VERGIL
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1-12 |
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1-23 |
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1-23 43-46 |
1-8 458-482 |
1-18 |
1-7 149-157 453-522 |
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1-22 50-64 |
1-20 506-525 |
1-8 655-665 |
1-5 651-658 |
1-25 |
456-471 |
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1-4 |
1-8 558-596 |
367-378 |
1-15 |
1-4 |
697-745 |
[1] It was in Syracusan verse that my Muse first
deigned to play, nor did she blush to inhabit the woods; but when I essayed to
sing of kings and battles, the Cynthian god touched my ear and admonished: “A
shepherd, Tityrus, should feed his sheep to fatness, but the songs he sings
should be finely spun.” Now I (for there will be a surfeit of poets anxious to
sing your praises, Varus, and to put sorrowful war into verse) – I shall
practise a rustic melody on a slender reed-pipe. Not unbidden are the songs I
sing. Yet if anyone, if anyone attracted by [the subject of] love shall read
even these verses, my tamarisks and all the grove shall sing of you; nor is any
page more pleasing to Phoebus than the one which has written the name of Varus
at its head [ie which bears the name of Varus at its head].
[1] Grant me, Arethusa, this final task. A few verses
must I sing to my Gallus, but such as Lycoris herself may read: who would
refuse a song to Gallus? If, when you glide beneath the Sicilian waves, you
would not have the salt sea mingle her waters with yours, then begin; let us
tell of Gallus' anxious love, while the snub-nosed goats gnaw at the tender
shrubs. Not to the deaf do we sing; the forests re-echo everything. [9] What groves or what glades held you, Naiads,
when Gallus was dying of unrequited love? For it was not the ridges of
Parnassus or any peaks of Pindar that caused you delay, nor Aeonian Aganippe.
Even the laurels, even the tamarisks wept for him, even pine-clad Maenalus and
the stones of chill Lycaeus wept for him as he lay beneath a lone rock. The
sheep too stand around him; neither are they ashamed of us, nor must you be
ashamed of the flock, inspired poet: even fair Adonis pastured sheep by the
river. The shepherd came too, the slow-paced swineherds came, and wet from the
[steeping of] winter acorns came Menalcas. All ask, "Whence this love of
yours?" Apollo came: "Gallus, why so mad?" said he. "Your
love, Lycoris, through snows and dread camps has followed another".
[1] What makes the crops joyous, under what
constellation it is fitting to turn the soil, Maecenas, and to marry the vines
to the elms, what is the management of cattle, what the treatment for keeping a
flock, how great experience for keeping thrifty bees, I shall now undertake to
sing. You, O brightest lights of heaven, who lead the gliding year along the
sky; and Liber and bountiful Ceres, if by your gift the earth has exchanged the
Chaonian acorn for the rich ear of corn, and has mingled draughts of Achelous
[ie water] with the new-found grapes; and you, ever-present guardians of
country folk, O Fauns, advance together, both Fauns and Dryad maidens: of your
gifts do I sing; and you, O Neptune, for whom first the earth, struck by your
mighty trident, produced the snorting horse; and [you] inhabitant of the
groves, for whom thrice a hundred snowy bullocks crop the rich shrubs of Cea;
yourself leaving your native grove and the glades of Lycaeus, Pan, guardian of
sheep, if your own Mt. Maenalus is a care to you, graciously be present, O
Tegean, and Minerva inventor of the olive, and the boy introducer of the curved
plough, and Silvanus, bearing a young cypress from the roots; and you gods and
goddesses all, whose desire it is to protect the fields, both you who rear new
fruits though no seed has been sown, and you who send down upon the crops
plentiful rain from heaven.
~
BREAK ~
[43] In early spring, when the frozen moisture
begins to melt on the white mountains and the friable clods break up beneath
the West wind, even then let my bull begin to groan over the deep-driven
plough, and the ploughshare worn by the furrow to become bright.
