Cavalry; right in the van were Æneas and faithful Achates;
After them other officials of Troja: amid the array rode
Pallas himself, superb in his mantle and blazoned equipments:
Just as when bathed in the ocean's wave hath the star of the mornin
Star which above all stars is the favorite planet of Venus—
Lifted its sacred visage, and melted the darkness from heaven.
Mothers solicitous stand on the walls, and with lingering glances
Follow the pillar of dust, and the regiments gleaming in copper.
They through the brambles in arms, through the nearest approach
Onward are tending: there issues a shout, and the column complete
Hoof with a quadruped clattering quivers the mouldering common.
Hard by the gelid river of Cæré there stands an immense grove,
Sacred afar by religious respect of the fathers: on all sides
Circling hills have enclosed it, and skirts it a forest of black pine.
Rumor reports that the ancient Pelasgi the grove, and a feast-day,
Sacred assigned to Silvanus as god of their pastures and cattle,
Who were original owners of old of the Latian confines.
Not far off from the spot were the Tuscans and Tarchon encamping,
Strongly entrenched, and the whole of their legion was now from the
Hilltop visible, stretching away on the limitless meadows.
Thither the father Æneas and chosen for battle his stalwarts
Cautiously climb, and though weary, attend to their horses and bodie
But on æthereal storm-clouds Venus, the beauteous goddess,
Bearing her gifts, had appeared, and, as soon as she sighted her offspr
Far in a valley sequestered apart on the banks of the gelid
Stream, she accosted him thus, and presented herself for the purpose:
"Lo! the bestowments I promised, designed by the art of my husband
Finished; nor scruple, my son, in the future, to challenge to combats
Either the haughty Laurentes, or spirited champion Turnus."
Spake Cythereä, and courted the grateful embrace of her offspring,
As she the radiant armor set down 'neath an opposite oak-tree.
He, with the gifts of the goddess and honor so signal delighted,
Cannot be sated, and, rolling his eyes o'er each article singly,
Wonders, while oft on his hands and his arms he poises the helmet,
Richly adorned with its terrible plumage, and seeming to vomit
Flames, and the fate-fraught sabre, and corselet inwoven with copper,
Blood-red, massive; as when by the sunbeams gilded, a lurid
Rain-cloud kindles in glow, and reflects from afar an effulgence.
So, too, the polished greaves of the finest of gold and amalgam
Wrought, and the spear, and the marvellous shield of ineffable fabric.
There the Italian affairs, and the triumphs in store for the Romans,
Not uninformed of the fates, nor unskilled in the coming hereafter,
Had the Ignipotent modeled; and there had each branch of the future
Line of Ascanius wrought, and the wars to be waged in their order:
Modeled the fostering wolf, in the moss-grown grotto of Mavors,
Couched in recumbent repose; and around her udders the twin-boys
Playfully hanging, while she as their mother lay licking the fearless
Infants, and bending her tapering neck in alternately stroking
Each in his turn, and with tongue thus tenderly shaping their bodies.
Not far away thence Rome and the Sabine maidens' unseemly
Rape in the crowd, while the grand Circenian circus was being
Held, he had added, and, suddenly rising, the singular warfare,
Romulus' party with Tatius old and his merciless Cures.
Flitting, was giving alarm that the Gauls were approaching the threshold:
Afterwards these same kings, when the struggle between them was over,
Armed were standing in front of the altar of Jupiter, holding
Goblets, and, over a slaughtered sow were concerting alliance.
Not far thence had his four-horsed chariots, swiftly careering,
Quartered asunder Mettus-but thou thy pledges, O Alban,
Shouldest have kept! and Tullus was dragging the corse of the faithless [drops.
Man through the woods, and the brambles were dripping with spattering blood-
There was Porsena, moreover, bidding them welcome back the discarded
Tarquin, and pressing the city with grievously stringent investment,
Whilst the Æneans were rushing to arms for the citizens' rescue.
Him thou canst see like a person indignant, like one in a threatening
Posture, because brave Cocles was daring to tear up the bridging,
Yea, and e'en Cloelia was swimming, with fetters dissevered, the river.
Manlius, high on the heights, was as guard of the fort of Tarpeia
Standing in front of the temple, and lofty Capitols holding.
Freshly was bristling the palace with Romulus' primitive thatching.
Here, moreover, a silvery goose, in the golden verandas
Gauls had approached through the brambles, and there were investing the castle
Screened by the darkness and boon of the dim and shadowy midnight:
Golden their flowing locks, and golden their radiant raiment;
Brightly they gleam in their striped, diversified plaids; then their milk-white 660
Necks are encircled with gold, and they each in hand are two Alpine
Spontoons brandishing, whilst they protected their bodies with long shields.
Here are the Salian dancers, and there are the naked Luperci,
Aye, and their lambs' wool tufts, and their targes descended from heaven,
Modeled, and virtuous maidens were leading the sacred processions
On through the city in light-wheeled carriages. Yonder he adds thence
Even Tartarean seats, and the towering portals of Pluto:
Criminal punishments also: and thee, O Cataline, hanging
High on a menacing crag, and quaking at sight of the furies:
Separate also the pious, and Cato dispensing them statutes.
