Dardania’s ruin, a welcome gift to be to her, the virgin queen of deathless steeds; and with nooses of cord they dragged it, as it had been a ship’s dark hull, to the stone-built temple of the goddess Pallas, and set it on that floor so soon to drink our country’s blood. But, as they labored and made merry, came on the pitchy night; loud the Libyan flute was sounding, and Phrygian songs awoke, while maidens beat the ground with airy foot, uplifting their glad song; and in the halls a blaze of torchlight shed its flickering shadows on sleeping eyes.

ChorusIn that hour around the house I was singing as I danced to that maiden of the hills, the child of Zeus; when there rang along the town a cry of death which filled the homes of Troy, and babies in terror clung about their mothers’ skirts, as forth from their ambush came the warrior-band, the handiwork of maiden Pallas. Soon the altars ran with Phrygian blood, and desolation reigned over every bed where young men lay beheaded, a glorious crown for Hellas won, for her, the nurse of youth, but for our Phrygian fatherland a bitter grief.