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in kindly succour. I follow where the signal leads, and anon entrust my sire, hidden in a vessel’s curving beams, to the gods of the sea and the winds and Aegaeon who holds the Cyclades in his embrace; nor set we any limit to our mutual grief, were it not that Lucifer is already chasing the stars from the eastern pole. Then at last I leave the sounding shore, in brooding fear and scarce trusting Lyaeus’ word, resolute in step but casting anxious thoughts behind me; nor rest I but must fain watch from every hill the breezes rising in heaven and the ocean waves. Day rises shamefast, and Titan opening heaven to view turns aside his beams from Lemnos and hides his averted chariot behind the barrier of a cloud. Night’s frenzied deeds lay manifest, and to all the new terrors of the day brought sudden shame, though all had share therein; they bury in the earth their impious crimes or burn with hurried fires. And now the Fury band and Venus sated to the full had fled the stricken city; now could the women know what they had dared, now rend their hair and bedew their eyes with tears. This island, blest in lands and wealth, in arms and heroes, famed for its site and enriched of late by a Getic triumph, has lost, not by onslaught of the sea or of the foe or by stroke of heaven, all her folk together, bereft and ravaged to the uttermost. No men are left to plough the fields or cleave the waves, silent are the homes, swimming deep in blood and stained red with clotted gore: we alone remain in that great city, we and the ghosts that fiercely hiss about our rooftops. I, too, in the inner courtyard of my house build high a flaming pile and cast thereon my father’s sceptre and arms and well-known royal