A tower there was, vast to look on from below, with lofty bridges, placed on a vantage-ground, which all the Italians, with utmost force and utmost strain of might, were essaying to storm, while the Trojans, on their side, were defending it with stones, and hurling showers of 20 darts through its narrow eyelets. Turnus the first flung a blazing torch and fastened fire on its side; fanned by the wind, the flame seized the planks and lodged in the consuming doors. The inmates are all in confusion, and in vain seek to escape the mischief. While they huddle 25 together and retire upon the part which the plague has spared, in an instant the tower falls heavily down, and the firmament thunders with the crash. Half dead they come to the ground, the huge fabric following on their backs, pierced by their own weapons, their breasts impaled by the 30 cruel wood. Barely two escaped, Helenor and Lycus—Helenor in prime of youth, whom Licymnia the slave had borne secretly to the Mæonian king, and had sent to Troy in forbidden arms, with the light accoutrement of a naked sword, and a shield uncharged by an escutcheon. 35 Soon as he saw himself with Turnus’ thousands round him, the armies of Latium standing on this side and on that, like a beast that, hemmed in by the hunters’ close-set ring, vents her rage on the darts and flings herself deliberately on death, and springs from high on the line of spears, even thus the doomed youth rushes on the midst of the foe, making for where he sees the darts are thickest. But Lycus, far swifter of foot, winds among ranks of foes and 5 showers of steel and gains the wall, and strives to clutch the fabric’s summit and reach the hands of his friends. Whom Turnus, following him at once with foot and javelin, taunts in victorious tone: “Dreamed you, poor fool, that you could escape my hands?” and with that he seizes him 10 as he hangs in air, and pulls him down with a great fragment of the wall; just as the bearer of Jove’s thunder trusses in his hooked talons a hare or a snow-white swan and soars into the sky, or one of Mars’ wolves snatches from the fold a lamb which its mother’s bleatings reclaim 15 in vain. On all sides rises the war-shout. They rush on the trenches and fill them with shattered earthworks, while others fling brazen firebrands to the roofs. Ilioneus with a rock, broken from a mighty mountain, brings down Lucetius as he assails the gates and waves his torch. 20 Liger kills Emathion, Asilas Corynæus, one skilled with the javelin, one with the arrow that surprises from a distance. Cæneus slays Ortygius, Turnus the conqueror Cæneus, Turnus Itys and Clonius, Dioxippus and Promolus, and Sagaris, and Idas, who was standing on the turret’s top. 25