Citadel

What is out of the lips, is out of the citadel.

Those indignant winds grumble with a loud murmuring around the confines of the mountain; Aeolus sits in his high citadel, holding his scepter, and he soothes their spirits and tempers their rages: if he did not do this, they would surely snatch away seas and lands and the deep heaven itself, and sweep them off through the windy sky.

Hotly the Tyrians are at work. These draw / the bastions' lines, roll stones and trench the ground; / or build the citadel.

"Then first Thymaetes cries aloud, to go / and through the gates the monstrous horse convey / and lodge it in the citadel. E'en so / his fraud or Troy's dark fates were working for our woe."

"Thus while they waver and, perplex with doubt, / urge diverse counsels, and in parts divide, / lo, from the citadel, foremost of a rout, / breathless Laocoon runs, and from afar cries out: / 'Ah! wretched townsmen! do ye think the foe / gone, or that guileless are their gifts? O blind / with madness! Thus Ulysses do ye know?'"

"But when Ulysses, fain / to weave new crimes, with Tydeus' impious son / dragged the Palladium from her sacred fane, / and, on the citadel the warders slain, / upon the virgin's image dared to lay / red hands of slaughter, and her wreaths profane, / hope ebbed and failed them from that fatal day, / the Danaans' strength grew weak, the goddess turned away. / No dubious signs Tritonia's wrath declared."

But heedless, blind with frenzy, one and all / up to the sacred citadel we strain, / and there the ill-omened prodigy install.

"High in the citadel the monstrous frame / pours forth an armed deluge to the day, / and Sinon, puffed with triumph, spreads the flame. / Part throng the gates, part block each narrow way; / such hosts Mycenae sends, such thousands to the fray."

"See, on the citadel, all grim with gore, / red-robed, and with the Gorgon shield aglow, / Tritonian Pallas bids the conflict roar."

Down from the citadel I haste below, / through foe, through fire, the goddes for my guide. / Harmless the darts give way, the sloping flames divide.