Part on the pile their wond’ring eyes employ: The pile by Pallas rais’d to ruin Troy. The Trojans, coop’d within their walls so long, Unbar their gates, and issue in a throng, Like swarming bees, and with delight survey The camp deserted, where the Grecians lay: The quarters of the sev’ral chiefs they show’d Here Phoenix, here Achilles, made abode Here join’d the battles there the navy rode. We thought, for Greece Their sails were hoisted, and our fears release. In sight of Troy lies Tenedos, an isle (While Fortune did on Priam’s empire smile) Renown’d for wealth but, since, a faithless bay, Where ships expos’d to wind and weather lay. Thus they pretend, but in the hollow side Selected numbers of their soldiers hide: With inward arms the dire machine they load, And iron bowels stuff the dark abode. “By destiny compell’d, and in despair, The Greeks grew weary of the tedious war, And by Minerva’s aid a fabric rear’d, Which like a steed of monstrous height appear’d: The sides were plank’d with pine they feign’d it made For their return, and this the vow they paid. And now the latter watch of wasting night, And setting stars, to kindly rest invite But, since you take such int’rest in our woe, And Troy’s disastrous end desire to know, I will restrain my tears, and briefly tell What in our last and fatal night befell. When he comes to the place appointed for the general rendezvouze, he finds a great confluence of people, but misses his wife whose ghost afterwards appears to him, and tells him the land which was design’d for him.Īll were attentive to the godlike man, When from his lofty couch he thus began: “Great queen, what you command me to relate Renews the sad remembrance of our fate: An empire from its old foundations rent, And ev’ry woe the Trojans underwent A peopled city made a desart place All that I saw, and part of which I was: Not ev’n the hardest of our foes could hear, Nor stern Ulysses tell without a tear. In order to this, he carries off his father on his shoulders, and leads his little son by the hand, his wife following him behind. At last, having been before advis’d by Hector’s ghost, and now by the appearance of his mother Venus, he is prevail’d upon to leave the town, and settle his household gods in another country. He declares the fix’d resolution he had taken not to survive the ruins of his country, and the various adventures he met with in the defense of it. Æneas relates how the city of Troy was taken, after a ten years’ siege, by the treachery of Sinon, and the stratagem of a wooden horse.

The aeneid translated