[1] Thus far have I sung of the tilling of fields
and the stars of heaven; now of thee, O Bacchus, shall I sing, and likewise
along with thee the woodland brakes and the progeny of the slow-growing olive.
Hither come! O father of the Wine-press - here all things are full of thy
blessings, for thee blossoms the land laden with the vine-leaves of autumn, and
[for thee] foams the vintage in brimming vats - hither, O father of the
Wine-press, come; and stripping off your buskins, stain with me thy naked legs
in the new must.
~
BREAK ~
[458] O happy husbandmen, even to excess, if only
they knew their own blessedness! For them of herself, far from the clash of
arms, the most righteous earth pours from the ground an ungrudging sustenance.
If no lofty mansion with its proud portals disgorges from all the palace its
huge tide of early morning callers, nor do they gape at door-posts variously
inlaid with splendid tortoise-shell, and dresses tricked with gold, and
Corinthian bronzes, and if white wool is not stained with the Assyrian drug,
and the use of clear oil is not adulterated with casia; but repose without a
care and a life that knows not deceit, enriched with varied treasures; yet ease
amid broad demesnes, caverns and natural lakes, cool Tempe vales and the lowing
of oxen and soft slumbers beneath the tree, are ever theirs. There are glades
and haunts of wild beasts, and a youth patient of toils and accustomed to
little, sacred service of the gods and reverence paid to fathers: among them
did Justice, departing from the earth, leave her last footprints.
[475] But as for me, first above all may the sweet
Muses, whose holy offerings I bring, smitten with mighty passion, take me to
themselves and show me the paths of heaven and the stars, the various eclipses
of the sun and labours of the moon; whence come tremblings of the earth; by
what force the seas swell high bursting their barriers and again of themselves
sink back into themselves; why winter suns make so much haste to dip in Ocean,
or what delay checks the slow nights.
[1] Thee too, O great Pales, will I sing, and
thee, renowned shepherd from Amphrysus [Apollo], and you, O forests and streams
of Lycaeus. Other themes, which might have charmed idle minds with song, are
now all hackneyed: who knows not either the harsh Eurystheus, or the accursed
Busiris’ altars? By whom has not [the tale of] the boy Hylas been told, and
Latonian Delos, and Hippodame, or Pelops conspicuous for his ivory shoulder, keen
with horses? A way must be attempted by which I too may be able to raise myself
from the ground and fly triumphant on the lips of men. First will I, if life
but last, return from the Aonian hill and lead with me [in triumph] the Muses
into my country; first, my Mantua, will I bring back for you the Idumaean
palms, and on your verdant plains set up a temple of marble, beside the waters
where the mighty Mincius wanders in slow meanders and fringes the banks with
tender reed. I will have Caesar in the middle, and he will keep the temple; in
his honour will I, conspicuous in Tyrian purple, drive in triumph by the river
a hundred four-horsed chariots.
[1] Next I shall describe the heavenly
gifts of aerial honey. This part [of my work] too, Maecenas, look upon [with
favour]. Marvellous spectacles of little things will I tell you of, high-souled
leaders and in order the whole nation’s character and pursuits and tribes and
battles. On a trivial theme the toil, but not trivial the glory, if any [poet]
the adverse powers permit and Apollo listens when called.
~
BREAK ~
[149] Come now, I will unfold the qualities which
Jupiter himself bestowed upon the bees, a reward in return for which they, following
the shrill sounds and clashing brass of the Curetes, fed the king of heaven in
the Dictaean cave. They alone have their children in common, the dwellings of
their city in partnership, and pass their lives under mighty laws; and they
alone acknowledge a fatherland and settled homes; and mindful of the coming
winter, they experience toil in summer, and into a common store they lay up
their gains.
