Aeneas and his followers have been welcomed to Carthage by Dido, the city’s queen. After a sumptuous banquet, Dido asks Aeneas to recount the tragic story of the sack of Troy, and of the Trojans’ wanderings since.

The company was hushed. All eyes were on Aeneas.
From his couch, his place of honour,
he now spoke these opening words.

‘Your majesty commands me to recall
a grief unspeakable: the way the Greeks
destroyed Troy’s wealth and brought doom on the kingdom.
I saw those piteous sights myself, and played no little part in them.
Why, even Myrmidons, Dolopians,
or some foot soldier in the ranks of brutal Ulysses
could not hold back their tears in speaking of such things.
Look now: how swiftly dewy night is draining from the sky;
the setting stars are telling us it’s time to sleep.
But if you really want to know about our downfall;
if in few words you wish to hear the final agony of Troy,
although I shudder to remember, and my mind
recoils in horror from the task, I will begin.

The Greeks were broken by the war, frustrated by the fates.
So many years had slipped away. But now their generals,
divinely aided by Athena’s art, constructed an enormous wooden horse:
within its belly, rows and rows of planks made out of deal.
It was a votive offering for their safe return to Greece,
so they pretended; and the rumour got about.
Within the gloom of its great flanks, they furtively
secreted their crack troops, and deep inside
the belly of the beast they crammed their soldiers, armed.

From Troy there is a view across to Tenedos.
The island is well known. In Priam’s time it was a wealthy place,
but now there’s just a bay. The harbour isn’t safe for ships.
The Greeks sailed there, and hid along its barren shore.
We thought they’d gone; that they were heading for Mycenae on the wind.
The land of Teucer was released from its long misery!
The gates were opened wide; and with what joy
the people flooded out to view the Greeks’ abandoned camp,
its posts deserted, and the empty beach.
Here the Dolopians had mustered; here merciless Achilles pitched his tent;
the fleet was anchored there; and there, the battlefield.
Some, stupefied at chaste Athena’s fatal gift,
surveyed the giant horse in wonderment.

Thymoetes first proposed that we should drag the thing
inside the walls and place it in the citadel.
Was he a traitor? Or did Troy’s fate incline that way?
But Capys and some wiser heads advised
that either we should hurl this suspect Grecian gift
headlong into the sea; or light a fire underneath;
or pierce the belly of the beast and probe its hiding place.
The crowd, uncertain, split into two factions.

Just then the priest Laocoön, ahead of an enormous crowd,
came rushing in a passion from the citadel, and shouted from a distance:
“Are you raving mad, you poor deluded citizens?
You really think the enemy has sailed?
Is any gift the Greeks bequeath untouched by treachery?
Is Ulysses well known for kindnesses like this?
No, either Greeks are hidden in this wooden frame,
or else it is an engine built to overtop our walls,
spy on our houses and come down upon the city from above;
or else they’ve hidden some deception there.
My fellow Trojans, do not trust the horse.
Whatever this thing is, I fear the Greeks;
I fear them even when they bring us gifts.”

With these words, and with mighty force,
he hurled his giant spear straight at the horse’s flank
and at the joints which held the curving belly of the beast.
The spear stuck, quivering; the belly trembled
and the space within rang hollow, giving forth a groan.
And had the gods’ commands and our own minds
not been perverted, that man would have driven us
to violate with steel the Grecian hiding-places,
Troy would still be standing,
Priam’s lofty fortress would remain!

But then a group of Trojan shepherds, shouting loudly,
dragged before the king a youth, hands tied behind his back.
He’d planned all this; his aim, to open Troy to the invaders.
Though a stranger, he had placed himself where he’d be found,
knowing full well that either he’d succeed in plying his deceit,
or else, for certain, he’d be killed.
Young men of Troy came running from all sides,
eager to see the captive and competing in their taunts.
Now hear this piece of Grecian treachery,
this prime example of their utter wickedness…

He stood, surrounded by the watching crowd, unarmed and frightened.
Staring at the mass of Trojans, back and forth,
“Alas,” he cried, “what land, what seas can now receive me?
What will be my wretched fate at last?
I have no place amongst the Greeks
and now the Trojans, even, clamour for my blood.”

At this lament, we changed our tone; we checked our violence.
We urged the man to speak, to tell us from what tribe he sprang,
what news he brought. “Tell us,” we cried,
“what you are hoping for now you’re our prisoner.”

The man at last put fear aside and spoke.
“Your majesty, whatever happens, I will tell you all.
I can’t deny that I am Greek. My name is Sinon.
But if malicious Fortune’s hands have fashioned me for misery,
they have not made of me a liar.
Perhaps you’ve heard of Palamedes, son of Belus, and the glory of his name?
He was against the war, and for that stance the Greeks,
by making bogus accusations, had him killed:
an action they regret, now that the innocent is dead.
He was our relative. My father was a poor man
but he sent me, very young, to fight in Palamedes’ company.
For when that man was powerful, and had the ear of kings,
we too enjoyed a certain reputation and renown.
But when he met his death — you know the tale of Ulysses’ foul trickery —
my life dragged on in gloom and grief,
indignant at the fate my friend, an innocent, had met.
I could not stay silent. I was mad with rage.
I vowed that if I ever made it back, victorious, to Argos,
where I was born, and should the chance occur,
I would avenge the death myself.
My words aroused fierce hatred — my first fall from grace.
Now Ulysses, to frighten me, made further allegations,
sowing dark rumours in the crowd, seeking the means
to prove my guilt and clear his own.
He would not rest until, with Calchas his accomplice…
but why spin out such an unwelcome tale?
Why waste your time? If all Greeks are the same to you,
and if you’ve heard enough, just punish me at once.
The Ithacan would thank you for it; and the sons of Atreus
would pay good money for my death!”

