Aeneid 2.624-678

Then indeed all Ilium seemed to settle into fires and Neptunian Troy (seemed) to be turned from the bottom: and just as when in the tops of the mountains farmers in rivalry press to fell an ancient ash tree, cut by the iron and thick axe (blows), that (tree) threatens and, made to tremble, sways its foliage with shaken top, until, conquered little by little by its wounds, it groaned its last and dragged ruin, torn from the ridges. I descend and, with a god leading, I am sped among the flame and enemies: the weapons give way and the flames recede.

(634) And when now it had been arrived at the thresholds of my paternal seat and ancient homes, my father, whom I first hoped to lift into high mountains and first sought, he declined to lead on life with Troy destroyed and to endure exile. 'O you, who have blood untouched by age,' he says, 'and whose solid strength stands with its oak, you pursue flight. If the gods had wished me to lead on my life, they would have saved these abodes for me. We have seen one destruction, enough and more, and we have survived a captured city. Depart, o thus having addressed this corpse placed thus. I myself will find death by my hand; the enemy will pity (me) and seek spoils. The loss of burial is easy. For a long time now hated by the gods and, useless, I have delayed the years, from which the father of the gods and king of men breathed upon me with the winds of lightening and touched (me) with fire.'

(650) Recalling such things he stood firm and remained fixed. We, in response, drenched with tears, both my wife Creusa and Ascanius and the whole house, lest my father wish to turn over everything with him and add his weight to pressing doom. He refused and clings to his undertaking and the seats themselves. Again I am born into armor and most wretched hope for death. For what plan or what fortune was now given? 'Did you believe that I could retreat with you abandoned, father, and does such wrong fall from a father's mouth? If it pleases the gods that nothing be left from such a city and this sits in your mind and it pleases to add yourself and yours to ruined Troy, the door lies open to that death, and now Pyrrhus will be here from the copious blood of Priam, who kills a son before the face (lit. pl.) of a father and a father before the altars. This it was, dear parent, (for) what you snatch me through the weapons, through the fires, to see the enemy in the inner recesses and to see Ascanius and my father and Creusa nearby, (all) slaughtered, the one in the blood of the other? Arms, men, take arms; the last light calls the beaten. Return me to the Danaans; allow that I revisit renewed battles. Never will we all die unavenged today.

(671) Hence I put on my sword again and I inserted my left hand to the shield, fitting (it), and I bore myself outside my home. But look, my wife, having embraced my feet at the threshold and holding little Iulus to his father: 'If you go t die take us also into everything with you; but if having tried you put some hope in arms taken up, protect this home first. To whom little Iulus, to whom your father and I, once called your wife, am left?