~
BREAK ~
[453] "Assuredly it is the anger of no mean
deity that is harrying you; great are the crimes you are expiating: Orpheus so
worth of pity for a misfortune in no wise deserved, is stirring up punishment
against you - should not the fates oppose - and is sorely wrathful for the
ravishment of his bride. She indeed, while fleeing headlong from you through the
river, she, a maiden doomed to die, failed to notice in the tall grass before
her feet the hideous water-snake as it guarded the bank. So the band of Dryads,
her companions, filled with their cry the mountain-tops; the peaks of Rhodope
wept, so did lofty Pangaea, and the martial land of Rhesus, and the Getae, and
Hebrus, and the Attic Orithyia. Orpheus himself, with his hollow shell
consoling the anguish of love, sang of you, sweet bride, of you by himself on
the lonely shore, of you when day was dawning, of you when it was passing
away. He entered even the jaws of
Taenarus, the deep portal of Dis, and the grove murky with black terror, and
visited the souls of the dead and their terrible king, and hearts that know not
how to relent at human prayers.
[471] Then, moved at his song, the insubstantial
shades and the spectres of those bereft of the light passed along from the
lowest abodes of Erebus, as many as the thousands of birds that shelter in the
woods when nightfall or a wintry shower drives them from the mountains; mothers
and men and the bodies of gallant heroes done with life, boys and unwedded
girls, and youths laid on funeral piles before the faces of their parents, whom
the black mud and the unsightly reeds of Cocytus and the unlovely lake with its
sluggish wave enclose around, and Styx nine times flowing-between confines.
Nay, even the very abodes and the inmost chambers of Death were amazed, and the
Furies who had plaited dark-blue snakes in their hair; and Cerberus held agape
his three mouths, and the wheel on which Ixion whirls stopped because of the
wind [sc. which Orpheus had lulled to sleep].
[485] And now, retracing his footsteps, he had
surmounted all eventualities, and the restored Euridice was approaching the
airs above, following behind (for this is the condition which Proserpina had
imposed), when a sudden frenzy seized the lover unawares - pardonable indeed,
if the Manes knew how to pardon; he paused, and on the very verge of daylight,
ah! unmindful, and yielding in resolve, he looked back on his own Euridice.
There was all his labor wasted, and his pact with the ruthless tyrant broken,
and thrice was the thunder-peal heard across the marshes of Avernus. "What
is it" she cried, that has destroyed both unhappy me and you, Orpheus? what
terrible frenzy? Lo, the cruel fates summon me back to make the journey a
second time, and slumber closes my swimming eyes. And now farewell: I am borne
away, surrounded by an impenetrable cloak of darkness, and stretching forth to
you my hands that are powerless to reach you, ah! no longer yours". She
spoke, and suddenly vanished from his sight in the opposite direction, like
smoke blending with thin air, and she never saw him thereafter, while he kept
clutching at the shades, wanting to say so much; nor did the ferryman of Orcus
any more allow him to pass the barrier of the marsh. What was he to do? twice
bereft of his bride, where was he to turn? with what tears move the Manes, what
divine powers with his words? She indeed, already cold, was sailing in the
Stygian boat.
[507] They report that he, for seven full months in
succession, beneath a lofty crag by the waters of desolate Strymon, wept ever,
and beneath those caverns cold unfolded this tale of woe, taming tigers and
leading oaks with his song; as a nightingale lamenting under a poplar shade
bemoans the loss of her young, which a callous farm-hand has spotted and
dragged unfledged from the nest; but she weeps all night long, and perched upon
a bough renews her piteous strain, and fills the regions all round with
sorrowful laments. No loves, no marriage joys could sway his soul: alone he
traversed the Hyperborean ices, and snowy Tanais, and fields never widowed from
Riphaean frosts, mourning the theft of Euridice and the worthlessness of Dis'
favour. Feeling themselves scorned by this devotion the Ciconian women, amid
the sacred rites of the gods, the Bacchic orgies held by night, tore the youth
in pieces and scattered his limbs widely over the fields.
