Parried aside, and his spear hangs fixed in the opposite gate-way.

"But thou shalt not so escape from this weapon which firmly my right hand Wields, for the owner of weapon and source of its wounds is another."

So he exclaims, and uprises aloft on his elevate broad-sword,

And with its keen steel, right in the centre between his temples, his forehead 750
Cleaves, and with hideous gash as it passes dissevers his beardless
Cheeks: there arises a crash, and the earth with his lumbering weight shook:
Dying he sprawls on the ground, his collapsing joints and his armor
Spattered with brains, and in equal divisions his head, as it rolled back,
Hither and thither hung down unsightly on each of his shoulders.

Turning now scatter the Trojans in trepidant panic asunder;

Yea, and had promptly the fortunate thought have occurred to the victor,
Then to have sundered the bars with his hands and admitted his comrades,
That might have proved as the terminal day of the war and the nation;
But his impetuous fury, and maddening craving for carnage,
Drove him ablaze on the foemen:-

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He at the outset catches Phaleres, and with him the ham-strung
Gyges: hence seizing the spears of the fugitive soldiers, he plies them
Sharp in their rear; for Juno supplies him with vigor and valor:
Halys he adds as an escort, and Phegeus, pierced through his buckler.
Then unawares on the walls, as they rally their troops for the onset,
Slays he Alcander, and Halius, slays, too, Noëmon, Prytanis.
Lynceus, rushing to meet him, and calling aloud on his comrades,

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He, as he dexterous leans from the breastwork, with his brandishing broadsword
Slashes; his head, by a single stroke of the weapon at close range,
Cast off afar with his helmet lay. Then the waster of wild beasts,
Amycus, also he slaughters, than whom no other was apter
Known in anointing a weapon, and arming its steel with a poison.
Clytius, Æolus' son, too, and Cretheus, a friend to the Muses,
Cretheus a mate of the Muses, whose sonnets and harp were forever
Dear to his heart, and he tuning its strings to melodious measures,
Ever was singing of steeds, and of arms and the battles of heroes.

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Teucran commanders at length, as they hear of the slaughter of allies,

Gather together; and Mnestheus, and dauntlessly eager Sergestus,
See their associates pallid with fright, and the foeman admitted. [rades:] 780
Mnestheus: "Where, at length, where are ye bending your flight," says he, "com-
Have ye still other defenses, still further ulterior ramparts?

Say, shall a single foeman, O citizens, hedged all round by your breastworks,
Thus with impunity, make through your city such horrible havoc ?

Shall he dispatch so many an eminent hero to Orcus?

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O, for your suffering country, your gods, and the mighty Æneas,
Have you, ye cowards, no shame and no sense of dishonor within you?"
Fired by such chidings they halt, and, amassing together in column,
Rally. By little and little now Turnus retires from the contest,
Seeking the stream, and the quarter begirt by its sheltering billow.
Fiercer the Teucrans, with boisterous clamor are pressing upon him:
Cluster around him a legion; as when on a savage lion a rabble
Steadily close with inimical weapons; he, frightened and goaded,
Wrathfully glowering, backward retreats, and neither his wrath nor his prowess
Let him exhibit his back; nor, however desirous to venture,

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Has he the courage to press through the weapons and hunters around him:
Just so Turnus, as hesitant, slowly his measuring footsteps
Backward withdraws, though his mind is intensely a boil with resentment.
Nay, but he twice did make an assault on the midst of his foemen;
Twice did he, turning, drive back to the walls their scattering columns.
But the entire reserve quick crowd from the camps in a body,
Nor does Saturnian Juno dare to supply him with needful
Armor and vigor, for Jupiter down from the heavens beforehand
Iris hath sent to convey no gentle commands to her sister,
Should not Turnus withdraw from the lofty redoubts of the Teucrans.
Therefore the champion could not, either with buckler or right hand,
Cope with such odds; he is so by the weapons projected from all sides
Whelmed. With a ceaseless tinkle, around his sockety temples
Rattles his helm, and its solid brass by their cobbles as battered.
Down from his forehead were stricken his plumes, and the boss of his buckler
Bides not the blows: with their lances the Trojans and thundering Mnestheus
Wrathful redouble their thrusts. From the whole of his body the sweat-drops
Stream, and the pitchy flow-for he has not the power to recover
Breath-pours down, and a laboring panting quivers his wracked limbs.

Soo

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Then he at length, by a headlong leap, with the whole of his armor Plunged in the current: it free on its yellowish eddies receives him Coming, and bearing him tenderly off on its lenient billows,

Sent him, all washed from his carnage, exultingly back to his comrades.

P

BOOK X.

Council of gods in Olympus: the battle's renewal, and Pallas
Slaughtered by Turnus; Mezentius slain and his son by Eneas.

MEANWHILE is thrown wide open the home of almighty Olympus, Whither the father of gods, and the sovereign of mortals, a council Calls to his starry throne, whence he gazes sublime on the landscapes All, and afar on the camps of the Dardans, and tribes of the Latins: They in the two-front halls take seat, and he opens the conclave:

'Mighty indwellers of heaven, from whence hath the sentiment in you
Changed for the worse, that ye quarrel thus only in partizan spirit?
I had not willed that Italia engage in a war with the Teucrans;
What is this wrangle against my behest? or what fear hath persuaded
These, or those to take arms, and provoke a resort to the sabre?
Time for legitimate fighting will come---and do not forestall it—
When on the Roman castles imperious Carthage hereafter
Mighty destruction. shall launch, and shall open the Alps in invasion:
Then will your struggle in malice, and scramble for issues be licit:
Now let it be, and accordantly sanction a peaceful alliance."