Consumed by curiosity, we had to know more,
naïvely innocent of wickedness so great,
of trickery so subtle in the Greeks.

So he continued, trembling with false emotion:
“Often the Greeks longed to abandon Troy,
beat a retreat, and go. They were tired of the long war.
If only they had done so! Sometimes a fierce storm closed them in,
or a gale from the south scared them from leaving.
But most important: when this horse, made out of maple beams,
was ready, storm clouds rumbled through the sky.
We were perplexed. We sent Eurypylus to ask its meaning
of Apollo’s oracle, and from the shrine he brought these chilling words:
A virgin’s blood appeased the winds
when first you Greeks arrived on Trojan shores.
Greek blood must once again be shed to gain a safe return.

And when the crowd heard this, they were astounded.
A cold shudder ran right through them to their bones.
Who was the fated one? Whom did Apollo claim?
The Ithacan’s great voice called Calchas out into our midst:
What is it that the gods demand? And many understood
that I would be the victim of that schemer’s evil crime.
They saw what was to come; and they said nothing.

For ten days the seer sat silent in his tent.
He would not speak a name; would not condemn a man to death.
At last, as if reluctantly, and forced to it by Ulysses’ protracted noise,
he utters… and condemns me to the altar. It was all arranged.
And everyone approved. The fate each man had feared, if coming to himself,
each could endure, now ruin had been switched to someone else.

The dreadful day approached. The sacred rites were ready,
with the salted meal, the ribbons for my temples.
But — I confess it — I broke free, I burst my chains,
and hid all night in a muddy pond, obscured by reeds,
waiting till the Greeks set sail, if they were going.
I have no hope now that I’ll ever see
my old homeland again, nor my sweet children,
nor my father, whom I miss so much.
The Greeks, perhaps, will make them pay the price for my escape,
and by their deaths, poor souls, absolve this crime of mine.
I beg you, by the gods above, by all the powers that know the truth,
and by whatever faith remains untainted among mortals,
pity this distress; pity the one who bears it undeserving!”

He wept. We pitied him, and spared his life.
Priam himself commanded that the man’s tight bonds and fetters
be removed, and kindly spoke to him:
“Whoever you may be, forget the Greeks that you have lost;
you’re one of us now. And yet answer me this question, truly:
what is the meaning of this giant horse? who is responsible?
what is its purpose? a religious offering? a war machine?”

To these words Sinon, practised in the arts of Greek deceit,
raised to the stars his liberated hands.

“You everlasting fires,” he cried, “and you, divine and sacred majesties,
you are my witnesses; and you, those altars and accursed swords
which I escaped, and headbands of the gods I wore as victim:
allow that I may break the solemn law which binds me to the Greeks;
allow that I may hate them, and reveal the truths they’d rather hide.
I am no longer bound by laws made in my homeland.
Only keep your promises, you men of Troy,
and when you are preserved, hold to your faith
if what I say proves true and you gain greatly from it!

Once the war had started, all Greek hopes and expectations
rested on Athena’s help. But from the moment Ulysses, that criminal,
and Diomedes tore her fateful image from its holy shrine,
slaughtered the castle guards, and dared to bloody with their hands
the ribbons on the virgin goddess’ statue which they’d robbed,
from then those hopes receded, ebbed away.
Their strength was broken now Athena was against them,
which she made plain with signs and portents.
For no sooner was the statue placed within their camp
than from its upraised eyes there burst forth flickering flames
and salty sweat ran down over its limbs.
Three times — I tell you in amazement — there leapt up
a glowing apparition of the goddess, shield and spear a-quiver.
Calchas prophesied at once that they must put to sea,
in flight, that Troy would never fall to Greek assaults
unless the Greeks repaired to Argos for new omens,
later bringing back Athena’s image which they’d shipped away.
They’re out at sea now, making for Mycenae with the wind behind them,
off to get recruits and more gods on their side.
Then they’ll be here again, unlooked for. So Calchas reads the signs.

This horse, at Calchas’ warning, has been made to stand in for the image
and to expiate its stealing and the insult to Athena.
Calchas told the Greeks to make a thing of interlocking timbers
so enormous, reaching to the sky,
that it could never enter by the city gates, be dragged within the walls,
to bring to Troy protection in your ancient faith.
Should any Trojan hand assault this homage to Athena, so he prophesied,
— would that the gods should visit such a fate on Calchas ! —
absolute destruction would descend on Priam’s empire
and the Trojans. But if you brought the horse into your city,
then the tide of war would turn and Troy advance up to Mycenae’s walls.
A dreadful fate would then await our children!”

