Leave unlamented to die on the unknown dust of the lowlands:
Opis is wafted away on her pinions to airy Olympus.
First flees, reft of its mistress, the light brigade of Camilla;
Routedly flee the Rutulians, flees the intrepid Atinas;
Scatter at random the chieftains, and companies, basely deserted,
Seek for a shelter, and wheeling their horses they scud to the ramparts.
None by resort to his weapons is able to cope with the Teucrans,
Charging and dealing out death, or evan to rally against them;
But, as they sling up their unbent bows on their languishing shoulders,
Hoof of the quadrupeds quivers the mouldering plain in their stampede,
On to the walls is the dark dust, turbid in ebony blackness
Those who were first in the stampede dashed in the opening gateways:
On them is pressing, with column disordered, the enemy's rabble;
Neither escape they a pitiful death, but there at the threshold,
Right in the walls of their country, and even within their protected
Rolled, while the matrons disconsolate, beating their breasts on the watch-towers, Raise to the planets of heaven the clamor of feminine wailing.
Homes, they are breathing their lives out: some, too, in closing the portals,
Dare not open a passage to comrades, nor into the ramparts
Welcome the earnest entreaters. There follows a sickening slaughter,
Both of those guarding the entrance, and those who are rushing on armor.
Barred out, before the eyes and the faces of sorrowing parents,
Some are precipitant into the trenches to imminent ruin
Rolled; while others, with reins thrown loose, and excited to frenzy,
Batter the gates, and the barred and impregnable door-posts.
Even the matrons aloft on the walls, in the height of the conflict-
Genuine love for their country incites--as they gazed on Camilla,
Trepidant hurl from their hands the projectiles, and even with hard oak
Turnus, as Acca reports to the chieftain the terrible tumult:
"Riddled and crushed is the Volscians' van, and Camilla has fallen!
Timber, and billets, and stakes that were hardened by charring, they reckless Rival the steel, and the foremost are burning to die for their country. Meanwhile, in wait in the forests, the cruelest tidings are filling
Foemen are wrathfully charging the lines, and, with Mars in ascendence,
Carrying all, and already the panic is reaching the ramparts."
He in a fury-so Jupiter's ruthless divinities will it—
Quits the blockaded hills, and abandons the intricate wildwoods.
Scarce had he gone out of sight, and was holding his way to the lowlands,
When, on the open wood-lawns marching, the father Æneas
Scales unmolested the ridge, and escapes from the darkening forests.
So they are both borne rapidly on to the walls in unbroken
Column; nor are they many a pace apart from each other:
Aye, and as soon as Æneas abroad looked out on the lowlands
Smoking with dust, he beheld the Laurentian columns, and Turnus
Recognized also the ruthless Æneas in arms, and distinctly
Heard, too, the tramp of advancing feet and the snorting of horses.
Straightway they would engage in encounters and hazard the combats,
Were not his tired steeds now in Iberia's surges the rosy
Phœbus immersing, and ushering night with decline of the daylight:
Pitch they their camps in front of the city and strengthen the ramparts.
Breach of the truce: how Eneas is wounded and healed oy his mother:
Final encounter of champions: Turnus is slain by Eneas
TURNUS, as soon as he sees that the Latins are utterly worsted,
Shattered by adverse Mars; that his promises now are remanded,
Sees he is marked by their eyes, self-prompted implacably kindling,
Rouses his wrath. As a lion at bay in the fields of the Punics,
Gored in his breast by a grievous wound at the hands of the hunters,
Musters his armor at length, and rejoices in shaking his shaggy
Mane on his neck, and unshrinkingly shivers the shaft of the spoiler
Fixed in his bosom, and roars with his mouth all reekingly gory:
Just like his is the violence growing in fiery Turnus.
Then he so speaks to the monarch, and thus he excited commences:
"No more halting in Turnus! There's naught that the dastard Æneans
Need to retract in their words, or recall what they lately have plighted.
Yes, I engage him! Bring sacrifice, father, and draw up the contract:
Either with this right hand yon Dardan deserter from Asia
I will to Tartarus send—let the Latins sit still and observe it—
Yea, and alone will refute with the sabre their common aspersion,
Or he shall hold us as slaves, and Lavinia own him as husband."
Mildly to him, and with heart imperturbable answers Latinus:
"Chieftain of chivalrous spirit, the more to excess in ferocious
Valor thou risest, the more it behooves me in turn to consider
Calmly the issues, and all the contingencies dreading to ponder.
Daunus, thy father's dominions are thine, as is many a stronghold
Won by thy hand, and Latinus has gold and a soul to assist thee.
Surely in Latium's bounds, and Laurentian fields, there are other
Virgins of no mean birth. Though unpleasant to utter, permit me,
Doffing disguises, to broach this, and drink it at once in thy spirit:
Proper it was that I marry my daughter to none of her former
Suitors, and all, both gods and men, were forewarning me of it.
