touch the rope. In it moves, rolling with threatening brow 20
into the heart of the city. O my country! O Ilion,
home of the gods! O ye, Dardan towers, with your martial
fame! Yes—four times on the gateway’s very threshold
it stopped, four times the arms rattled in its womb.
On, however, we press, unheeding, in the blindness of our 25
frenzy, and lodge the ill-starred portent in our hallowed
citadel. Even then Cassandra[130] unseals to speak of future
fate those lips which by the god’s command no Trojan
ever believed—while we, alas! we, spend the day that