Then first Thymaetes cries aloud, to go / and through the gates the monstrous horse convey / and lodge it in the citadel. E'en so / his fraud or Troy's dark fates were working for our woe."

The towering citadel is understood to be the city's nerve centre.

Down from the citadel I haste below, / through foe, through fire, the goddes for my guide. / Harmless the darts give way, the sloping flames divide.

Hotly the Tyrians are at work. These draw / the bastions' lines, roll stones and trench the ground; / or build the citadel.

Those indignant winds grumble with a loud murmuring around the confines of the mountain; Aeolus sits in his high citadel, holding his scepter, and he soothes their spirits and tempers their rages: if he did not do this, they would surely snatch away seas and lands and the deep heaven itself, and sweep them off through the windy sky.

High in the citadel the monstrous frame / pours forth an armed deluge to the day, / and Sinon, puffed with triumph, spreads the flame. / Part throng the gates, part block each narrow way; / such hosts Mycenae sends, such thousands to the fray."

What is out of the lips, is out of the citadel.

But she had heard that an offspring, led by Trojan blood, would one day overturn the Tyrian citadels; from this would come a nation ruling widely and proud in war, for the destruction of Libya: thus the Fates spun out their destiny.

See, on the citadel, all grim with gore, / red-robed, and with the Gorgon shield aglow, / Tritonian Pallas bids the conflict roar."

But heedless, blind with frenzy, one and all / up to the sacred citadel we strain, / and there the ill-omened prodigy install.