Swayed by attachment to thee, and induced by the tenure of kindred
Blood, and the tears of my sorrowing spouse, I have, breaking all fetters,
Snatched from a son his betrothed, and embarked in an infamous warfare.
Turnus, thou seest from thence what disasters and battles pursue me,
Yea, and thou seest how great are the hardships thou chiefly endurest:
Twice in a mighty engagement defeated, we scarce in the city
Succor Italia's hopes: nay, still are the streams of the Tiber
Warm with our blood, and the vast plains blanch with the bones of our kins
Where am I drifting so often? What madness is swaying my purpose?
If then, were Turnus extinct, I were ready to court this alliance,
Why, while he yet is unharmed, do I rather not yet finish the contests?
What will my kin, the Rutulians, what will the rest of Italia
Say, if I-fortune belie the expression-should basely betray thee
Over to death, while seeking our daughter and marriage relations?
Look at the various issues of battles, and pity thine aged
Sire, whom his native Ardeä now in his loneliness widely
Separates." Never a whit by these words is the raving of Turnus
Curbed; it o'ercomes him the more, and he sickens by efforts to cure him.
Soon, though, as able to speak, in his utterance thus he insisted:
"Highness, what cares thou assumest for my sake, I pray thee for my sake
Lay now aside, and permit me to barter my death for my honor!
Father, we also do weapons and no mean steel in our right hand ·
Scatter, and blood flows free from the wounds we inflict on a foeman.
Far will his goddess mother be from him to shelter her fleeing
Son in a feminine cloak, and conceal herself in the vanishing shadows."
Meanwhile the queen was, shocked by the singular turn of the warfare, Weeping, and fast to her fiery son-in-law desperate holding:
"O by these tears, and respect, if aught touches thy soul, for Amata,
Turnus, I pray thee, thou only hope to me now, thou reliance
Sole of my pitiful dotage, the glory and sway of Latinus
Pivots on thee; on thee rests all of our tottering household,
Only I beg thee refrain from engaging a hand with the Teucrans.
Turnus, in that dread contest whatever disasters await thee
Thence, are awaiting me, too: I at once will abandon this hated
Light, and a captive I never will look as my son on Æneas.”
Lovely Lavinia, catching the voice of her sorrowing mother,
Drenches her burning cheeks with tears, and her plentiful blushes
Kindled a fire in her heart, and it glowingly mantled her features:
Just as if one should the Indian ivory stain with a blood-rea
Rouge, or when snow-white lilies may seemingly redden by many
Roses immingled; such hues in her face did the maiden exhibit.
Love is confusing him quite, and he, fixing his eyes on the maiden,
Blazes the more in his armor, and briefly addresses Amata:
"Do not I beg thee, my mother, O do not with tears, nor with such sad
Omen attend me, when marching away to the contests of ruthless
Mars; for delay of his death is not at the disposal of Turnus.
Idmon, go bear to the Phrygian tyrant my doubtless unwelcome
Terms, that he, soon as the morrow's Aurora, upwafted on purple
Chariot, reddens in heaven, against the Rutulians do not
Marshal the Teucrans; but let the Rutulians all, and the Teucrans
Rest on their armor, and we with our blood will determine the warfare:
On yon plain be Lavinia won as the conqueror's consort!"
When he has uttered these words, and has rapid retired to his mansions, Seeks he his steeds, and rejoices in seeing them prancing before himSteeds which Orithyia gave herself as a prize to Pilumnus,
Which could in whiteness outrival the snows, and in races the breezes.
Bustling hostlers are standing around them, and patting with hollow
Hands their resounding breasts, and combing their gracefully flowing
Manes. Then around his shoulders he places his corselet of scaly
Gold, and of white orichalcum: at once he attaches for wearing
Sword and shield, and the cones of his deep-red plumage-the very
Sword the Ignipotent god had himself for Daunus his parent
Fashioned, and plunged at a white heat into the Stygian billow.
Then, as amid his apartments, against a magnificent column
Leaned, it was standing, with vigor he seizes his powerful war-spear,
Spoil of Auruncan Actor, and tosses it quivering o'er him,
Shouting out: "Now, O spear, that hast never dishonored my summons,
Now is the time! Once wielded thee mightiest Actor, and Turnus'
Right hand wieldeth thee now: O grant that I level his carcass
Low; that I rend with my powerful hand the enveloping breast-plate
Wrenched from the Phrygian eunuch, and draggle in ordure the ringlets
Frizzled with heated iron, and dripping with myrrh in profusion."
Thus is he driven by furies, and, blazing from all of his features,
Sparkles are starting, and fire in his keen eye flashes defiance:
Just as a bull, when enraged at the onset of battle, terrific
Bellowings rouses, and strives in his horns to embody his anger,
Butting the trunk of a tree, and assails the winds with his wrathful
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