Aeneid Book 2, lines 370-400

Into battle

by Virgil

On the night of Troy’s fall, Aeneas and the band he has gathered fall in for the first time with the enemy. Princess Casandra’s husband, Coroebus, suggests a trick to dupe the Greeks: it succeeds at first, but will have serious consequences later.

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Primus se, Danaum magna comitante caterva,
Androgeos offert nobis, socia agmina credens
inscius, atque ultro verbis compellat amicis:
“Festinate, viri: nam quae tam sera moratur
segnities? alii rapiunt incensa feruntque
Pergama; vos celsis nunc primum a navibus itis.”
dixit, et extemplo, neque enim responsa dabantur
fida satis, sensit medios delapsus in hostis.
Obstipuit, retroque pedem cum voce repressit:
inprovisum aspris veluti qui sentibus anguem
pressit humi nitens, trepidusque repente refugit
attollentem iras et caerula colla tumentem;
haud secus Androgeos visu tremefactus abibat.
Inruimus, densis et circumfundimur armis,
ignarosque loci passim et formidine captos
sternimus: adspirat primo fortuna labori.
atque hic successu exsultans animisque Coroebus,
“O socii, qua prima” inquit “fortuna salutis
monstrat iter, quoque ostendit se dextra, sequamur
mutemus clipeos, Danaumque insignia nobis
aptemus: dolus an virtus, quis in hoste requirat?
arma dabunt ipsi.” sic fatus, deinde comantem
Androgei galeam clipeique insigne decorum
induitur, laterique Argivum accommodat ensem.
hoc Rhipeus, hoc ipse Dymas omnisque iuventus
laeta facit; spoliis se quisque recentibus armat.
vadimus immixti Danais haud numine nostro,
multaque per caecam congressi proelia noctem
conserimus, multos Danaum demittimus Orco.
diffugiunt alii ad navis, et litora cursu
fida petunt: pars ingentem formidine turpi
scandunt rursus equum et nota conduntur in alvo.

“The first Greek we meet, a big troop with him, is Androgeos. Unsuspecting, thinking we are an allied force, he even speaks friendly words: ‘Hurry up, men, why such slowness and delay? Troy is in flames, others are taking and sacking it, and you are just coming from the high ships’, he says; and immediately, receiving no reassuring reply, realises he has fallen right in with enemies. He stops short, and falls back in silence. Like a man who, struggling through, treads on a glittering snake unseen on the ground among the rough thorns, and in sudden fear steps backas its anger kindles and it puffs up its blue neck, so Androgeos draws away, trembling at the sight. We rush them, hemming them in with weapons on all sides, and cut them down everywhere, unfamiliar as they are with their surroundings and gripped by fear. Fortune breathes on this, our first action; in high spirits and buoyed by success, Coroebus speaks: ‘Comrades, when fortune shows us a way to safety, and under the best of auspices , let us follow! Let’s switch shields, and gird on the emblems of the Greeks – why, when dealing with an enemy, make a distinction between stratagem and skill at arms? The enemy themselves will supply our weapons!’ And he dons Androgeos’s plumed helmet and his shield blazoned with his famous crest, and girds a Greek sword to his side. Elated, Rhipeus, Dymas and all of our warriors do the same, and every man equips himself from new-won trophies. Under this borrowed identity we advance, mingling with the Greeks, joining combat many times in the darkness of the night, and send down many to Hades. Some run for their ships, seeking the safety of the shore; some in shameful panic climb back up the mighty horse and hide in its familiar womb.”

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More Poems by Virgil

  1. Fire strikes Aeneas’s fleet
  2. Dido and Aeneas: Hell hath no fury …
  3. Aeneas prepares for a hopeless fight
  4. Anchises’s ghost invites Aeneas to visit the underworld
  5. Turnus is lured away from battle
  6. The death of Dido.
  7. Storm at sea!
  8. The Trojan Horse enters the city
  9. The farmer’s happy lot
  10. The death of Pallas
  11. Virgil predicts a forthcoming birth and a new golden age
  12. The death of Euryalus and Nisus
  13. The Trojan horse opens
  14. King Latinus grants the Trojans’ request
  15. Aeneas tours the site of Rome
  16. The Fury Allecto blows the alarm
  17. Juno is reconciled
  18. Dido falls in love
  19. Virgil begins the Georgics
  20. Hector visits Aeneas in a dream
  21. The infant Camilla
  22. Aeneas finds Dido among the shades
  23. Juno’s anger
  24. Laocoon warns against the Trojan horse
  25. New allies for Aeneas
  26. What is this wooden horse?
  27. Jupiter’s prophecy
  28. The Aeneid begins
  29. Palinurus the helmsman is lost
  30. More from Virgil’s farming Utopia
  31. Virgil’s perils on the sea
  32. King Mezentius meets his match
  33. Dido’s release
  34. Aeneas sees Marcellus, Augustus’s tragic heir
  35. Aeneas prepares to tell Dido his story
  36. Aeneas saves his son and father, but at a cost
  37. Souls awaiting punishment in Tartarus, and the crimes that brought them there.
  38. Signs of bad weather
  39. Rites for the allies’ dead
  40. How Aeneas will know the site of his city
  41. Juno throws open the gates of war
  42. The Trojans prepare to set sail from Carthage
  43. Mercury’s journey to Carthage
  44. Charon, the ferryman
  45. Aeneas arrives in Italy
  46. Dido’s story
  47. The Trojans reach Carthage
  48. The portals of sleep
  49. Cassandra is taken
  50. Vulcan’s forge
  51. Rumour
  52. Aeneas’s ships are transformed
  53. Dido and Aeneas: royal hunt and royal affair
  54. A Fury rouses Turnus to war
  55. Laocoon and the snakes
  56. Turnus the wolf
  57. Mourning for Pallas
  58. Aeneas reaches the Elysian Fields
  59. Aeneas joins the fray
  60. Aeneas rescues his Father Anchises
  61. Aeneas comes to the Hell of Tartarus
  62. The natural history of bees
  63. Aeneas and Dido meet
  64. The journey to Hades begins
  65. Sea-nymphs
  66. Aeneas is wounded
  67. Aeneas learns the way to the underworld
  68. Aeneas’s oath
  69. The Syrian hostess
  70. The death of Priam
  71. Omens for Princess Lavinia
  72. The farmer’s starry calendar
  73. Help for Father Aeneas from Father Tiber
  74. The Harpy’s prophecy
  75. Catastrophe for Rome?
  76. Aeneas’s vision of Augustus
  77. Aristaeus’s bees
  78. Turnus at bay
  79. Virgil’s poetic temple to Caesar
  80. In King Latinus’s hall
  81. Love is the same for all
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