ranks. But others fill their place; while stones and every 15
kind of missile keep raining unabated.
“There in the entry, at the very gate, is Pyrrhus[135] in his
glory, gleaming with spear and sword, and with all the
brilliance of steel. Even as against the daylight a serpent
gorged with baleful herbage, whom winter’s cold of late 20
was keeping swollen underground, now, his skin shed, in
new life and in the beauty of youth, rears his breast erect,
and wreathes his shining scales, towering to the sun, and
flashes in his mouth his three-forked tongue. With him