623'O wretched women,' she says, 'whom no Achaean hand dragged to death in war beneath the walls of our homeland! 624O unhappy race, for what destruction is Fortune keeping you? 626The seventh summer since the fall of Troy is now turning, while we are borne along, having measured out all seas, all lands, so many inhospitable rocks and stars, as over the great sea we pursue an Italy that flees from us, and are rolled about by the waves. 630Here are the bounds of Eryx, our brother, and Acestes our host: who forbids us to lay down walls and give our citizens a city? 632O homeland, and Penates snatched in vain from the enemy, will no walls now ever be called Troy's?
633Shall I nowhere see Hector's rivers, Xanthus and Simois? 635Come, then, and with me burn these ill-omened ships. 636For in my sleep the image of the prophetess Cassandra seemed to give me blazing torches: "Seek Troy here; 638here is your home," she said. 638Now is the time to act, and such great portents allow no delay. 639See, four altars to Neptune; 640the god himself supplies the torches and the courage.' 641Saying this, she is first to seize the deadly fire with force, and raising her right hand high, straining, brandishes it and throws: the minds of the Trojan women are roused, their hearts stunned. 644At this one of the many, the eldest, Pyrgo, royal nurse to so many of Priam's sons, says: 'This is not Beroe, mothers, this is not the Rhoetean wife of Doryclus; 647note the signs of divine beauty and her blazing eyes; 648what spirit she has, what a face, the sound of her voice, or her step as she walks.
650I myself just now left Beroe behind, ill, indignant that she alone was missing such a rite and would not pay Anchises the honours due to him.' 653So she spoke. 654But the mothers at first, wavering, began to eye the ships with malignant looks, torn between a wretched love for the land before them and the kingdom calling them by fate, when the goddess rose through the sky on poised wings and in her flight cut a huge arc beneath the clouds. 659Then indeed, stunned by the portent and driven by frenzy, they cry out together and snatch fire from the hearths within; 661some strip the altars, and throw on leaves and brushwood and torches.
662Vulcan rages with loosened reins through benches and oars and sterns of painted fir.