her right and the bowstring. Forthwith the hurtling of the shaft and the rush of the breeze reached Arruns’ ear at the moment the steel lodged in his body. Him gasping and groaning his last his comrades leave unthinking in the unmarked dust of the plain: Opis spreads her wings, and 20 is borne to skyey Olympus. First flies, its mistress lost, Camilla’s light-armed company; fly the Rutules in rout, flies keen Atinas; leaders in disarray and troops in devastation make for shelter, turn round, and gallop to the walls. None can sustain 25 in combat the Teucrians’ deadly onset or resist the stream; they throw their unstrung bows on their unnerved shoulders, and the hoof of four-foot steeds shakes the crumbling plain. On rolls to the ramparts a cloud of dust, thick and murky; and the matrons from their sentry-posts, 30 smiting on their breasts, raise a shriek as women wont to the stars of heaven. Who first pour at speed through the open gates are whelmed by a multitude of foemen that blends its crowd with theirs; they scape not the agony of death, but on the very threshold, with their 35 native walls around them, in the sanctuary of home, they breathe away their lives. Some close the gates: they dare not give ingress to their friends nor take them within the walls, implore as they may: and a piteous carnage ensues, these guarding the approach sword in hand, those rushing on the sword’s point. Some, borne on by the deluge, stream headlong into the moat; some in blind agony, spurring their horses, charge as with battering-rams the 5 portals and their stubborn barriers. Nay, the very matrons on the walls in the intensity of the struggle, prompted by true patriot spirit at sight of Camilla, fling darts from their quivering hands, and make hard oak-stakes and seared truncheons do the work of steel, hot and headlong, 10 and fain would be the first to die for their city.