Through his cunning Sinon lied his way into our trust.
We were ensnared by guile, by counterfeited tears:
Trojans whom neither Diomedes nor Achilles conquered,
nor ten long years of war, nor their one thousand ships!

But now another portent, yet more frightful,
fell on our unhappy, unsuspecting people and disquieted our minds.
Laocoön, who was Neptune’s priest that day, as drawn by lot,
was killing a great bull before the customary altars,
when from Tenedos
two snakes came swimming side by side across the tranquil sea.
I shudder to recall it: coiling and uncoiling,
their bellies rising with the swell, their blood-red crests topping the waves,
they headed for the shore. Their great lengths skimmed the foam behind,
huge backs folding and twisting;
we heard the noise they made churning the water.
And now they reached the land, their blood-shot eyes a-blaze,
quivering tongues licking their hissing mouths.
We paled at the sight, and scattered.
They went straight for Laocoön.
First, each snake entwined itself around the little bodies
of the priest’s two sons, and with its fangs gorged on their helpless limbs.
Then, as Laocoön advanced to save his children, weapons in hand,
they seized him too and bound him tight,
twice round the waist, twice with their scaly skin about his throat,
their heads and upraised necks towering above him.
He meanwhile was fighting with both hands to break the knots,
his priestly headbands steeped in gore and covered in black venom.
He uttered hideous cries to heaven, like a wounded bull
who has escaped the altar, shaking from its neck the ill-directed axe.
Gliding away, the snakes sought out unmerciful Athena’s shrine
high in the citadel, and nestled there
beneath her feet and in the circle of her shield.

Then a new terror crept into our quaking hearts,
and people said Laocoön was rightly punished for his crime;
he had profaned the sacred oak, and hurled his cursèd spear into its body.
“Drag up the image to Athena’s house,” they cried. “Placate her holiness.”

We breached the walls and overturned the city’s battlements.
Everyone helped; under the creature’s feet they placed rollers
and cords of hemp were looped around its neck.
The death machine ascended to the walls, chock-full of soldiers.
Maidens and boys surrounded it, chanting holy songs,
delighted just to touch the rope. Up it smoothly moved
and made its fateful entrance to the city.
Oh my country! Ilium, home of the gods,
your mighty battlements famous in war!
Four times the horse stopped at the threshold of the walls.
Four times the armour in its belly clashed.
But we pressed furiously on, blind to the consequence.
We placed the dreadful monster in our holy citadel.
At this, Cassandra raised her voice, predicting doom;
but Trojans never credited her words. That was a god’s command.
We, miserable people, living out our final day,
wrapped festal boughs around the sacred shrines throughout the city.
 
Meanwhile, the sky revolves. Night rises swiftly from the sea,
enfolding in its mighty shadow heaven, earth — and Greek duplicity.
Throughout the silent town the Trojans are at rest;
sleep holds their weary limbs.
From Tenedos Greek ships in tight formation slip their moorings.
Under a friendly, silent moon they make for a familiar shore,
their royal flagship leading with a beacon.
Sinon, whom the gods’ malign instruction has protected,
stealthily slides back the planks of pine
and frees the Greeks imprisoned in the horse’s belly.
From the wooden cavern, sliding down the lowered rope
and glad to breathe the open air again,
emerge Thessandrus, Sthenelus and fearsome Ulysses,
then Acamas and Thoas,
Pyrrhus and Machaon,
Menelaus and Epeos, who devised the plot.
They spread out into Troy, the city buried deep in sleep and wine.
They kill the guards, and at the open gates
greet comrades waiting for them, and combine their troops.

It was the hour of the first rest: that gift from heaven,
stealing over tired mortals, which they find most sweet.
I dreamt that Hector stood before my eyes,
most sorrowful, and shedding floods of tears,
his body mutilated by Achilles’ chariot
— as once it had been, in the days gone by — and black with dirt and gore,
his swollen feet cut by their leather thongs.
Ah, what a sight he was! How different from that Hector
who returned to Troy clad in Achilles’ spoils,
who torched Greek ships with Trojan flames.
His beard was ragged, and his hair matted with blood.
He bore the many wounds he’d got around Troy’s walls.
I dreamt I wept myself, greeting him first, and saying, in my grief,
“Light of the Trojans and our surest hope, where have you been so long?
How we have missed you, Hector! Say from what shores you’ve come.
So many of your family are dead. Troy’s sufferings are countless.
With what joy our weary eyes behold you!
What act of shame has marred your handsome face?
Why do I see these wounds?”

He said nothing, seeming not to heed my idle questions.
Then, from deep within his chest, he uttered a great sigh.
“Son of a goddess, flee from here!” he cried. “Escape the flames!
The enemy controls our walls; from its great height
our Troy has fallen. Priam and our country have what they deserve.
If strength of hand — my hand — could save Troy’s towers,
they would be saved. Troy now entrusts to you
her sacred things, her household gods. Go, take them with you.
They must share your fortunes. Seek for them
that mighty city you shall found at last
when you have wandered on the sea.” Those were his words.
And then it seemed that from our city’s inner sanctuary
his hands brought forth the priestly headbands
and the goddess of the hearth, with her undying fire.

