THE TAKING OF ILIOS 



and therewithal spewed forth wine. And many 

 gathered together in one place were slain as they 

 fought and many, as they were pursued, fell from the 

 towers into the house of Hades, leaping their latest 

 leap. And a few through a narrow hollow, like 

 thieves, escaped unnoticed from the storm of their 

 perishing fatherland. Others within, in the surge 

 of war and darkness, like to men gone rather than 

 to men fleeing, fell one above the other. And the 

 city could not contain the filth, desolate of men 

 but over-full of dead. And there was no sparing. 

 Driven by the frenzied lash of sleepless turmoil they 

 had no regard even to the gods, but with most 

 lawless onset they defiled with blood the innocent 

 altars of the immortals. And old men most piteous 

 were slain in most unworthy slaughter : slain not on 

 their feet, but, stretching on the ground their 

 suppliant limbs, they had their grey heads laid low. 

 And many infant children were snatched from the 

 mother's breast that had suckled them but a little 

 while and, understanding not, paid for the sins of 

 their parents, while she that nursed it, offered the 

 child the breast in vain, and brought offering of milk 

 it might not suck." And birds and dogs, here and 

 there throughout the city, the fowls of air and the 

 beasts that walk the earth, feasted in company and 

 drank the black blood and made a savage meal. The 

 crying of the birds breathed slaughter, while the 

 barking dogs bayed wildly over torn corpses of men, 

 pitiless and heeding not that they were rending their 

 own masters. 



And Odysseus and Menelaus of the goodly hair 

 set out for the house of woman-mad Deiphobus, like 



• Pliny, N.H. xxxv. 98. 



2 s 625 



