doorway
Pyrrhus moves rejoicingly in the sparkle of arms and gleaming brass:
like as when a snake fed on poisonous herbs, whom chill winter kept hid
and swollen underground, now fresh from his weeds outworn and shining in
youth, wreathes his slippery body into the daylight, his upreared breast
meets the sun, and his triple-cloven tongue flickers in his mouth. With
him huge Periphas, and Automedon the armour-bearer, driver of Achilles'
horses, with him all his Scyrian men climb the roof and hurl flames on
the housetop. Himself among the foremost he grasps a poleaxe, bursts
through the hard doorway, and wrenches the brazen-plated doors from the
hinge; and now he hath cut out a plank from the solid oak and pierced a
vast gaping hole. The house within is open to sight, and the long halls
lie plain; open to sight are the secret chambers of Priam and the kings
of old, and they see armed men standing in front of the doorway.

'But the inner house is stirred with shrieks and misery and confusion,
and the court echoes deep with women's wailing; the golden stars are
smitten with the din. Affrighted mothers stray about the vast house, and
cling fast to the doors and print them with kisses. With his father's
might Pyrrhus presses on; nor guards nor barriers can hold out. The gate
totters under the hard driven ram, and the doors fall flat, rent from
the hinge. Force makes way; the Greeks burst through the entrance and
pour in, slaughtering the foremost, and filling the space with a wide
stream of soldiers. Not so furiously when a foaming river bursts his
banks and overflows, beating down the opposing dykes with whirling
water, is he borne mounded over the fields, and sweeps herds and
[499-529]pens all about the plains. Myself I saw in the gateway
Neoptolemus mad in slaughter, and the two sons of Atreus, saw Hecuba and
the hundred daughters of her house, and Priam polluting with his blood
the altar fires of his own consecration. The fifty bridal chambers--so
great was the hope of his children's children--their doors magnificent
with spoils of barbaric gold, have sunk in ruin; where the fire fails
the Greeks are in possession.

'Perchance too thou mayest inquire what was Priam's fate. When he saw
the ruin of his captured city, the gates of his house burst open, and
the enemy amid his innermost chambers, the old man idly fastens round
his aged trembling shoulders his long disused armour, girds on the
unavailing sword, and advances on