It showed how his sons threw themselves upon Sennacherib within the temple, and how they left him there dead.[1]
[1] 2 Kings, xix. 37.
It showed the ruin and the cruel slaughter that Tomyris wrought, when she said to Cyrus, “For blood thou hast thirsted, and with blood I fill thee.”
[1] Herodotus (i. 214) tells how Tomyris, Queen of the Massagetae, having defeated and slain Cyrus, filled a skin full of human blood, and plunged his head in it with words such as Dante reports, and which he derived from Orosius, Histor. ii. 7.
It showed how the Assyrians fled in rout after Holofernes was killed, and also the remainder of the punishment.[1]
[1] Judith, xv. 1.
I saw Troy in ashes, and in caverns. O Ilion! how cast down and abject the image which is there discerned showed thee!
What master has there been of pencil or of style that could draw the shadows and the lines which there would make every subtile genius wonder? Dead the dead, and the living seemed alive. He who saw the truth saw not better than I all that I trod on while I went bent down.—Now be ye proud, and go with haughty look, ye sons of Eve, and bend not down your face so that ye may see your evil path!
More of the mountain had now been circled by us, and of the sun’s course far more spent, than my mind, not disengaged, was aware, when he, who always in advance attent was going on, began, “Lift up thy head; there is no more time for going thus abstracted. See there an Angel, who is hastening to come toward us: see how from the service of the day the sixth hand-maiden returns.[1] With reverence adorn thine acts and thy face so that he may delight to direct us upward. Think that this day never dawns again.”
[1] The sixth hour of the day is coming to its end, near noon.