Metamorphoses

The conqueror, Ulysses, set sail for the country of Hypsipyle, and of the illustrious Thoas, and the regions infamous for the slaughter there of the husbands of old; that he might bring back the arrows, the weapons of the Tirynthian hero . After he had carried them back to the Greeks, their owner attending too, the concluding hand was put, at length, to this protracted war. Troy and Priam fell together; the wretched wife of Priam lost after every thing else her human form, and alarmed a foreign air with her barkings. Where the long Hellespont is reduced into a narrow compass, Ilion was in flames; nor had the flames yet ceased; and the altar of Jove had drank up the scanty blood of the aged Priam. The priestess of Apollo dragged by the hair, extends her unavailing hands towards the heavens. The victorious Greeks drag along the Dardanian matrons, embracing, while they may, the statues of their country’s Gods, and clinging to the burning temples, an envied spoil. Astyanax is hurled from those towers from which he was often wont, when shown by his mother, to behold his father, fighting for himself, and defending the kingdom of his ancestors.

MetamorphosesOvidHenry T. RileyEnglishVerse permalinkRead in Book 13

Book 13, Line 21ProseID metamorphoses-riley-en-prose-13-21