Meanwhile, throughout the city there was lamentation and confusion.
Though my father’s house, where I was sleeping,
was secluded, screened by trees,
the dreadful noise of war came to me ever more clearly.
I shook myself from sleep and climbed onto the roof.
I stood there, straining my ears to listen.
The sound was like a fire which engulfs a cornfield
when a gale is blowing from the south; or when
a raging torrent from a mountain river floods the fields,
destroys the hopeful crops and wastes the oxen’s labour,
dragging down forests with it; the shepherd, puzzled, awestruck,
clambers up a rock and hears the roar.

The treachery the Greeks had practised was now clear.
Deiphobus’s mansion crashed down under towering flames.
Ucalegon, his neighbour, had his house a-blaze.
Looking out to sea, I saw the Hellespont reflect the flames.
I heard the shouts of men, the blare of trumpets.
Frantically, I grabbed my weapons, knowing how little use they were,
but desperate to get a fighting force together
and with them charge up to the citadel.
Madness and rage were driving me;
how glorious, I thought, to die in battle!

Just as I was leaving, here was Panthus, breathless, at my door:
priest of Apollo on the citadel, escaping the Greek swords,
in his own hands carrying the holy symbols of our vanquished gods,
dragging his little grandchild with him. He was frantic.
“Where is the fiercest fighting, Panthus? What stronghold could we seize?”
At once, and with a groan, he answered,
“Our last day has come. Our doom is certain.
Trojans and the city are no more.
Our former glories, in his anger, Jupiter has passed to Greece.
Troy is ablaze; the Greeks are masters of it.
At the citadel, the horse spews out armed men.
Triumphant Sinon, to insult us, spreads the flames.
Greek troops in thousands hold the open gates,
as many as came over from Mycenae.
Others block the narrow lanes, with weapons drawn:
a solid line of steel, sword-points flashing, ready to slaughter.
Our front line of sentries, even, are not fighting back;
there is no sign of last resistance.”

Panthus’ words came to me like a message from the gods.
They drove me to the flames,
the clash of swords, the brutal battleground,
the howls and shouts of fighters rising skyward.
In the moonlight, comrades joined me:
Rhipeus and Epytus, that valiant soldier,
Hypanis, Dymas, the boy Coroebus, son of Mygdon…
As it chanced, Coroebus had just come to Troy,
burning with mad passion for Cassandra,
to help her father and the Trojans as a hopeful son-in-law.
Unlucky man, not to have heeded her prophetic words!

I saw these men close ranks, ready for battle, and I spoke:
“You are brave lads, against these odds!
If you’re determined to be with me, to put up a final fight,
see how our cause now stands.
The gods, by whom this empire was sustained,
have gone. They’ve left their shrines and altars empty
and the city you are fighting for is burning.
Let us die together, in the thick of it.
The only hope of the defeated is to hope for nothing!”

This raised their youthful spirits to a fury
and, like ravening wolves crazy with hunger,
blindly driven from their lairs in a black fog,
their cubs at home awaiting their return, thirsting for blood,
we charged the enemy, our weapons drawn,
knowing for certain we were going to die,
and fought our way up to the citadel;
the cloak of darkness gave us some protection.
Unspeakable, the havoc and the carnage of that night;
our anguish plumbed the depths of any quantity of tears.
Ancient Troy, supreme for many years, was ruined.
Lifeless bodies lay about the streets and in the houses,
at the doorways of the temples of the gods.
Nor was it only Trojans who were killed.
Courage returned sometimes to the defeated;
Greeks in their triumph were cut down as well.
Grief, panic, death in all its forms were everywhere.

First, we came upon Androgeos, leading a horde of Greeks.
He wrongly thought our group was on his side
and called out in a friendly voice,
“Hey, get a move on, comrades! What’s been keeping you?
The rest are pillaging and burning Troy;
have you just got here from the ships?”
He heard no friendly answer. He knew at once
that he had fallen among enemies.
Shocked into silence, he retreated.
Like one who, walking on firm ground amid rough briars,
stands on an unseen snake and shrinks back, terrified,
to see the angry creature rear up,
puffing out the purple blotches on its neck:
Androgeos in terror backed away.
We charged, surrounding them with close-ranked swords.
They were surprised, and panicked; they didn’t know the ground.
We slew them all. Fortune favoured our first efforts.
Greatly daring, flushed with our success, Coroebus shouted,
“Brothers, Fortune smiles on us and points the way; let’s follow her!
I say we change our shields and don Greek uniforms.
Deceit or bravery: who knows in war?
Our enemies themselves will give us arms.”
So saying, he put on Androgeos’ plumed helmet,
took his decorated shield and fastened at his side the dead man’s sword.
Rhipeus did likewise, and Dymas, and all the lads.
Elated, each one armed himself with new-found spoils.
On we moved, amongst the enemy and under foreign gods’ protection,
in the darkness fighting hand to hand, time and again,
dispatching many Greeks. Some scattered to their ships,
and swiftly made for safer shores; some cowards,
terrified, climbed back inside the giant horse
and hid in its familiar belly.
  
