Specially fierce is whose clan, by continual hunting in woodlands
Trained, the ferocious Æquicolæ, who on the ruggedest fallows
All armed culture the earth, and it always delights them to bear off
New-found spoils, and to live as rapacious marauders by plunder.
Nay, and there came from the hardy Marruvian nation a high-priest
Who for a helmet was decked with a wreath of proliferous olive,
Sent by his sovereign Archippus, the great and redoubtable Umbro,
Who was the viperous brood, and the deeply respirable hydras
Wont by his spells and his manipulations to lull into slumbers,
Wont to attemper their wrath, and their bites to relieve by his treatment;
But he possessed no appliance to heal a Dardanian spear-point's
Thrust, nor for wounds did somniferous incantations avail him,
No, nor his herbs, howe'er carefully culled on the Marsian mountains:
Thee have Anguitia's woodland, thee have the Fucinus' crystal
Billow, and thee have the watery lakes wept:-
On to the war, too, was marching Hippolytus' beautiful offspring
Virbius, whom his mother Aricia sent in his glory,
Reared in Egeria's groves, in the region surrounding its humid
Shores, where are standing the altars of rich and propitious Diana;
For they in legend relate that Hippolytus, when by his step-dame's
Trick he had fallen, and his father's penalty paid by his life-blood,
Torn into shreds by his terrified steeds, he again to beholding
Planets ætherial came, and to heaven's superior breezes,
Called thence back by Pæonian herbs, and the love of Diana.
Then the omnipotent father, indignant that any exempted
Mortal should rise to the light of life from the shadows infernal,
Smote the Phoebus-begotten inventor of such an unsanctioned
Nostrum, and art, with a thunderbolt down to the Stygian billows.
But kind Trivia safely Hippolytus hides in her secret
Seats, and anon to the nymph and the woods of Egeria trusts him,
Where he alone in Italia's forests unknown might his lifetime
Spend, and where changing his name, he might Virbius be in his surname:
Whence from the temple and sacred groves of Trivia horn-hoofed
Steeds are excluded, because on the beach, by the watery monsters
Frightened, they once both the youth and his chariot shattered to atoms.
None the less was his son his mettlesome steeds on the commons
Training, and rushing in chariot eagerly on to the battles.
Turnus himself, in the midst of his chieftains in person transcendent, Bustles, displaying his armor, and over them towers by a whole head; Crested with triple plumage his helmet aloft of Chimera
Flaunts, outbreathing Ætnean fires from her jaws and in aspect
Seemingly raging the more, and fuming with frightfully lurid
Flames but the fiercer, the crueler grew in their carnage the battles.
Bossed was his burnished buckler in gold with the figure of Iö
Standing with horns uplifted, and shaggy with bristles, a cow now,
Monstrous the theme! and beside her the maiden's guardian, Argus,
Yea, and her father Inachus pouring a stream from a carved urn.
Clouds of accoutred infantry follow, and shielded battalions
Densely are packed on the plains, the Argive troops, the Auruncan
Squads, the Rutulian hordes, the Sicanian veteran rangers,
And the Sacranian ranks, and with painted shields the Labici;
Those who, O Tiber, thy glades and the sacred shore of Numicus
Furrow, the yeomanry, who the Rutulian hills with the plowshare
Till, and the Circæan ridge, o'er whose grain fields Jupiter Anxur
Rules, and Feronia, proud of her evergreen grove is protectress,
Where the dismal morasses of Satura lie, and the Ufens,
Cold through its deep dells, searches its way and is buried in ocean.
Came there besides these up from the Volscian nation Camilla,
Leading her cavalry squadron, and blooming in brass her battalions,
Warrior-queen, whose womanly hands were unused to Minerva's
Distaff and basket; but trained was the maiden instead to encounter ·
Arduous battles, and rival the wind in the speed of her racing:
She o'er the tops of the blades of the untouched harvest could lightly
Skim, and not injure withal in careering the tenderest grain-heads;
Or through the midst of the ocean upborne on the crests of the billows
Hold on her way, and not moisten her nimble soles in the surface.
Every youngster from dwellings and fields poured forth to behold her;
Crowds, too, of matrons admire her and eager look out as she passes,
Gaping with spirits astonished, at how her imperial mantle
Veils with its purple her delicate shoulders, and how, too, the buckle
Fastens her ringlets in gold, and how she her Lycian quiver
Wears, and, with spear-head mounted, her pastoral truncheon of myrtle.
Meanwhile Eneas repairs to Evander and forms an Alliance:
Venus, assisted by Vulcan, presents him invincible armor.
WHEN, from Laurentum's citadel, Turnus has signal of warfare
Hoisted, and cornets with hoarse-voiced blare have sounded the tocsin;
When he has fretted his mettlesome chargers and rattled his armor,
Straightway their souls are perturbed, and at once, with a trepidant tumult,
Leagues all Latium firmly together, and wildly the youthful
Warriors bluster. The principal leaders, Messapus, and Ufens,
Yea, and Mezentius spurner of gods, their forces on all sides
Marshal, and strip of their tillers the extended Latian grainfields.
Venulus also it sent to the mighty Diomede's city,
Aid to entreat, and to tell of the Teucrans in Latium settling;
Tell that Æneas has come with his fleet, and is bringing his conquered
Homegods, how he is destined by fates, as he claims, to be sovereign;
How, too, the numerous nations are banding themselves with the Dardan
Chieftain, and how through Latium wide is increasing his prestige.
