Dido. O Hector who weepes not to heare thy name?
AEn. Yet flung I forth, and desperate of my
life,
Ran in the thickest throngs, and with this sword
Sent many of their sauadge ghosts to hell.
At last came Pirrhus fell and full of ire.
His harnesse dropping bloud, and on his speare
The mangled head of Priams yongest sonne,
And after him his band of Mirmidons,
With balles of wilde fire in their murdering pawes,
Which made the funerall flame that burnt faire Troy:
All which hemd me about, crying, this is he.
Dido. Ah, how could poore AEneas scape their hands?
AEn. My mother Venus iealous of my health,
Conuaid me from their crooked nets and bands:
So I escapt the furious Pirrhus wrath:
Who then ran to the pallace of the King,
And at Ioues Altar finding Priamus,
About whose withered necke hung Hecuba,
Foulding his hand in hers, and ioyntly both
Beating their breasts and falling on the ground,
He with his faulchions poynt raisde vp at once,
And with Megeras eyes stared in their face,
Threatning a thousand deaths at euery glaunce.
To whom the aged King thus trembling spoke:
Achilles sonne, remember what I was,
Father of fiftie sonnes, but they are slaine,
Lord of my fortune, but my fortunes turnd,
King of this Citie, but my Troy is fired,
And now am neither father, Lord, nor King:
Yet who so wretched but desires to liue?
O let me liue, great Neoptolemus,
Not mou’d at all, but smiling at his teares,
This butcher whil’st his hands were yet held
vp,
Treading vpon his breast, strooke off his hands.
Dido. O end AEneas, I can heare no more.
AEn. At which the franticke Queene leapt on
his face,
And in his eyelids hanging by the nayles,
A little while prolong’d her husbands life:
At last the souldiers puld her by the heeles,
And swong her howling in the emptie ayre,
Which sent an eccho to the wounded King:
Whereat he lifted vp his bedred lims,
And would haue grappeld with Achilles sonne,
Forgetting both his want of strength and hands,
Which he disdaining whiskt his sword about,
And with the wound thereof the King fell downe:
Then from the nauell to the throat at once,
He ript old Priam: at whose latter gaspe
Ioues marble statue gan to bend the brow,
As lothing Pirrhus for this wicked act:
Yet he vndaunted tooke his fathers flagge,
And dipt it in the old Kings chill cold bloud,
And then in triumph ran into the streetes,
Through which he could not passe for slaughtred men:
So leaning on his sword he stood stone still,
Viewing the fire wherewith rich Ilion burnt.
By this I got my father on my backe,
This yong boy in mine armes, and by the hand