Alas, we may not trust the gods for anything against their will!
Here was Cassandra, Priam’s daughter, being dragged with streaming hair
down from the temple and Athena’s shrine,
lifting her burning eyes in vain to heaven —
her eyes, because her straining hands were bound.
Coroebus couldn’t bear the sight; it drove him witless.
Fatally, he hurled himself straight at Cassandra’s captors.
We all followed, rushing at them in a pack, our weapons drawn.
But now our allies on the temple roof,
confused by foreign armour and the Greek crests on our helmets,
hurled missiles down on us and overwhelmed us,
causing pitiful and useless slaughter.
Then the Greeks, enraged to see Cassandra taken from them,
mustered from all sides and fell upon us:
Ajax — fiercest of them all — and Agamemnon, Menelaus
and the whole Greek host. It was as if
a hurricane had caused opposing winds to clash
and make the forest groan: West against South against exultant East
(the wind that drives the horses of the dawn). Nereus, steeped in foam
and brandishing his trident, stirs the seas to fury from their lower depths.
Back to the fight came some whom by our cunning
we had routed in the dark and driven to the corners of the town.
They recognised our shields now, and the weapons which had tricked them;
now they marked our foreign accents. They outnumbered us at once.
Coroebus was the first to fall, cut down by Peneleus at Athena’s altar.
Rhipeus was killed: most upright of the Trojans,
most observant in the cause of justice; but the gods willed otherwise.
Dynas and Hypanis both perished, stabbed by friendly weapons.
Nor could your great goodness, Panthus,
nor Apollo’s sacred headbands break your fall.

Alas, my city, Troy in ashes, and my comrades’ only funeral pyre!
Be witness that, the night of your destruction,
I avoided neither clash of weapons nor the hazards of the war.
And had the fates desired that I should die in combat with the Greeks,
I would have earned that death!

We tore ourselves away. Iphitus and Pelias were with me.
Iphitus was borne down by the years;
Pelias moved slowly, limping with a wound from Ulysses.
At once a clamour summoned us to Priam’s house.

Here we came upon a truly mighty battle, as if none
were being fought elsewhere, as if no men were dying
right across the city. Mars was on the loose.
Greeks were swarming up towards the roof;
others, under cover of a line of shields, attacked the gates.
Their ladders clung to walls, where by the very doorposts
men were struggling to get a foothold on the rungs,
holding shields in their left hands against the arrows from above,
while with their right they grabbed the battlements.
The Trojans meanwhile tore down parapets
and all the tile-work on the roof; with these as missiles,
they prepared to mount a last defence before they died.
They knew the end was near. Gilded roof beams,
which had once adorned the dwelling of their ancestors,
they rolled down on the Greeks. Others crowded round the doors below,
guarding them shoulder to shoulder, with drawn swords.
We were inspired afresh: to save the royal palace,
to relieve our men and reinforce the broken lines.
 
A postern gate gave entrance by a secret doorway
to a passage which ran through the palace halls.
While Troy yet stood, Andromache, poor soul,
had often used it, unattended, visiting her husband’s parents,
taking little Astyanax to see his grandfather.
I got up to the roof, where desperate Trojans
still were hurling down their useless missiles.
On the rooftop’s very edge there stood a tower, rising to the sky.
From here all Troy was visible,
as were the Greek encampment and their ships.
Surrounding it with iron straps,
placed at the upper storeys where the joints were weak,
we wrenched the tower from its lofty place and pushed it over.
It went crashing down. Across a wide expanse of ground
it crushed the ranks of Greeks. Yet on they came,
attacking us with stones and weapons of all kinds…

At the palace gate, before the courtyard, Pyrrhus stood,
puffed up with pride, in gleaming brazen armour.
He was like a snake in springtime
which has passed the chill of winter underground,
fattening itself on poison plants, and now,
its winter skin sloughed off,
refreshed and in the glow of youth, rears up toward the sun
and shoots out from its mouth a three-forked tongue.
Beside him stood the giant Periphas, Automedon his armour-bearer
— he had been Achilles’ charioteer — and all the youth of Scyros.
These men surged toward the building, throwing flaming brands onto the roof.
Pyrrhus himself was first to grab a two-edged battle-axe,
hack through the stubborn woodwork of the gates
and tear the brass-bound doors from off their hinges.
Heaving out a panel from the doors,
he breached the solid oak, opening a huge hole in the wood.
The house within was now exposed to view,
its long halls clearly visible, the royal inner chambers
— Priam’s and his ancestors’ — laid bare.
The palace guards were standing at the threshold, armed.

Inside the house, confusion reigned: a dreadful, shrieking uproar.
In the women’s quarters, wailing echoed round the vaulted halls.
The noise extended to the shining stars.
Trembling women roamed the building,
clinging onto doors and planting farewell kisses on them.
Pyrrhus, with his father’s strength, advanced;
no bars, no guards could slow his onward rush.
The palace gates were rammed, again, again; they tottered
and the doors, wrenched from their hinges, fell down flat.
Force had prevailed; the Greeks poured in.
Once in, they killed the first line of our guards
and packed the spacious courtyard with their soldiers.
Not with such fury does a foaming river overflow its banks
and in its towering rage engulf the fields
and drown the sheep and cattle on the plains.
On the threshold I saw Pyrrhus, in a killing frenzy,
Agamemnon, Menelaus…

I saw Hecuba, together with her hundred daughters
and, amongst the altars, Priam, polluting with his blood
the very flames that he himself had blessed.
The famous fifty chambers, sporting on their doors
the spoils of war — barbarian gold — and from whose beds
had sprung abundant offspring, were in ruins;
where the fire guttered, Greeks controlled.

