“Then, indeed, I beheld all Ilion sinking into flame, and Neptune’s city, Troy, overturned from its base. Even as an ancient ash on the mountain-top, which woodmen have hacked with steel and repeated hatchet strokes, and are trying might and main to dislodge—it keeps nodding 15 menacingly, its leafy head palsied and shaken, till at last, gradually overborne by wound after wound, it has given its death-groan, and fallen uprooted in ruined length along the hill. I come down, and, following my heavenly guide, thread my way through flames and foemen, 20 while weapons glance aside and flames retire. “Now when at last I had reached the door of my father’s house, that old house I knew so well, my sire, whom it was my first resolve to carry away high up the hills—who was the first object I sought—refuses to survive the 25 razing of Troy and submit to banishment. ‘You, whose young blood is untainted, whose strength is firmly based and self-sustained, it is for you to think of flight. For me, had the dwellers in heaven willed me to prolong my life, they would have preserved for me my home. It is enough 30 and more than enough to have witnessed one sack, to have once outlived the capture of my city. Here, O here as I lie, bid farewell to my corpse and begone. I will find me a warrior’s death. The enemy will have mercy on me, and my spoils will tempt him. The loss of a tomb 35 will fall on me lightly. Long, long have I been a clog on time, hated of heaven and useless to earth, from the day when the father of gods and sovereign of men blasted me with the wind of his lightning, and laid on me the finger of flame.’[139]