Jupiter thus much briefly; but not so briefly the golden

Venus replies:

"Father eternal, thou sovereign disposer of men and of empires, Thou-for what else can there be, or who now can we sue for assistance?— Seest how insolent now the Rutulians are, and how Turnus

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Haughtily rides through the midst with his steeds, and how flushed with successful
Mars he careers! No longer do closed walls shelter the Teucrans;
Nay, they inside of their portals, and e'en on the mounds of their breastworks
Mingle in fights, and the trenches around are o'erflowing with carnage.
Then, too, Æneas, unknowing, is absent: and wilt thou, then, never

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Let them be free from investment? Again does an enemy threaten
New-born Troja's defences; again does an army attack them.
Once more, too, on the Teucrans upstarts from Ætolian Arpi
Tydeus' son. I presume that my wounds at his mercy abide me:
Aye, and that I thine offspring must wait the assaults of a mortal!
If have without thy concurrence and sovereign permission, the Teucrans
Sought for Italia, let them atone for the trespass, and aid them
Not by thy succor; but if they have followed so many responses,
Which both supernals and ghosts have imparted, why now can there any
Agency thwart thy commands, and establish new destinies for them?
Why here repeat how their shipping was burned on the sea-beach of Eryx?
Why, too, refer to the monarch of storms, and the furious tempests,
Roused in Æolia, or Iris dispatched on the clouds with a message?
Now, too, she even infernals-that yet unattempted remaining
Set of contingencies-musters, and loose hath Allecto in upper
Realms, as a Bacchanal, raved through the midst of Italian cities.
Naught am I influenced now by supremacy—that we expected

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While there was fortune: let those thou preferest should conquer now conquer.

If there is any retreat, which thy rigorous spouse to the Teucrans

Offers, I, even by desolate Troja's smouldering ruins,

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Father, adjure thee, O let me Ascanius send from the conflicts

Safely away, and my grandson allow to survive the disaster.

Let, if it need be, Æneas be tossed on the unknown waves of the ocean;

Let him pursue thus whatever direction his fortune affords him:
This one O let me protect, and withdraw from the terrible combat.
There is my Amathus, there is my Paphus, and lofty Cythéra,
There my Idalian homes: there let him, his armor abandoned,
Spend an inglorious life. Bid Carthage in grinding oppression
Burden Ausonia: nothing from him shall the Tyrian cities

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Thwart. What delights can it be to escape from the scourge of a warfare?

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What to have fled through the midst of Argolican burnings in safety?

What to have weathered so many a peril of land and the vast sea,
While the Teucrans are Latium and renovate Pergamus seeking?
Were it not better to squat on the last ash-heap of their country,
But on the soil where their Troja hath been? O restore to the outcasts,
Father, I pray thee, their Xanthus and Samoïs: grant that the Teucrans
Roll through their Ilian hazards again." Then imperial Juno,
Stirred by a violent frenzy: "Why force me to break the profoundest
Silence, and so to divulge in expression my smothered resentment?
Who, pray, of men, or of gods, has compelled thine Æneas to take up

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Arms, and to thrust himself as a foe on the monarch Latinus ?
He, by the guidance of fate, hath Italia sought! Be it rather
Prompted by warnings of crazy Cassandra. And did we advise him
Then, to abandon his camps, and his life to commit to the wild winds?
Aye, and to trust the event of the war and his walls to a stripling?
Yes, and unsettle Tyrrhenian faith, and the quieted nations?
Tell me, what god, or what rigorous potence of ours on the mischief
Drove him! Where's Juno, or Iris dispatched on the clouds in this case?
So it is base for Italians with flames to environ the new-born
Troja! and base, too, for Turnus to dwell in the land of his fathers!
Turnus, whose grandsire's Pilumnus, whose mother the goddess Venilia!
What, is it naught that the Trojans with dark torch threaten the Latins,
Plowing with alien yoke their fields, and sequestering plunder?
Naught to choose fathers-in-law, and betrothed brides wrest from the bosoms,
Suing for peace with the hand, and displaying their armor on ship-sterns?
Thou from the grasp of the Grecians hast power to withdraw thine Æneas,
Aye, and instead of a man to proffer a mist, and intangible vapor !
Yes, and transform his fleet to as numerous nymphs of the ocean:
But for us to afford the Rutulians succor is awful!
Absent, unknowing Æneas! Unknowing then let him be absent !
There are thy Faphus, Idalium; there, too, thy lofty Cythéra!
Why then attempt a belligerent city, and hearts that are dauntless?
We, to its base are essaying to raze, then, Phrygia's crumbling
State! Is it we? or he who has thrust on the Archives his outcast
Trojans? And what was the reason, forsooth, that Europe and Asia
Marshalled in arms, and dissolved, through perfidious theft, their alliance?
Guided by me did the Dardan adulterer battle with Sparta
Once? Did I furnish him arms, or by lechery foster the warfare ?
There it behooves thee to fear for thy darlings, but now thou belated
Risest, and wrongfully wrangling, bootlessly bandiest banter !"

Such was the pleading of Juno, and all the indwellers of heaven
Murmured in varied approval, as when the incipient cyclones
Rumble, as pent in the forests they roll their indefinite murmurs
On, and afar to the mariners signal the gathering tempests.

Then the omnipotent father, whose sway of affairs is the highest,
Speaks, and the lofty home of the gods grows still at his speaking;
Earth to its centre has trembled, and loftiest æther is silent;
Then, as the zephyrs have hushed, and the deep held quiet its surges:
"Take hence into your souls, and infix my behests in your bosoms;
Since it is not to Ausonia granted to join in a friendly

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