And what was Priam’s fate, perhaps you wonder?
When he saw the captured city felled, his palace doors torn off,
the enemy in occupation of his house, old as he was
he vainly threw his long-abandoned armour
round his ancient trembling shoulders,
girding on his useless sword. A man about to die,
he charged towards the packed ranks of the foe.

In the middle of the palace, open to the sky,
stood a gigantic altar, by an ancient laurel tree
which leant against it, shading the household gods.
Here on the altar steps sat Hecuba, in vain hope of protection,
with her daughters, huddled all together
like doves blown helplessly before a raging storm,
clutching the holy effigies.
When Hecuba saw agèd Priam in the armour of his youth, she cried,
“What are you thinking of, my poor unhappy husband,
taking up these weapons? Where are you going in such haste?
It is too late to save the city, or defend it;
it would be, even were my Hector with us now.
Give up; stay here. The altar will protect us all
or we will die together.” With these words
she pulled the old man to her, placing him upon the holy seat.

But now Polites, Priam’s son, escaping wounded
from the carnage caused by Pyrrhus, fled through the fighting
down the palace’s long colonnades, and crossed the empty courts.
Hot in pursuit came Pyrrhus, ready to strike,
about to catch him up and spear him.
When Polites reached his parents’ side, before their eyes
he fell down, pouring out his lifeblood in a stream.
At which the king, already in the arms of death,
gave full vent to his anger, shouting at Pyrrhus,
“For your crime, for deeds so wicked,
if in heaven there is justice which requites these acts,
I pray the gods to thank you as is fit,
reward you in the manner you deserve:
you, who have made me watch my own son’s murder
and with his death defiled a father’s sight.
This was not the way Achilles, whom you falsely claim
to be your father, dealt with me when we were enemies.
He had respect for my request; he recognised my rights.
He gave back Hector’s lifeless corpse for burying
and granted me a safe return to Troy.”
With these words, Priam feebly threw his spear.
The harmless thing rebounded off the bronze of Pyrrhus’ armour
with a clang, onto his shield boss, where it dangled idly.
Pyrrhus answered, “Take this message to my father, then.
Tell him that Pyrrhus is degenerate; my deeds are evil. And now die!”
He dragged the trembling king, still slipping in his son’s spilt blood,
up to the altar steps. He twisted Priam’s hair in his left hand
and lifted with his right his flashing sword
and buried it in Priam’s side, up to the hilt.

So Priam’s fortunes ended. Fate decreed that this should be his doom:
to see his Troy laid low, in flames;
the man who once was ruler of so many lands and peoples,
monarch of Asia. They dragged his body to the seashore,
where it lies, a huge and mutilated trunk, head severed
from the neck, a corpse without a name.

Rage and horror now possessed me. I stood stupefied
and my dear father’s image rose before me
as I looked upon the king, a man of the same age,
fatally wounded, gasping his life away.
I saw my poor forsaken wife Creüsa
and our plundered house. What had become of little Iulus?
I looked round and scanned our forces. All were spent.
They had deserted me: collapsed upon the ground
or fallen helplessly into the flames.

I was alone. And then I saw Helen, silently hiding,
out of the way, in Vesta’s shrine.
I went across and looked. The scene was lit up by the flames.
This hated woman, fearing the Trojans’ wrath towards her
for the sack of Troy, fearing the Greeks’ revenge,
the anger of the husband she abandoned,
she — the curse of her country and of ours —
had sneaked away and crouched down by the altars.
Burning rage leapt up in me; a longing to avenge
the ruin of my country and to make her pay for her misdeeds.
“So I suppose,” I thought, “that she’ll see Sparta
and Mycenae, where she came from, once again,
returning there as queen, unharmed, triumphant!
She’ll see her husband and her home,
her parents and her children, be attended
by a throng of Trojan ladies, waited on by Trojan servants.
Did Priam perish by the sword for this?
For this was Troy burnt to the ground,
our seashore drenched with blood so many times?
No, not for this, for her! Although I’ll gain no noble fame
for punishing a woman; though such victory receives no praise;
yet to have stamped out this abomination
and exacted retribution as deserved, will bring me credit.
An avenging fire will fill my soul with joy;
I will have done some justice to the ashes of my people.”
Railing like this, and in a frenzy of the mind,
I turned on her…

