The Aeneid by Robert Fagles Virgil, Bernard Knox Page B

tales
as she drank long draughts of love—asking Aeneas
question on question, now about Priam, now Hector,
what armor Memnon, son of the Morning, wore at Troy,
how swift were the horses of Diomedes? How strong was Achilles?
    “Wait, come, my guest,” she urges, “tell us your own story,
start to finish—the ambush laid by the Greeks, the pain
your people suffered, the wanderings you have faced.
For now is the seventh summer that has borne you
wandering all the lands and seas on earth.”

BOOK TWO
     

     
    The Final Hours of Troy
     
    Silence. All fell hushed, their eyes fixed on Aeneas now
as the founder of his people, high on a seat of honor,
set out on his story: “Sorrow, unspeakable sorrow,
my queen, you ask me to bring to life once more,
how the Greeks uprooted Troy in all her power,
our kingdom mourned forever. What horrors I saw,
a tragedy where I played a leading role myself.
Who could tell such things—not even a Myrmidon,
a Dolopian, or comrade of iron-hearted Ulysses—
and still refrain from tears? And now, too,
the dank night is sweeping down from the sky
and the setting stars incline our heads to sleep.
But if you long so deeply to know what we went through,
to hear, in brief, the last great agony of Troy,
much as I shudder at the memory of it all—
I shrank back in grief—I’ll try to tell it now . . .
    “Ground down by the war and driven back by Fate,
the Greek captains had watched the years slip by
until, helped by Minerva’s superhuman skill,
they built that mammoth horse, immense as a mountain,
lining its ribs with ship timbers hewn from pine.
An offering to secure safe passage home, or so
they pretend, and the story spreads through Troy.
But they pick by lot the best, most able-bodied men
and stealthily lock them into the horse’s dark flanks
till the vast hold of the monster’s womb is packed
with soldiers bristling weapons.
“Just in sight of Troy
an island rises, Tenedos, famed in the old songs,
powerful, rich, while Priam’s realm stood fast.
Now it’s only a bay, a treacherous cove for ships.
Well there they sail, hiding out on its lonely coast
while we thought—gone! Sped home on the winds to Greece.
So all Troy breathes free, relieved of her endless sorrow.
We fling open the gates and stream out, elated to see
the Greeks’ abandoned camp, the deserted beachhead.
Here the Dolopians formed ranks—
“Here savage Achilles
pitched his tents—
“Over there the armada moored
and here the familiar killing-fields of battle.
Some gaze wonderstruck at the gift for Pallas,
the virgin never wed—transfixed by the horse,
its looming mass, our doom. Thymoetes leads the way.
‘Drag it inside the walls,’ he urges, ‘plant it high
on the city heights!’ Inspired by treachery now
or the fate of Troy was moving toward this end.
But Capys with other saner heads who take his side,
suspecting a trap in any gift the Greeks might offer,
tells us: ‘Fling it into the sea or torch the thing to ash
or bore into the depths of its womb where men can hide!’
The common people are split into warring factions.
     
    “But now, out in the lead with a troop of comrades,
down Laocoön runs from the heights in full fury,
calling out from a distance: ‘Poor doomed fools,
have you gone mad, you Trojans?
You really believe the enemy’s sailed away?
Or any gift of the Greeks is free of guile?
Is that how well you know Ulysses? Trust me,
either the Greeks are hiding, shut inside those beams,
or the horse is a battle-engine geared to breach our walls,
spy on our homes, come down on our city, overwhelm us—
or some other deception’s lurking deep inside it.
Trojans, never trust that horse. Whatever it is,
I fear the Greeks, especially bearing gifts.’
     
    “In that spirit, with all his might he hurled
a huge spear straight into the monster’s flanks,
the mortised timberwork of its swollen belly.
Quivering, there it stuck, and the stricken womb
came booming back from its depths with echoing groans.
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