Æneas is anxious to assure his fair listener that, in spite of Hector’s adjuration to fly, he did all that man might do in defence of his king and his countrymen. He had rallied a band of brave men, and for a while made head against the enemy. They were favoured by the mistake made by a party of Greeks, who took them for friends in the darkness, and whom they cut to pieces, and having arrayed themselves in their armour, dealt destruction in the enemy’s very ranks. But all resistance was in vain. The appearance of Neoptolemus--Pyrrhus--the “Red-haired”--and the comparison of the young warrior in his strength and beauty to the serpent who comes forth after casting its winter slough, is fine in the original, and finely translated:-- “Full in the gate see Pyrrhus blaze, A meteor, shooting steely rays: So flames a serpent into light, On poisonous herbage fed, Which late in subterranean night Through winter lay as dead: Now from its ancient wounds undressed, Invigorate and young, Sunward it rears its glittering breast, And darts its three-forked tongue.” And the fate of the unhappy Priam is an equally beautiful picture, of a different tone:-- “Perhaps you ask of Priam’s fate: He, when he sees his town o’erthrown, Greeks bursting through his palace-gate, And thronging chambers once his own, His ancient armour, long laid by, Around his palsied shoulders throws, Girds with a useless sword his thigh, And totters forth to meet his foes.” Hecuba, who with her women is clinging to the altar, rebukes her husband for this mad attempt to match his feeble strength against the enemy. Still, when Pyrrhus rushes into the hall in pursuit of one of Priam’s sons, Polites, and slays him full in the father’s sight, the old man hurls a javelin at the Greek chief, with a taunting curse upon his cruelty. But it is “A feeble dart, no blood that drew; The ringing metal turned it back, And left it clinging, weak and slack.” And the ruthless son of Achilles drags the old king to the altar, and slays him there. One more episode of that terrible night Æneas relates to his hostess:-- “I stood alone, when lo! I mark, In Vesta’s temple crouching dark, The traitress Helen: the broad blaze Gives me full light, as round I gaze. She, shrinking from the Trojans’ hate, Made frantic by their city’s fate, Nor dreading less the Danaan sword, The vengeance of her injured lord,-- She, Troy’s and Argos’ common fiend, Sat cowering, by the altar screened. My blood was fired: fierce passion woke To quit Troy’s fall by one sure stroke.”