Horror-stricken but undeterred, Æneas hurried on to where the fray seemed the hottest, and gathering round him some score of trusty comrades, he thus addressed them: "Friends and brothers in arms, all is not lost; let us take courage from despair, and at worst die like men with our breasts to the foe." They all rushed into the mellay, and at first fortune favored the brave. Androgeus, the captain of a picked corps of Greeks, hailed them; and mistaking them in the darkness for fellow-countrymen, twitted them on their tardiness, and bade them hurry on to share in the loot. Too late he perceived his mistake. Before they had time to unsheath a sword or unbuckle a shield, Æneas and his comrades were on them and not one escaped. Flushed with their first success, Coroebus, one of the forlorn hope, cried: "Hark ye, comrades, I have bethought me of a glorious stratagem; let us exchange arms and scutcheons with our dead foemen. All is fair in war." No sooner said than done; and great was the havoc they wrought at the first by this disguise, but in the end it cost them dear. As they passed by the temple of Minerva they were arrested by a piteous spectacle. Cassandra, the prophetic maid, was being dragged from the altar by the rude soldiery, her hair disheveled, her arms pinioned, and her eyes upturned to heaven. Coroebus' high spirit could not brook the sight, and he hurled himself on the ruffians, the rest following his lead. Though outnumbered they held, and more than held, their own, till from the pinnacles of the temple a whole battery of rocks and missiles rained down on their devoted heads. Their disguise had too well deceived the defenders of the temple, and soon the assailants were reinforced by the main body of the Greeks, with Ajax and the two Atridæ at their head, who soon penetrated their disguise. Coroebus was the first to fall; then Ripeus, the justest ruler in all Troy; nor did his gray hairs and the fillet of Apollo that he wore save Panthus from the common fate. Æneas, with two wounded comrades, all that was left of that devoted band, made his way to the palace of Priam, where it looked as if the whole Greek force had gathered. Part were working battering-rams against the solid masonry, others planting scaling ladders against the walls, up which the boldest, with shields held high above their heads, were already swarming, while the garrison hurled down on them stones, tiles, whatever came to hand; even the gilded beams of the royal chambers.