Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/177

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and learn the cause of his coming. But the nobles of the Danaans, and the flower of Agamemnon's bands, when they saw the hero and his armour gleaming through the shade, were smitten with strange alarm: some turn their backs in flight, as erst they fled to the ships: others raise 5 a feeble war-shout. The cry they essay mocks their straining throats.

Here it is that he sees Priam's son, mangled all over, Deiphobus, his face cruelly marred—face and both hands—his temples despoiled of his ears, and his nose 10 lopped by unseemly carnage. Scarce, in truth, he recognized him, trembling as he was, and trying to hide the terrible vengeance wreaked on him: unaccosted, he addresses him in the tones he knew of old: "Deiphobus, mighty warrior, scion of Teucer's illustrious stock, who 15 has had the ambition to avenge himself so cruelly? who has had his will of you thus? For me, Rumour told me on that fatal night that you had sunk down, tired with the work of slaughtering the Greeks, on a heap of undistinguished carnage. Then with my own hand, I set up 20 an empty tomb on the Rhœtean shore, and thrice with a loud voice invoked your spirit. There are your name and your arms to keep the spot in memory: your self, dear friend, I could not see, so as to give you repose in the fatherland I was leaving." To whom the son of Priam: 25 "Dear friend, you have failed in nought: all that Deiphobus could claim has been paid by you to him and to his shade. No; it was my own destiny and the deadly wickedness of the Spartan woman that plunged me thus deep in ill: these tokens are of her leaving. How we 30 spent that fatal night in treacherous joyance you know well: too good cause is there to bear it in mind. When the fateful horse at one bound surmounted the height of Pergamus, and brought a mailclad infantry in its laden womb, she feigned a solemn dance, and led round the 35 city Phrygian dames in Bacchic ecstasy; herself in their midst raising a mighty torch aloft, and calling to the Danaans from the top of the citadel. That hour I, spent