It is not for men to trust unwilling gods. Cassandra was being dragged from Pallas’ temple, Her hair loosed to the wind, her eyes turned upward To heaven for mercy; they had bound her hands. Coroebus could not bear that sight; in madness He threw himself upon them, and he died. We followed, all of us, into the thick of it, And were cut down, not only by Greeks; the rooftops, Held by our friends, rained weapons: we were wearing Greek crests and armor, and they did not know us. And the Greeks came on, shouting with anger, burning To foil that rescue; there was Menelaus, And Agamemnon, and the savage Ajax, And a whole army of them. Hurricanes Rage the same way, when winds from different quarters Clash in the sky, and the forest groans, and Neptune Storms underneath the ocean. Those we routed Once in the dark came back again from the byways And alleys of the town; they mark our shields, Our lying weapons, and our foreign voices. Of course we are outnumbered. Peneleus It was, who slew Coroebus, at the altar Sacred to Pallas. Ripheus fell, a man Most just of all the Trojans, most fair-minded. The gods thought otherwise. Hypanis, Dymas, Were slain by their own men, and Panthus’ goodness Was no protection, nor his priestly office. I call to witness Troy, her fires, her ashes, And the last agonies of all our people That in that hour I ran from no encounter With any Greek, and if the fates had been For me to fall in battle, there I earned it. The current swept me off, with two companions, One, Iphitus, too slow with age, the other, Pelias, limping from Ulysses’ wound. The noise kept calling us to Priam’s palace.
There might have been no fighting and no dying Through all the city, such a battle raged Here, from the ground to roof-top. At the threshold Waves of assault were breaking, and the Greeks Were climbing, rung by rung, along the ladders, Using one hand, the right one up and forward Over the battlements, the left one thrust In the protecting shield. And over their heads The Trojans pried up towers and planking, wrecking The building; gilded beams, the spoils of their fathers, Were ample weapons for the final moment. Some had the doorways blocked, others, behind them, Were ready with drawn swords. We had a moment When help seemed possible: new reinforcement Might yet relieve the palace. There was a secret entrance there, a passage All the way through the building, a postern gate, Where, while the kingdom stood, Andromache Would go, alone, or bring the little boy, Astyanax, to Hector’s father and mother. I climbed to the top of the roof, where the poor Trojans Were hurling down their unavailing darts. A tower stood on the very edge, a look-out Over all Troy, the ships and camp of the Greeks. This we attacked with steel, where the joints were weakest, And pried it up, and shoved it over. It crashed. A noisy ruin, over the hostile columns; But more kept coming up; the shower of stones And darts continued raining. Before the entrance, at the very threshold Stood Pyrrhus, flashing proudly in bronze light, Sleek as a serpent coming into the open, Fed on rank herbs, wintering under the ground, The old slough cast, the new skin shining, rolling His slippery length, reaching his neck to the sun, While the forked tongue darts from the mouth. Automedon Was with him, Periphas, Achilles’ driver, A giant of a man, and the host from Scyros, All closing in on the palace, and hurling flames. Among the foremost, Pyrrhus, swinging an axe, Burst through, wrenched the bronze doors out of their hinges, Smashed through the panelling, turned it into a window. The long halls came to view, the inner chambers Of Priam and the older kings; they see Armed warriors at the threshold. Within, it is all confusion, women wailing, Pitiful noise, groaning, and blows; the din Reaches the golden stars. The trembling mothers Wander, not knowing where, or find a spot To cling to; they would hold and kiss the doors. Pyrrhus comes on, aggressive as his father; No barrier holds him back; the gate is battered As the ram smashes at it; the doors come down. Force finds a way: the Greeks pour in, they slaughter The first ones in their path; they fill the courtyard With soldiery, wilder than any river In flood over the banks and dikes and ploughland. I saw them, Pyrrhus, going mad with murder, And Atreus’ twin sons, and Hecuba I saw, and all her daughters, and poor old Priam, His blood polluting the altars he had hallowed. The fifty marriage-chambers, the proud hope Of an everlasting line, are violated, The doors with the golden spoil are turned to splinters. Whatever the fire has spared the Greeks take over.