[1] I sing of arms and of the man who was the
first to come by fate, an exile, from the coast of Troy to the Lavinian shores
of Italy; much buffeted indeed both on land and sea by the constraints of the
gods above - on account of cruel Juno's unforgetting anger - much too having
suffered in war, until he could found a city and bring his household gods into
Latium; whence came the Latin nation and the Alban sires and the lofty walls of
Rome. Muse, tell me the reasons: what was the slight to her divinity, or what
was she aggrieved at, that the queen of the gods drove a man famed for his
true-heartedness to undergo so many misfortunes and meet with so many
trials? Do celestial hearts harbour such
anger?
[12] There was an ancient city (Tyrian settlers
possessed it), Carthage by name, facing Italy and the mouths of Tiber from
afar, rich in wealth and most harsh in the pursuits of war, which Juno is
reported to have cherished uniquely beyond all other lands, placing even Samos
second: here was her armour, here her chariot. Even then she make it her object
and her care that this should be the ruling capital of the nations, if in any
way the fates were to allow it. But indeed she had heard that a race was
springing from Trojan blood to overthrow one day her Tyrian stronghold; that
from it should come a people ruling far and wide, and proud in war, to be the
ruin of Libya; and that this is how the fates were ordaining things.
~
BREAK ~
[50] Pondering such thoughts to herself with heart
aflame the goddess reached Aeolia, the land of storm-clouds, a place teeming
with raging winds. Here in a huge cave king Aeolus checks under his command the
wrestling winds and resounding tempests, and curbs them with prison-bonds. They
chafe and howl about the bars to the accompaniment of the mighty rumbling of
the mountain; while on his lofty citadel sits Aeolus, sceptre in hand, and he
chastens their passions and controls their rage. Did he not do so, then
assuredly they would seize and carry with them both sea and land and deep
heaven, and sweep them through the air. But the almighty father, fearing this,
put them away in dark caves, and placed a mass of lofty mountains on top, and
appointed a king who in accordance with a fixed covenant should know both how
to hold tight and when bidden how to make loose the reigns. To him then in
suppliant guise addressed these words:
[1] All fell silent, and fixed their gaze in rapt
attention. Then father Aeneas thus began from his lofty couch: Unspeakable, O
queen, is the sorrow you bid me revive: how the Greeks overthrew the power of
Troy and her mournful realm; what dreadful things I myself beheld, and whereof
I formed a great portion. What Myrmidon or Dolopian, or what soldier of the
hardy Ulysses could refrain from tears in the telling of such a tale? And now
dewy night is speeding from the sky and the setting stars invite to sleep. But
if there is so deep a desire to learn of our misfortunes and briefly to hear
the final effort [death-agony] of Troy, although my soul shudders at the recollection
and shrinks back with grief, I will make the attempt.
[13] Broken in war and driven back by the fates,
the Greek chieftains, now that so many years were gliding by, built by Pallas’
divine art a horse the size of a mountain, and interwove its ribs with planks
of pine. They pretended that it was a votive offering for their return; that
was the rumour spread abroad. Selecting picked men, they stealthily shut them
up here into its dark side, and filled full the vast caverns and belly with
armed soldiery.
~
BREAK ~
[506] Perhaps you may also inquire what was the
fate of Priam. When he beheld the downfall of his captured city and the doors
of the palace wrenched asunder, and the enemy in the heart of his inmost
chambers, old as he was he took his armour long since used, fruitlessly set it
upon his shoulders palsied with age, girded on the sword with which he could do
so little, and into the thick of the enemy he moved to meet his death. In the heart
of the palace and beneath the open firmament of heaven there stood a great
altar, and near it an ancient bay-tree bending over the altar and embracing the
Penates in its shade. Here Hecuba and her daughters were sitting about the
altar in vain, like doves driven down by a black tempest, huddled together and
clasping the images of the gods. But when she saw Priam himself wearing
youthful arms, she cried: “What resolve so frantic, most unhappy husband, has
compelled you to gird yourself with these weapons? Or where are you rushing? It
is not such help, nor such defenders as those, that this hour needs; no, not if
my Hector himself were present now. Please, come to me here. This altar will
protect us all, or you will die with us. So she spoke, and she received the old
king to herself, and set him in the sacred place.
