Quintus Quake

But naught availed targes nor levers, when Aeneas' might swung in his hands a stone like a thunderbolt, hurled it with uttermost strength, and dashed to death all whom it caught beneath the shields, as when a mountain's precipice-edge breaks off and falls on pasturing goats, and all that graze thereby tremble; so were those Danaans dazed with dread. Stone after stone he hurled on the reeling ranks, as when amid the hills Olympian Zeus with thunderbolts and blazing lightnings rends from their foundations crags that rim a peak, and this way, that way, sends them hurtling down; then the flocks tremble, scattering in wild flight; so quailed the Achaeans, when Aeneas dashed to sudden fragments all that battle-wall moulded of adamant shields, because a God gave more than human strength. No man of them could lift his eyes unto him in that fight, because the arms that lapped his sinewy limbs flashed like the heaven-born lightnings. At his side stood, all his form divine in darkness cloaked, Ares the terrible, and winged the flight of what bare down to the Argives doom or dread. He fought as when Olympian Zeus himself from heaven in wrath smote down the insolent bands of giants grim, and shook the boundless earth, and sea, and ocean, and the heavens, when reeled the knees of Atlas neath the rush of Zeus. So crumbled down beneath Aeneas' bolts the Argive squadrons. All along the wall wroth with the foeman rushed he: from his hands whatso he lighted on in onslaught-haste hurled he; for many a battle-staying bolt lay on the walls of those staunch Dardan men. With such Aeneas stormed in giant might, with such drave back the thronging foes. All round the Trojans played the men. Sore travail and pain had all folk round the city: many fell, Argives and Trojans. Rang the battle-cries: Aeneas cheered the war-fain Trojans on to fight for home, for wives, and their own souls with a good heart: war-staunch Achilles' son shouted: "Flinch not, ye Argives, from the walls, till Troy be taken, and sink down in flames!" And round these twain an awful measureless roar rang, daylong as they fought: no breathing-space came from the war to them whose spirits burned, these, to smite Ilium, those, to guard her safe.


- Quintus Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica, Book 11