No More Learning

Now die. " So
saying, he drew him quivering to the very altar, slipping in the pool of
his child's blood, and wound his left hand in his hair, while in his
right the sword flashed out and plunged to the hilt in his side. This
was the end of Priam's fortunes; thus did allotted fate find him, with
burning Troy and her sunken towers before his eyes, once magnificent
lord over so many peoples and lands of Asia. The great corpse lies along
the shore, a head severed from the shoulders and a body without a name.

'But then an awful terror began to encircle me; I stood in amaze; there
rose before me the likeness of my loved father, as I saw the king, old
as he, sobbing out his life under the ghastly wound; there rose Creusa
forlorn, my plundered house, and little Iulus' peril. I look back
[564-596]and survey what force is around me. All, outwearied, have
given up and leapt headlong to the ground, or flung themselves
wretchedly into the fire:

['Yes, and now I only was left; when I espy the daughter of Tyndarus
close in the courts of Vesta, crouching silently in the fane's recesses;
the bright glow of the fires lights my wandering, as my eyes stray all
about. Fearing the Teucrians' anger for the overthrown towers of Troy,
and the Grecians' vengeance and the wrath of the husband she had
abandoned, she, the common Fury of Troy and her native country, had
hidden herself and cowered unseen by the altars. My spirit kindles to
fire, and rises in wrath to avenge my dying land and take repayment for
her crimes. Shall she verily see Sparta and her native Mycenae
unscathed, and depart a queen and triumphant? Shall she see her spousal
and her home, her parents and children, attended by a crowd of Trojan
women and Phrygians to serve her? and Priam have fallen under the sword?
Troy blazed in fire? the shore of Dardania so often soaked with blood?
Not so.
For though there is no name or fame in a woman's punishment, nor
honour in the victory, yet shall I have praise in quenching a guilty
life and exacting a just recompense; and it will be good to fill my soul
with the flame of vengeance, and satisfy the ashes of my people. Thus
broke I forth, and advanced infuriate;]

'----When my mother came visibly before me, clear to sight as never till
then, and shone forth in pure radiance through the night, gracious,
evident in godhead, in shape and stature such as she is wont to appear
to the heavenly people; she caught me by the hand and stayed me, and
pursued thus with roseate lips:

'"Son, what overmastering pain thus wakes thy wrath? Why ravest thou? or
whither is thy care for us fled? Wilt thou not first look to it, where
thou hast left Anchises, [597-630]thine aged worn father; or if Creusa
thy wife and the child Ascanius survive? round about whom all the Greek
battalions range; and without my preventing care, the flames ere this
had made them their portion, and the hostile sword drunk their blood.
Not the hated face of the Laconian woman, Tyndarus' daughter; not Paris
is to blame; the gods, the gods in anger overturn this magnificence, and
make Troy topple down. Look, for all the cloud that now veils thy gaze
and dulls mortal vision with damp encircling mist, I will rend from
before thee. Fear thou no commands of thy mother, nor refuse to obey her
counsels. Here, where thou seest sundered piles of masonry and rocks
violently torn from rocks, and smoke eddying mixed with dust, Neptune
with his great trident shakes wall and foundation out of their places,
and upturns all the city from her base. Here Juno in all her terror
holds the Scaean gates at the entry, and, girt with steel, calls her
allied army furiously from their ships. . . . Even now on the citadel's
height, look back! Tritonian Pallas is planted in glittering halo and
Gorgonian terror.