'Twixt these, broadly was stretching the golden expanse of a swollen
Sea, but its deep-blue billows were foaming with feathery white-caps:
Round in the bright, pure silver in circles were dolphins the broad deep
Sweeping with frisky tails, and cleaving the billowy whirlpool:
Out in its midst could the bronze-beaked fleets, and the Actian battles
Plainly be seen; and thou couldst, too, behold the whole of Leucaté
Glowing in battle array, and the surges effulgent with pure gold.
Cæsar Augustus on this side leading Italians to combats,
Flanked by the Senate and people, and cherished Penates and great gods,
High on his stern-deck standing, and each of his temples exultant
Breathing out flames, and there sparkles his father's star on his forehead.
There, on the other side, tall is Agrippa, with winds and the great gods
Favoring, leading his army, whose beak-crowned temples with naval
Crown are effulgently gleaming, the arrogant signal of battle.
Yonder as victor, with forces barbaric, and various armor,
Antony brings from the tribes of the morning, and shore of the Red-Sea,
Egypt, and swarming his Orient allies, and farthermost Bactra
Full in their midst is the queen, with her country's timbrels the squadrons
Summoning, seeing not yet the couple of serpents behind her.
Monsters of gods of every description, and barking Anubis,
Wield against Neptune and Venus, and even Minerva, their hostile
Weapons. The steel-clad Mavors aloof in the midst of the contest
Rages, and hideous Furies are sweeping from regions of æther;
Discord jubilant stalks, with her mantelet riddled to tatters,
After her follows, with blood-stained scourge, the inhuman Bellona.
Seeing these, Actium's patron Apollo was bending his cross-bow
Downward: in dread of him, every Egyptian and Indian, and every
With him; and shame! in his train an Egyptian consort attends him!
All seem rushing at once, and the whole main foaming and splashing,
Torn by the back-drawn oars, and the prows surmounted with tridents.
Seaward they steer, and the Cyclades thou wouldst imagine were wrenched loose,
Sailing the ocean, and loftiest mountains with mountains colliding,
Men of a marvellous stature are perched on the turretted stern decks;
Flamable tow and the feathery steel is by hand and by weapons
Scattered: with fresh-made massacre redden the fallows of Neptune.
Arab, and all the Sabæans were turning their backs in a panic:
Even the queen was beheld as unfurling the sails to the welcome
Winds, and seemed now, even now, to be loosing the ropes of the main-sail.
Her in the midst of the carnage, and palid from doom in the future,
Had the Ignipotent fashioned as borne by the waves and the West-wind.
Opposite though as in mourning the Nilus enormous in stature,
Spreading his fluttering folds, and with all its investure inviting
Back to its dark blue bosom and sheltering rivers the vanquished.
Meantime Cæsar, in triplicate triumph, conveyed in the Roman
Walls, to Italia's gods was a votive immortal devoting,
Even three hundred capital shrines through the whole of the city;
He is admiring; not knowing their meanings, he, pleased with the pattern,
Lifts to his shoulder the fame, and the fates of his future descendents.
Here, too, had Mulciber sketched the Numidian tribes and the loose girt
Africans: here, too, the Leleges, Carian hordes and Geloni
Carrying arrows. In waves more gentle now passed the Euphrates;
There the remotest of men, the Morini, and there the bicornous
Rhine and untamable Dahæ, and scorning a bridge, the Araxes.
Such on the shield of Vulcan-the gift of his mother-the objects
Loud were the streets with the joy and the sports and the plaudit resounding;
Clusters of matrons at all of the temples, at all there were altars:
Strewing the ground in front of the altars lay sacrificed bullocks.
He in the snow-white porch of the brilliant Apollo his station
Taking, the gifts of the peoples acknowleges, and on the proud gates
Hangs them. The conquered nations are marching in lengthy procession,
Varied in languages each, as in habit of costume and armor.
Trojans in Camp are assaulted by Turnus: Euryalus' midnig
Venture with Nisus: the havoo of Turnus, who leaps in the
BUT, while these scenes are afar in a different quarter enacted, Down from heaven has Saturnian Juno her messenger Iris Sent to audacious Turnus. It happened that Turnus was just then Seated at ease in a hallowed vale, in a grove of his parent Pilumnus: Thus from her roseate mouth did the daughter of Thaumas address hi "Turnus, what none of the gods to thee wishing would venture to pro Lo! the revolving day of its own free will hath accorded. Leaving his city and comrades and vessels, Æneas is absent, Seeking the kingdom and home of the Palatine monarch Evander; Still not enough, he hath Corythus' farthermost cities invaded, Yea, and is arming the Lydians' horde-their yeomanry mustered. Why doubt? Now is the juncture to order out horses and chariots: Break through every delay, and seize on his crippled encampments." Spake she, and, heavenward soaring away on her balancing pinions, Clave on the clouds in her flight a wide-arched, radiant rainbow. Instant the warrior knew her, and raised to the planets his folded Palms, and thus in his utterance followed the fugitive goddess: "Iris, the glory of heaven, who sent thee to me on the thin clouds Wafted to earth? Whence came this so unexpectedly splendid Weather? I see in its midst heaven parting asunder, and lonely Stars in the firmament straggling! I follow thy marvellous omens, Whosoever dost summon to arms!" And having thus spoken, Forth to the billow he strode, and the waters scooped from the top-surf Often imploring the gods, and he loaded the heavens with votives.
Soon to the open plain was advancing the whole of his army,
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