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.

Thus while they waver and, perplex with doubt, / urge diverse counsels, and in parts divide, / lo, from the citadel, foremost of a rout, / breathless Laocoon runs, and from afar cries out: / 'Ah! wretched townsmen! do ye think the foe / gone, or that guileless are their gifts? O blind / with madness! Thus Ulysses do ye know?'"

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.

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."

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."

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

But when Ulysses, fain / to weave new crimes, with Tydeus' impious son / dragged the Palladium from her sacred fane, / and, on the citadel the warders slain, / upon the virgin's image dared to lay / red hands of slaughter, and her wreaths profane, / hope ebbed and failed them from that fatal day, / the Danaans' strength grew weak, the goddess turned away. / No dubious signs Tritonia's wrath declared."

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

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

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