heir faces to the town, and seek a sheltering place,
Nor yet may any turn with spear upon the Teucrian chase,
That beareth death of men in hand, or bar the homeward road:
Cast back on fainting shoulders now the loose bow hangs a load;
The horny hoofs of four-foot things shake down the dusty mead,
The mirky cloud of rolling dust doth ever townward speed;
And mothers beating of their breasts stand on the watch-towers high,
And cast abroad their woman's wail up to the starry sky.
But they who in their fleeing first break through the open doors,
In mingled tumult on their backs a crowd of foemen pours; 880
Nor do they 'scape a wretched death: there, on the threshold-stead,
Within their fathers' walls, amidst the peace of home, they shed
The lives from out their bodies pierced: then some men shut the gate,
Nor durst they open to their friends, or take in them that wait
Praying without; and there indeed is woeful slaughter towards
Of them that fence the wall with swords, and rushers on the swords.
Those shut out 'neath the very eyes of weeping kith and kin,
Some headlong down the ditches roll, by fleeing rout thrust in;
Some blindly and with loosened rein spur on their steeds to meet
As battering-rams the very gates, the ruthless door-leaves beat 890
And now, in agony of fight, the mothers on the walls,
E'en as they saw Camilla do, (so love of country calls),
With hurrying hands the javelins cast, and in the iron's stead
Make shift of hardened pale of oak and stake with half-burned head.
Hot-heart they are, afire to die the first their town to save.

Meanwhile to Turnus in the woods sweeps in that cruel wave
Of tidings: trouble measureless doth Acca to him bring,--
The wasting of the Volscian host, Camilla's murdering,
The onset of the baneful foe with favouring Mars to aid;
The ruin of all things; present fear e'en on the city laid, 900
He, madly wroth, (for even so Jove's dreadful might deemed good),
Leaveth the hills' beleaguerment and mirky rugged wood.
Scarce was he out of sight thereof, and nigh his camp to win,
When mid the opened pass and bare AEneas entereth in,
Climbeth the ridge, and slippeth through the thicket's shadowy night.

So either toward the city fares with all their battle-might,
And no long space of way indeed there was betwixt the twain