What he designs by these projects, and what, too, if fortune befriends him,
He would expect as result of the fight, is to Diomede clearer
Known than apparent to Turnus the monarch, or monarch Latinus.
Such are the issues in Latium; which the Laömedon hero,
All now seeing, heaves with a mighty tide of emotions:
But he dispatches his hurrying soul now hither, now thither
Speeds it in divers directions and whirls it incessant on all things:
Just as a tremulous gleam from the sun, or the radiant moon-beam's
Image at times, from the brim of a caldron of water reflected,
Widely through all of the interval flits, and anon on the breezes
Upward is vaulted, and flashingly strikes on the uppermost ceiling.
Night was abroad, and o'er all lands slumber profound was possessing Wearied animal natures-the races of birds and of cattle
When on the bank of the river, and under the vault of the cold sky
Father Æneas, disturbed in his breast by the ominous warfare,
Laid him adown, and allowed a belated repose in his members.
Lo! Tiberinus himself, the god of the place, from the charming
Stream, as an old man seemed to arise in the midst of the poplar
Thicket: a delicate linen was screening his form with a sea-green
Veil, and a shadowy cane-brake shrouding his locks as a garland.
Then he thus seemed to accost him, and soothe his distress in these words:
"O thou born of the peerage of gods, who the city of Troja
Bringest us back from the foemen, and Pergamus keepest forever,
Long by the glebe of Laurentum, and Latian meadows expected,
Here is thy permanent home-nor forego it-thy permanent homegods;
Be not alarmed by the menace of war: all swelling and anger
Now of the gods have surceased:-
Soon shall be-lest thou imagine a dream is depicting these fancies—
Under the marginal hollies discovered reposing a huge sow,
Having but recently brought forth thirty head at a litter,
White on the ground reclining, and round her udder her white pigs.
That is the site of thy city, the permanent rest of thy labors;
There, when thrice ten years shall have passed, shall Ascanius peaceful
Found him a city renowed by the notable title of Alba.
Chant I no doubtful events: now listen and I will instruct thee
Briefly how to accomplish successfully what is before thee.
On these shores the Arcadians, sprung as an issue from Pallas,
Those who are monarch Evander's attendants-who followed his standards
Site have selected of old, and a city laid out in the mountains,
Named from the name of their forefather Pallas of old Pallanteüm.
These with the Latin nation are waging perpetual warfare;
These in alliance admit to thy camps and unite them in treaties:
I will myself by my banks and the course of my channel conduct thee,
So as to stem by thine oars upwafted the opposite current.
Rise now, O goddess-born, and as soon as the stars are declining,
Solemnly offer to Juno thy prayers, and her anger and threatenings
Conquer by suppliant vows. To me thou as victor shalt honor
Render; for I am the stream that thou seest in plenteous current
Sweeping its banks and dividing luxuriant acres of tillage,
Dark-blue Thybris, to heaven a most delectable river:
Here there a grand home, the head of imperial cities, awaits thee."
So spake the deified stream, and then buried himself in the deep lake,
Seeking the bottom. Night with its slumber has quitted Æneas:
Rises he viewing the Orient's gleams of ætherial sun-light
Dawning, and due in his hollowed palms he the wave of the current
Lifts, and unfeignedly pours forth to æther expressions of this sort:
"Nymphs, ye Laurentian nymphs, from whom is the rise of the rivers,
Thou, too, O father Thybris, do thou on thy consecrate current,
Welcome Æneas, and rid him at last of his hazardous perils,
So in what fountain soever thy lake, in condoling our trials,
Holds thee, and out of what soil soever thou gracefully gushest,
E'er by my homage, and e'er by my offerings thou shalt be honored,
Horn-crowned River, the monarch supreme of Hesperia's waters;
Only be present and nearer confirm thy divinity to me."
So he recounts, and selects from his squadron a couple of galleys,
Rigs them with oars, and his comrades at once he accoutres with armor.
But of a sudden, behold! to their eyes a remarkable portent !
Bright through the forest, in color the same as her litter of white pigs
Couched, lay a sow, and there she is seen on the emerald grass-bank;
Pious Æneas to thee, yes to thee, great Juno devotes her
Bringing oblations and stations her there with her group at the altar.
All that night, as long as it lasted, the Thybris its swelling
Current abated, and refluent steady, with ripple so silent
Stood, that it smooth in the style of a pool, or a quieted mill-pond,
Spread for its waters a level, that effort in rowing be needless.
Hence on the journey attempted they speed with a favoring murmur:
Glides on over the shallows the unctuous pine, and the ripples
Wonder, and wonders the thicket unwonted afar at the flashing
Shields of the men and the gorgeous keels, as they float on the river.
Meanwhile weary they out a night and a day in their rowing;
Pass they the channel's circuitous bends, and are screened by the divers
Trees, and asunder the green woods cleave on the tranquilized waters.
Fiery the sun had upclimbed the meridian orbit of heaven,
When they behold in the distance the walls, and the castle, and scattered
Roofs of the houses, which Roman authority now has exalted
Even to heaven, then poor the estate that Evander was owning:
Shoreward they quickly are turning their prows and are nearing the city.
On that day, as it chanced, the Arcadian king was performing
Annual rites to the gods, to Amphitryon's mighty descendent,
Out in a grove in front of the town: his son Pallas was with him,
With him were all the chiefs of his troops, and his indigent Senate,
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