Aeneid 2.453-505

There was a threshold and hidden doors and a utility passage between (lit. among themselves) the homes of Priam, and doorposts remote in the back, by which unlucky Andromache more often was accustomed to bear herself, unaccompanied, while the royal powers remained, to her in-laws and used to bring the boy Astyanax to his grandfather. I escape to the steps of the high summit, whence the wretched Teucrians were throwing vain weapons by hand. With my sword having attacked around the turret standing at the precipice and rising up under the stars from the highest roofs, whence all Troy and the ships of the Danaans and the Achaean camps were accustomed to be seen, by which the highest floors give shaky joints, we uproot from the high seats and overthrew (it); this, having slipped suddenly brought ruin and a sound and fell over the lines of the Danaans widely. But others come up; neither the rocks nor any tribe of weapons meanwhile cease.

(469) Before the vestibule itself and on the first threshold, Pyrrhus exults, flashing with spears ad bright bronze: as when a snake, having fed on evil grasses, which winter covered, swollen, under the cold earth, now, new with skins put aside and shining with youthfulness, rolls slippery backs, lofty with chest lifted to the sun, and flickers with forked tongues in his mouth. Together huge Periphas and driver of Achilles' horses, armor-bearer Automedon together with the whole Scyrian youth advance to the roof and throw flames to the gables. He himself among the first bursts the hard thresholds wiht a snatched double-axe and tears the bronze doorposts from the hinge; and now, with the beam split, he cuts through stout oak and gave a huge window with a wide mouth. The inner home appears and the long atriums are revealed; the innermost recesses of Priam and your kings are exposed and they see armed men standing in the first threshold. But the inner home is mixed with groaning and wretched tumult, and deep within the hollow rooms howl with womanly lamentations; the clamor strikes the golden stars. Then fearful mothers wander in the huge homes and, having embraces the doorposts, hold on and press kisses. Pyrrhus presses on the fatherland with violence; neither the bolts nor guards themselves prevail to endure; the door slips with bronze ram, and the dislodged doorposts lean forward on the hinge. The way is made by force; the admitted Danaans burst the approaches and slaughter the first men and fill places with extensive soldiery. Not thus, when a frothy stream goes out of broken banks and overwhelms opposing barriers with the whirlpool, raging with a wave it is born into the fields and through all the plains and drags the hers with the stables. I myself saw Neoptolemus raging with slaughter and the twin sons of Atreus on the threshold, I saw Hecuba and the hundred daughters-in-law and Priam amid altars befouled with blood, which fires he himself had consecrated. Those fifty bedchambers, such great hope of descendants, doorposts with barbarian gold and proud with spoils lean down; the Danaans hold where fire falls short.