[1] After it was the pleasure of the gods to
destroy the kingdom of Asia and the nation of Priam, guiltless though it was,
and [when] proud Ilium had fallen and the whole of Neptune-built Troy was still
smoking from the ground, we were driven by the auguries of the gods to seek out
far-flung places of exile and empty lands; and we toil at building our fleet
just beneath Antandros and at the foot of the mountains of Phrygian Ida, doubtful
as to where the fates would bear us, where we might stop; and we collect a
company of men.
[655] Scarce had he spoken when on the mountain-top
we saw the shepherd Polyphemus himself, moving with mighty bulk among his
flocks and seeking the well-known shore - a monster horrible, shapeless, huge,
bereft of light. A pine-trunk guides his hand and steadies his steps; his
fleecy sheep attend him: they his sole joy and solace in his woe. When he
touched the deep waves and came to the sea, he washed the oozing blood from his
gouged eye, grinding his teeth and groaning; then strode through the water
quite in mid-ocean, nor yet did the waves wet his tall sides.
[1] But the queen, all the long while stricken
with heavy care, feeds the wound with her life-blood, and is consumed by a
hidden fire. Much does the hero’s valour recur to her thoughts, and much the
honour of his race: his looks and words remain fixed within her breast, nor
does care allow peaceful rest to her limbs.
~
BREAK ~
[651] “Sweet relics, so long as fate and heaven
allowed, receive this spirit of mine and release me from these sorrows. I have
lived my life and accomplished the course which fortune gave, and now great
will be the phantom of me to pass beneath the earth. I have established a glorious
city, I have seen my own walls, and avenging my husband I have exacted
punishment from the brother who was my foe – happy, alas too happy, if only the
Dardan ships had never reached our shore!”
[1] Meanwhile Aeneas was now in mid-course,
resolutely holding the way with his fleet, and was cutting through the waves
darkened by the north wind, as he looked back on the walls which were now
bright with the flames [of the funeral pyre] of ill-starred Dido. The cause
which had lighted so great a fire was unknown to them, but the thought of the
bitter pain caused when a great love is desecrated, and the knowledge of what a
woman in frenzy may do, led the hearts of the Trojans along paths of grim
foreboding. When the vessels were out to sea and no land met the sight any
more, but sea everywhere and sky everywhere, a dark rain-cloud gathered over
his head, bringing gloom and foul weather, and the waves grew rough under its
dark onset.
[12] The pilot Palinurus himself spoke from the
lofty stern: “Alas! why have such clouds covered the sky? What, father Neptune,
are you planning?” Having spoken thus he then gave orders to gather in the
tackle and to bend over the strong oars. He then set the sails aslant into the
wind and spoke thus: “Noble Aeneas, not if Juppiter should pledge it to me with
all his authority, could I hope to reach Italy under such a sky. The winds have
changed and roar across our course as they rise from the dark west, and the air
thickens into cloud. Nor have we strength to struggle against the storm or to
make enough way against it. Since Fortune prevails, let us obey and change our
course [to steer] where she calls us. Far off cannot be, I imagine, the trusty
and brotherly shores of Eryx and the harbour of Sicily, if only with due memory
I retrace the stars observed before.”
[456] 'Hapless Dido, was the news true then which
came to me, namely that you had perished and with the sword had sought your
end? Alas! was it death that I brought you? By the stars I swear, by the gods
above and by whatever pledge of faith there is in the depths of the earth, it
was not by my own will, O queen, that I left your shore. But the command of
Heaven it was, which now compells me to pass through these shades, through
regions rough with neglect and through night profound, that drove me by its
behests; nor could I believe that I should by my departure bring you such deep
grief as this. Stay your step and withdraw not yourself from my view. Whom do
you seek to escape? This is the last word that Fate lets me speak to you.'
