and therewith spewed forth wine. And many gathered together in one place were slain as they fought and many, as they were pursued, fell from the towers into the house of Hades, leaping their latest leap. And a few through a narrow hollow, like thieves, escaped unnoticed from the storm of their perishing fatherland. Others within, in the surge of war and darkness, like to men gone rather than to men fleeing, fell one above the other. And the city could not contain the filth, desolate of men but over-full of dead. And there was no sparing. Driven by the frenzied lash of sleepless turmoil they had no regard even to the gods, but with most lawless onset they defiled with blood the innocent altars of the immortals. And old men most piteous were slain in most unworthy slaughter: slain not on their feet, but, stretching on the ground their suppliant limbs, they had their grey heads laid low. And many infant children were snatched from the motherâs breast that had suckled them but a little while and, understanding not, paid for the sins of their parents, while she that nursed it, offered the child the breast in vain, and brought offering of milk it might not suck.a And birds and dogs, here and there throughout the city, the fowls of air and the beasts that walk the earth, feasted in company and drank the black blood and made a savage meal. The crying of the birds breathed slaughter, while the barking dogs bayed wildly over torn corpses of men, pitiless and heeding not that they were rending their own masters.
And Odysseus and Menelaus of the goodly hair set out for the house of woman-mad Deiphobus, like
a Pliny, N. H. xxxv. 98.