But then my gracious mother came before my eyes.
She shone more brightly than I’d ever seen before.
Her purity, her radiance lit up the night.
She showed herself as goddess, tall and beautiful,
the way she must appear to those who dwell above.
She took my hand, restraining me.
Her lovely voice pronounced these words:
“My son, what is the grief that stirs up
such wild anger in you? Why this rage?
Your loving care for me: where has it gone?
Should you not first see where you’ve left your weary father,
old Anchises; find out if your wife Creüsa
and your son, your Iulus, have survived?
Greek battle lines surround all three of them
and were it not for my concern
they would by now have perished in the flames;
their blood would have been spilled by hostile swords.
It is not Helen — she whose face you hate —
who is to blame for this; nor Paris. No, it is the gods,
the unforgiving gods, who have destroyed Troy’s wealth
and dragged it down from its supremacy.
Watch: I shall draw aside the cloud which up to now
has veiled your sight and dulled your mortal vision in its pall.
Obey me without fear; respect my counsel.
Here, where you see heaps of shattered rubble,
rocks torn from rocks, smoke drifting up amid the dust,
here Neptune is at work, shaking Troy’s walls,
upending its foundations with his giant trident,
tearing the city’s structure from its grounding.
Here is Juno — fiercest goddess of them all —
with sword in hand, controlling Troy’s west gate
and furiously summoning her allies from the ships.
Look up now to the city’s topmost towers.
Athena takes her stand there. Storm clouds lower round her
and the Gorgon’s head is snarling in her shield.
Jupiter, my father, gives the Greeks their courage
and supplies their strength; he stirs up the gods against the Trojans.
Quickly fly from here, my son, and leave behind this anguish.
I will never leave you. I will see you safely to your father’s house.”
With these words she vanished in the darkness of the night.
Fearful shapes came to my eyes: the gods’ great presences,
the hatred which they bore to Troy…

The city Neptune founded was collapsing in the flames
and I was witness to its overthrow.
It was as if an ancient ash tree in the mountains,
being felled by energetic woodmen with their saws and axes,
slowly weakened by its wounds and on the point of falling,
leaves a-tremble, crown nodding and swaying,
utters at last one mighty groan
as, ripped out from the mountainside, it crashes to the ground.

Down from the citadel I went and, with my mother’s guidance,
safely made my way through fire and the enemy.
Swords let me pass; the flames withdrew.

I reached the doorway of my father’s dwelling: my ancestral home.
I sought my father first, and begged that he would let me
carry him away into the hills. But he refused.
He had no wish, with Troy destroyed, to suffer exile or prolong his life.
“The rest of you,” he cried, “with your young blood,
your strength and vigour, you must flee, in haste, at once...
But as for me, had those who dwell in heaven willed
that I should live a longer span, they would have spared my home.
I’ve seen the city overthrown and captured once already, and survived.
That is enough, and more. You see me lying down now;
treat me as a corpse, and say farewell, and go! I’ll die a warrior.
The enemy will slay me out of pity, and collect the spoils.
I am not troubled by the loss of burial. I’m hated by the gods;
I’ve lived a life that’s useless and too long
since Jupiter’s hot breath blew on me in his lightning bolt
and scorched me with his fire.”

He spoke on in this way. He was unshakeable, while we dissolved in tears:
my wife Creüsa, my boy Iulus, all our household.
We pleaded that his stubbornness would hurt us all,
would load an extra sorrow on our misery.
But he refused our pleas. He had decided; he was staying where he lay.
In deep despair, I grabbed my armour once again.
A death wish was upon me. What strategy, what stroke of luck
could help us now? I cried out, “Father,
do you really think that I could leave without you?
Has such shameful language ever passed a father’s lips?
If heaven wishes to annihilate our city,
if you’re determined in your course
— to add your death and ours to Troy’s destruction —
that door opens wide. Soon Pyrrhus will be here,
reeking with Priam’s blood: the man who calmly butchered
Priam’s son before his father’s eyes, then slew the father at the altar.
Was it for this, my gentle mother, that you rescued me
through fire and sword: to see the enemy invade my home,
to see my wife, my son and father slaughtered in each other’s blood?
Bring me my weapons, men! Life’s last glimmer summons the defeated!
Let me at the Greeks again; I’ll find and fight them.
We shall not die unavenged today!”

I girded on my sword and put my left hand through the strapping on my shield.
As I was doing this and rushing from the house,
Creüsa at the door caught hold of me; she clutched my feet
and lifted little Iulus up towards his father.
“If you are going out to die, whatever happens,
take us with you. You have seen what lies outside;
so if you trust these weapons and this armour,
guard our house first. To what fate are you abandoning
your Iulus, and your father, and the woman
who once called herself your wife?”

She wept. She filled the whole house with her cries.
But then a portent, strange and wonderful, appears.
Between the hands and faces of his frantic parents,
suddenly a tongue of flame shines down on Iulus’ head.
It does no harm. It licks his curls and plays around his temples.
Trembling with fear, at once we shake his blazing hair
and quench the holy flames with water.
But my father raises joyful eyes to heaven
and, with hands and voice uplifted, cries,
“Almighty Jupiter, if any prayers can move you,
look on us — I ask no more — and help us,
if our virtue has deserved it. Father, prove this omen true!”
Hardly had the old man said these words,
when with a sudden clap of thunder in the east,
a shooting star bursts from the heavens,
sailing through the dark, its long tail blazing light and fire.
We watch it glide over the roof and crash in splendour
in the forests on Mount Ida, leaving a lengthy furrow
shining in the sky, and all around the stench of sulphur.
At this my father, overcome, and getting to his feet,
salutes the gods and venerates the holy sign:
“Now there is no delay. Now I am with you.
Where you lead, I follow. God of my fathers,
save my household, save my grandson, whom you favour.
You have given us this augury;
Troy has a future under your protection.
Son, I yield to you, I do. I’ll keep you company;
I can refuse no longer.”

