No More Learning

Let me unfold this hard saying in all
sincerity: and do thou drink it into thy soul. I might not ally my
daughter to any of her old wooers; such was the universal oracle of gods
and men. Overborne by love for thee, overborne by kinship of blood and
my weeping wife's complaint, I broke all fetters, I severed the maiden
from her promised husband, I took up unrighteous arms. Since then,
Turnus, thou seest what calamities, what wars pursue me, what woes
thyself before all dost suffer. Twice vanquished in pitched battle, we
scarce guard in our city walls the hopes of Italy: the streams of Tiber
yet run warm with our blood, and our bones whiten the boundless plain.
Why fall I away again and again? what madness bends my purpose? if I am
ready to take them into alliance after Turnus' destruction, why do I not
rather bar the strife while he lives? What will thy Rutulian kinsmen,
will all Italy say, if thy death--Fortune make void the word! --comes by
my betrayal, while thou suest for our daughter in marriage? Cast a
glance on war's changing fortune; pity thine aged father, who now far
away sits sad in his native Ardea. '

In nowise do the words bend Turnus' passion: he rages the more fiercely,
and sickens of the cure. So soon as he found speech he thus made
utterance:

'The care thou hast for me, most gracious lord, for me lay down, I
implore thee, and let me purchase honour with death. Our hand too rains
weapons, our steel is strong; and our wounds too draw blood. The goddess
his mother will be far from him to cover his flight, woman-like, in a
cloud and an empty phantom's hiding.
'

But the queen, dismayed by the new terms of battle, wept, and clung to
her fiery son as one ready to die: [56-89]'Turnus, by these tears, by
Amata's regard, if that touches thee at all--thou art now the one hope,
the repose of mine unhappy age; in thine hand is Latinus' honour and
empire, on thee is the weight of all our sinking house--one thing I
beseech thee; forbear to join battle with the Teucrians. What fate
soever awaits thee in the strife thou seekest, it awaits me, Turnus,
too: with thee will I leave the hateful light, nor shall my captive eyes
see Aeneas my daughter's lord. ' Lavinia tearfully heard her mother's
words with cheeks all aflame, as deep blushes set her face on fire and
ran hotly over it. Even as Indian ivory, if one stain it with sanguine
dye, or where white lilies are red with many a rose amid: such colour
came on the maiden's face. Love throws him into tumult, and stays his
countenance on the girl: he burns fiercer for arms, and briefly answers
Amata:

'Do not, I pray thee, do not weep for me, neither pursue me thus
ominously as I go to the stern shock of war. Turnus is not free to dally
with death. Thou, Idmon, bear my message to the Phrygian monarch in this
harsh wording: So soon as to-morrow's Dawn rises in the sky blushing on
her crimson wheels, let him not loose Teucrian or Rutulian: let Teucrian
and Rutulian arms have rest, and our blood decide the war; on that field
let Lavinia be sought in marriage. '

These words uttered, withdrawing swiftly homeward, he orders out his
horses, and rejoicingly beholds them snorting before his face: those
that Orithyia's self gave to grace Pilumnus, such as would excel the
snows in whiteness and the gales in speed. The eager charioteers stand
round and pat their chests with clapping hollowed hands, and comb their
tressed manes. Himself next he girds on his shoulders the corslet stiff
with gold and pale mountain-bronze, and buckles on the sword and shield
and scarlet-plumed [90-124]helmet-spikes: that sword the divine Lord of
Fire had himself forged for his father Daunus and dipped glowing in the
Stygian wave. Next, where it stood amid his dwelling leaning on a massy
pillar, he strongly seizes his stout spear, the spoil of Actor the
Auruncan, and brandishes it quivering, and cries aloud: 'Now, O spear
that never hast failed at my call, now the time is come; thee princely
Actor once, thee Turnus now wields in his grasp. Grant this strong hand
to strike down the effeminate Phrygian, to rend and shatter the corslet,
and defile in dust the locks curled with hot iron and wet with myrrh. '
Thus madly he runs on: sparkles leap out from all his blazing face, and
his keen eyes flash fire: even as the bull when before his first fight
he bellows awfully, and drives against a tree's trunk to make trial of
his angry horns, and buffets the air with blows or scatters the sand in
prelude of battle.

And therewithal Aeneas, terrible in his mother's armour, kindles for
warfare and awakes into wrath, rejoicing that offer of treaty stays the
war. Comforting his comrades and sorrowing Iulus' fear, he instructs
them of destiny, and bids bear answer of assurance to King Latinus, and
name the laws of peace.

Scarcely did the morrow shed on the mountain-tops the beams of risen
day, as the horses of the sun begin to rise from the deep flood and
breathe light from their lifted nostrils; Rutulian and Teucrian men
measured out and made ready a field of battle under the great city's
ramparts, and midway in it hearth-fires and grassy altars to the gods of
both peoples; while others bore spring water and fire, draped in
priestly dress and their brows bound with grass of the field.