the sight of our armour and the confusion
                caused by our Greek crests brought pitiable slaughter on us.
                Then the Greeks raised furious alarm at the rescue of Cassandra
                and gathered from every quarter to attack us, Ajax fiercest of
                them all, the two sons of Atreus and the whole army of the
                Dolopians. It was as though a whirlwind had burst and opposing
                winds were clashing, the west, the south, and the east wind
                glorying in the horses of the morning, with woods wailing and
420         wild Nereus churning up the sea from its depths. Then also
                appeared all those Greeks who had been routed by our stratagem
                in the darkness of the night and scattered through the city. They
                realized that our shields and weapons were not our own and
                did not accord with the words on our lips. In an instant they
                overwhelmed us by the sheer weight of their numbers. Coroebus
                was the first to die. He fell by the right hand of Peneleus and lay
                there face down on the altar of Minerva, goddess mighty in
                arms. Rhipeus also fell. Of all the Trojans he was the most
                righteous, the greatest lover of justice. But the gods took their
                own decision. Hypanis and Dymas were cut down by their
430         fellow-Trojans, and as for you, Panthus, you found as you fell
                that your great devotion and the ribbon you wore as priest of
                Apollo were no protection. I call to witness the ashes of Troy. I
                call upon the flames in which my people died. In the hour of
                your fall I did not flinch from the weapons of the Greeks or
                from anything they could do. If it had been my fate to fall, my
                right hand fully earned it.

                From here we were swept along in the fighting, Iphitus and
                Pelias with me. Iphitus was no longer young, and Pelias had
                been slowed by a wound he had received from Ulixes. The noise
                of shouting drew us straight to Priam’s palace and there we
                found the fighting so heavy that it seemed there were no battles
                anywhere else, that this was the only place in the city where men
440         were dying. We saw Mars, the irresistible God of War, Greeks
                rushing to the palace, men with shields locked over their backs
                packing the threshold, ladders hooked to the walls and men
                struggling to climb them right against the very doorposts, thrusting
                up their shields on their left arms to protect themselves while
                their right hands gripped the top of the walls. The Trojans for
                
their part were tearing down their towers and the roofs of all
                their buildings. They saw the end was near, and these were the
                weapons they were preparing to defend themselves with in the
                very moment of death, rolling down on the heads of their
                enemies the gilded beams and richly ornamented ceilings of
                their ancestors. Down on the ground others were standing
450         shoulder to shoulder with drawn swords blocking the doorway.
                My spirit was renewed and I rushed to bring relief to the
                palace of my king, to help its defenders, to put heart into men
                who were defeated.

                There was a forgotten entrance at the rear, a secret doorway
                entering into a passage which joined the different parts of
                Priam’s palace. While the kingdom of Troy still stood, poor
                Andromache often used to come this way unattended to visit
                Hector’s parents, taking her son Astyanax to see his grandfather.
                I slipped through this door and climbed to the highest gable of
                the roof, from where the doomed Trojans were vainly hurling
460         missiles. There was a tower rising sheer towards the stars from
                the top of the palace roof, from which we used to look out over
                the whole of Troy, the Greek fleet and the camp of the Achaeans.
                We set about this tower and worked round it with iron bars
                where there was a join we could open up above the top floor of
                the palace. Having loosened it from its deep bed in the walls,
                we rocked it and suddenly sent it toppling, spreading instant
                destruction and crushing great columns of Greeks. But others
                still came on and the hail of rocks and other missiles never
                slackened.

                In the portico in front of the palace, on the very threshold,
470         Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, whom men also call Neoptolemus, was
                rampaging and the light flashed on the bronze of his weapons.
                He was like a snake which has fed on poisonous herbs and
                hidden all winter in the cold earth, but now it emerges into the
                light, casts its slough and is renewed. Glistening with youth, it
                coils its slithering back and lifts its breast high to the sun with
                its triple tongue flickering from its mouth. Huge Periphas was
                with him, and Automedon, the charioteer and armour-bearer
                of Achilles. With him too were all the young warriors of Scyros
                coming to attack the palace and throwing firebrands on to the
480         
roof. Pyrrhus himself at their head seized a double-headed axe
                and with it smashed the hard stone of the threshold, wrenching
                the bronze-plated doorposts from their sockets. He then hacked
                a panel out of the mighty timbers of the door and broke a gaping
                hole which gave them a view into the house. There before their
                eyes were the long colonnades and the inner chambers. There
                before their eyes was the heart of the palace of Priam and the
                ancient kings. They saw armed men standing in the doorway,
                but inside all was confusion and lamentation, and deep into the
                house the hollow chambers rang with the wailing of women,
                and their cries rose to strike the golden stars. Frightened mothers
490         were wandering through the great palace, clinging to the doorposts
                and kissing them. But Pyrrhus pressed on with all the
                violence of his father Achilles, and no bolts or guards could hold
                him. The door gave way under repeated battering and the posts
                he had dislodged from their sockets fell to the ground. Brute
                force made the breach and the Greeks went storming through,
                butchering the guards who stood in their way and filling the
                whole house with soldiers. No river foaming in spate was ever
                like this, bursting its banks and leaving its channel to overwhelm
                everything in its path with its swirling current, as it bears down
                furiously on ploughed fields in a great wave, and cattle and their
500         pens are swept all over the plains. I myself saw Neoptolemus in
                an orgy of killing and both the sons of Atreus on the threshold.
                I saw Hecuba with a hundred women, her daughters and the
                wives of her sons. I saw Priam’s blood all over the altar, polluting
                the flame which he himself had sanctified. Down fell the fifty
                bedchambers with all the hopes for generations yet to come,
                and down came the proud doorposts with their spoils of barbaric
                gold. Everything not claimed by fire was now held by Greeks.

                Perhaps you may also ask how Priam died. When he saw the
                capture and fall of his city, the doors of his palace torn down
510         and his enemy in the innermost sanctuary of his home, although
                he could achieve nothing, the old man buckled his armour long
                unused on shoulders trembling with age, girt on his feeble sword
                and made for the thick of the fight, looking for his death. In the
                middle of the palace, under the naked vault of heaven, there
                stood a great altar, and nearby an ancient laurel tree leaning
                
over it and enfolding the household gods in its shade. Here,
                vainly embracing the images of the gods, Hecuba and her daughters
                were sitting flocked round the altar, like doves driven down
                in a black storm. When Hecuba saw that Priam had now put on
520         his youthful armour, ‘O my poor husband,’ she cried, ‘this is
                madness. Why have you put on this armour? Where can you
                go? This is not the sort of help we need. You are not the defender
                we are looking for. Not even my Hector, if he were here now
                …Just come here and sit by me. This altar will protect us all,
                or you will die with us.’ As she spoke she took the old man to
                her and led him to a place by the holy altar.