door gives way under the thick strokes of the battery,
and the valves are torn from their hinges and brought
down. Force finds its way; the Danaans burst a passage,
rush in, and slaughter those they meet, and the whole 10
wide space is flooded with soldiers. With far less fury,
when the river, all foam, has broken the prison of its banks
and streamed with triumphant tide over the barriers set
to check it, down it comes tumbling along the corn-fields,
and along the whole country sweeps away herd and stall. 15
With my own eyes I saw Neoptolemus, mad with carnage,