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But lord Aeneas, ere yet the contest is sped, calls to him Epytides,
guardian and attendant of ungrown Iulus, and thus speaks into his
faithful ear: 'Up and away, and tell Ascanius, if he now holds his band
of boys ready, and their horses arrayed for the charge, to defile his
squadrons to his grandsire's honour in bravery of arms. ' So says he, and
himself bids all the crowding throng withdraw from the long racecourse
and leave the lists free. The boys move in before their parents' faces,
glittering in rank on their [554-590]bitted horses; as they go all the
people of Troy and Trinacria murmur and admire. On the hair of them all
rests a garland fitly trimmed; each carries two cornel spear-shafts
tipped with steel; some have polished quivers on their shoulders; above
their breast and round their neck goes a flexible circlet of twisted
gold. Three in number are the troops of riders, and three captains
gallop up and down; following each in equal command rides a glittering
division of twelve boys. One youthful line goes rejoicingly behind
little Priam, renewer of his grandsire's name, thy renowned seed, O
Polites, and destined to people Italy; he rides a Thracian horse dappled
with spots of white, showing white on his pacing pasterns and white on
his high forehead. Second is Atys, from whom the Latin Atii draw their
line, little Atys, boy beloved of the boy Iulus. Last and excellent in
beauty before them all, Iulus rode in on a Sidonian horse that Dido the
bright had given him for token and pledge of love. The rest of them are
mounted on old Acestes' Sicilian horses. . . . The Dardanians greet
their shy entrance with applause, and rejoice at the view, and recognise
the features of their parents of old. When they have ridden merrily
round all the concourse of their gazing friends, Epytides shouts from
afar the signal they await, and sounds his whip. They gallop apart in
equal numbers, and open their files three and three in deploying bands,
and again at the call wheel about and bear down with levelled arms.
Next
they start on other charges and other retreats in corresponsive spaces,
and interlink circle with circle, and wage the armed phantom of battle.
And now they bare their backs in flight, now turn their lances to the
charge, now plight peace and ride on side by side. As once of old, they
say, the labyrinth in high Crete had a tangled path between blind walls,
and a thousand ways of doubling treachery, where tokens to follow failed
in the [591-625]maze unmastered and irrecoverable: even in such a track
do the children of Troy entangle their footsteps and weave the game of
flight and battle; like dolphins who, swimming through the wet seas, cut
Carpathian or Libyan. . . .

This fashion of riding, these games Ascanius first revived, when he girt
Alba the Long about with walls, and taught their celebration to the Old
Latins in the way of his own boyhood, with the youth of Troy about him.
The Albans taught it their children; on from them mighty Rome received
it and kept the ancestral observance; and now it is called Troy, and the
boys the Trojan troop.

Thus far sped the sacred contests to their holy lord. Just at this
Fortune broke faith and grew estranged. While they pay the due rites to
the tomb with diverse games, Juno, daughter of Saturn, sends Iris down
the sky to the Ilian fleet, and breathes a gale to speed her on,
revolving many a thought, and not yet satiate of the ancient pain. She,
speeding her way along the thousand-coloured bow, runs swiftly, seen of
none, down her maiden path. She discerns the vast concourse, and
traverses the shore, and sees the haven abandoned and the fleet left
alone. But far withdrawn by the solitary verge of the sea the Trojan
women wept their lost Anchises, and as they wept gazed all together on
the fathomless flood. 'Alas! after all those weary waterways, that so
wide a sea is yet to come!