He had spoken. Now the fire which had engulfed the city
was approaching; we could hear the roar.
I cried, “Dear father, come then, climb up on my back.
My shoulders will support you; you’re not heavy.
Whatever happens — danger or deliverance — we’ll face together.
Iulus, come with me. Creüsa, leave a little distance, and then follow.
Servants, listen to me. Just outside the city,
there’s a hillock next to Ceres’ ancient temple. It’s a lonely spot.
Beside it is a cypress tree. It’s old; our ancestors protected and revered it.
We’ll split up and gather there.
Father, take the holy symbols of our nation’s household gods.
I’ve just come from the battle, and from killing;
it would be profane to handle them
until I’ve cleansed myself in running water.”
With these words, I spread a tawny lion skin
over my neck and shoulders, and bend down to lift my father.
Iulus tightly holds my hand and follows me,
his little steps not matching mine. Behind us comes my wife.

We pick our way amidst the gloom.
Before, I’d never been afraid of spears and arrows hurled at me,
nor hordes of hostile Greeks. But now I’m scared
by every breath of wind, on edge at any sound.
I fear both for my father and my son.

We neared the gates. I thought we’d make it safely out,
when suddenly I seemed to hear the tramp of marching feet.
My father, peering through the dark, cried out,
“Fly, my son, fly! They’re coming. I can see
their glittering shields and shining helmets!”

I shall never know what evil power took hold of me.
I lost my wits, and as we plunged down alleyways,
leaving behind the streets I knew, by some unhappy chance
Creüsa, alas, was snatched away from us.
Did she stop running? Did she lose her way
and drop down in exhaustion?
I don’t know. I never saw my wife again.
I didn’t even look for her, or think about her,
till we got to Ceres’ ancient temple on the hillock.
Here, when all had gathered, she alone was missing
from the company, lost to her husband and her son.
I was beside myself, berating every mortal, every god.
This was, for me, the worst disaster in the fall of Troy.
I left my son, my father and Troy’s household gods
in charge of my companions, hidden in a winding valley,
strapped my shining armour on and turned back to the city,
with no choice except to run the gauntlet as before,
re-enter and scour all of Troy and put my life in danger yet again.

I found the walls first, then the gloomy entrance
to the gate by which I’d left. My eyes strained in the dark
as I retraced my steps. At every turn my mind was filled with dread
and, even in the silence, terror lurked.

I made it to our house. She might, just possibly,
have found her way back home.

The Greeks had broken in. They had the whole place occupied.
And as I looked, devouring fire rolled upward in the wind.
It reached the roof. Flames towered above the house
and sent a raging blast of heat into the sky.
         
On I went, to Priam’s house and to the citadel.
There, in the empty colonnades of Juno’s shrine,
stood Phoenix and the terrifying Ulysses,
chosen to guard the plunder. Troy’s royal treasures had been snatched
from temples set alight throughout the city, and brought here:
sacred altars, bowls of solid gold and captured robes, all piled in heaps.
Around them, in a long line, boys and trembling women stood.

Abandoning all caution now, I cried out in the night.
I filled the streets with shouting, in my anguish
calling in vain Creüsa’s name, redoubling my cries,
again, again. And as I rushed about the city, house to house,
in endless, desperate search of her, a mournful apparition
rose before my eyes. It was Creüsa’s ghost,
her image larger than I’d known her in her life. It struck me senseless
and the hair stood upright on my head. My voice stuck in my throat.
But then she spoke these words, to calm my fears:

“What is the use in yielding to such frantic grief, sweet husband?
These things have come about by heaven’s will.
You may not take Creüsa with you on your journey; this
the lord of high Olympus won’t allow.
Long exile is your fate, and you must plough
the vast expanses of the level sea. But you will come to Italy,
where Tiber gently flows through fertile, cultivated fields.
Joy, kingship and a royal wife await you there.
So wipe away those tears for your belov’d Creüsa.
I will never look upon the vaunted dwellings
of the Myrmidons or the Dolopians.
I will not go as slave to mistresses in Greece; not I,
a Trojan lady, married to the son of Venus, the divine.
The mighty mother of the gods has kept me on these shores.
Farewell now; and preserve the love we both bear to our son.”

She said these words, then left me weeping, with so many things
I longed to say to her. She drew away, into thin air. Three times
I tried to fold my arms around her neck; three times
her likeness, grasped in vain, escaped my hands,
as if borne up upon the breeze, or very like a fleeting dream.

The night had run its course, and so at last I rejoined my companions;
where I found, to my amazement, that great numbers
of new would-be travellers had flooded in, women and men,
youngsters gathered for exile, a pitiable crowd.
From all parts they had come, their minds made up, their baggage packed,
ready to cross the sea wherever I might lead.

Above Mount Ida’s highest ridges rose the morning star.
It brought the day. Greeks had blockaded and now held the gates.
No hope of help remained. I bowed to the inevitable,
took my father up, and headed for the mountains.’