With crumbled dust and dissipated gold

Float grossly laden. To the immortal gods

These thanks, fraught with rich memory of much good,

We pay; they taught our hands to spread the net

With anger-whetted wit; a woman’s frailty

Laid bare old Ilium to the Argive bite,

And with the setting Pleiads outleapt a birth

Of strong shield-bearers from the fateful horse.

A fierce flesh-tearing lion leapt their wails,

And licked a surfeit of tyrannic blood.