[467] By such words Aeneas dept trying to soften
her heart, burning with wrath though she was, and glaring fiercely, and he was
for summoning forth tears. But she, turning aside, kept her eyes fixed on the
ground; nor was her look changed by the speech which he had begun, more than if
she had been a solid rock or a block of Marpesian marble.
[1] You too, Caieta, nurse of Aeneas, gave by
your death an everlasting renown to our shores. Your glory still haunts your
grave, and - if there be any glory in it - your name marks the spot in mighty
Hesperia where your bones were laid to rest.
[1] When Turnus raised on high the signal for war
from the citadel of Laurentum and with hoarse notes his trumpets rang, and when
he roused his spirited steeds and clashed his arms, straightway men's minds
were troubled. At once all Latium leagues together in trepid rising, and the
young warriors are livid with rage. The foremost chiefs, Messapus and Ufens,
and Mezentius the scorner of the gods, from all sides muster forces and deprive
the fields of husbandmen over a wide area.
~
BREAK ~
[558] Then father Evander, grasping the hand of his
departing son, clings to him weeping incessantly, and utters these words: “Oh
if only Juppiter would give me back the years that are past, [so that I might
now be] as I was when close beneath Praeneste I laid low the foremost ranks [of
the enemy] and victoriously burnt heaps of shields, and with this right hand
sent king Erilus down to Tartarus, to whom at his birth his mother Feronia had
given (dreadful to relate!) three lives, three sets of arms to be wielded –
thrice in death was he to be laid low; whom nevertheless this right hand then
bereft of all these lives and stripped of just as many suits of armour! ... So
I should not now be being torn from your sweet embrace, dear son; and never
should Mezentius in contempt for myself, his neighbour, by the sword have
wrought so many cruel murders, and bereft the city of so many citizens. [572]
But you, O gods above, and you, Jupiter, most mighty ruler of the gods, I
beseech you take pity on an Arcadian king, and hear a father’s prayers. If your
will, if the fates keep for me Pallas safe, if I live destined to see him again
and to come at one with him, I pray for life; and am willing to endure any
hardship whatever. But if, O Fortune, you threaten some unspeakable disaster:
now, O! now may I be allowed to break off my cruel life, while my cares [for
you] still have cause for doubt, while hope for the future is still unsure,
while you, dear boy, my sole and last delight, I hold in my embrace; and may no
heavier tidings wound my ears.” These words the father was pouring forth at the
final parting; his servants carried him swooning within the palace.
[585] And now indeed the horse had gone forth by
the open gates, Aeneas among the foremost and his faithful Achates, and after
them the other lords of Troy, Pallas himself in the middle of the train,
conspicuous in his cloak and blazoned arms: such as when bathed in Ocean’s
waves Lucifer [= the Morning Star], whom Venus loves above the other starry
fires, exalts in heaven his sacred visage and dissolves the darkness. Mothers
stand trembling on the walls and follow with their eyes the dusty cloud and the
squadrons gleaming with brass. Through the thickets, where the goal of their
journey is shortest [= by the way that leads them soonest to their goal] they
march in arms; a shout goes up, and in close array the [horses’] hoofs with
galloping shake the crumbling plain.
[367] Meanwhile horsemen, who had been sent forward
from the Latin town while the rest of their army waited on the plain in battle
array, were going on their way and bringing answers to king Turnus, three
hundred, all bearing shields, with Volcens as leader. And now they were nearing
the camp and coming under the wall, when they caught sight of these two veering
off by a path to the left, and in the glimmering shadows of night his helmet
betrayed the forgetful Euryalus, as it flashed back to the light. Not idly was
it seen. Volcens shouted from the column: “Stand, men! What is the purpose of
your journey? Who are you in arms? Or where are you going?” They sought not to
confront the foe, but hastened their flight into the forest and trusted to night.
[1] Meanwhile the palace of all-powerful Olympus
is opened, and the father of the gods, and king of men, summons a council in
his starry abode, whence on high he gazes over all the earth, and the camp of
the Trojans, and the Latin people. They take their seats in the
double-entranced hall, and the king himself begins: “Majestic dwellers in the
skies, why is your decision turned back, and why do you strive so with
contentious hearts? I had forbidden that Italy should engage in war with the
Trojans. What means this dissension against my prohibition? What fear has
prompted either these or those [of you] to pursue arms and provoke the sword?
The due time for battle will arrive - do not call it forth – when hereafter
fierce Carthage shall let loose upon the citadels of Rome great destruction and
the opening of the Alps: then will it be lawful to contend with hatred, then to
plunder each other. For now let be, and cheerfully ratify the compact that has
been decreed.”
[1] Meanwhile Aurora arose and left the Ocean.
Aeneas, though his sorrows urge him to give time also for the burying of his
comrades, and his mind is troubled by the death [of Pallas], yet as conqueror
he determined to pay his vows to the gods at earliest Dawn.
[697] Then father Aeneas, hearing the name of
Turnus, abandons the walls, abandons the high battlements. He casts aside all
delay, breaks off all tasks, exultant with the joy [of battle], and thunders
dreadfully on his arms: mighty as Athos, or mighty as Eryx, or as father
Appennine himself roars with tossing oaks and mightily rejoices in his
snow-capped summit when he raises himself to the breezes. Now it was that with
eagerness both Rutulians and Trojans and all the Italians turned their gaze,
both they who were holding the high fortress and they who had been battering
the foot of the walls with the ram; and from their shoulders they took off
their arms. Latinus himself is amazed to think that mighty men, born in distant
parts of the world, should have met one another [in combat] and should be
deciding the issue with the sword. And so, when the plain was clear with open
surface, with a swift run forward and hurling their spears from afar, they
close combat with shields of ringing bronze. Earth yields a groan; then with
swords they redouble blow on blow; chance and valour mingle into one. Just as
when on massive Sila or the peak of Taburnus two bulls with opposing horns
charge into deadly battle; back in terror retreat the herdsmen; all the herd
stands dumb with dread, and the heifers wait silently to see which one is to be
lord of the forest, which one the whole herd is to follow. With ponderous force
they exchange wounds with each other, and but their horns in the struggle and
bathe their necks and shoulders in streams of blood. All the woodland echoes
with their bellowing. Just so Trojan Aeneas and the Daunian hero close with
their shields; a mighty crash fills the sky. Juppiter himself holds up a pair
of scales in even poise [lit: the tongue of the balance being made even] and
places in them the several destinies of the two, to see whom the struggle
dooms, and with whose weight death sinks down.
[728] At this point Turnus springs forth, thinking
it safe, and with his whole body rises onto his sword uplifted high, and
strikes. The Trojans and excited Latins cry out, and the gaze of both sides is
riveted on them. But the treacherous sword snaps, and in mid blow fails him in
his fiery rage, [and Turnus would be left helpless] did not flight come to his
rescue. Swifter than the East wind he flies, as soon as he beholds a hilt not
his own and his hand disarmed. The story is that in his headlong haste, at the
very moment when he was mounting his yoked steeds to begin the fight, leaving
his father’s blade behind, in his hurry snatched up the steel of his charioteer
Metiscus; and long it held out, as long as the scattering Teucrians were
turning their backs. But when it met with the divine armour of Vulcan, like
brittle ice it snapped at the blow; the fragments glitter on the yellow sand.
So Turnus distractedly flees this way and that over the plain, and now here,
now there he wheels around in aimless circles; for on all sides the Teucrians
enclosed him in a thick ring, and on this side a vast marsh, on that steep
walls engirdle him.