Trial is open of what live valour can do; nor indeed is our foe far to
seek; on all sides they surround our walls.
seek; on all sides they surround our walls.
Virgil - Aeneid
Why again and again hurlest thou these unhappy citizens on
peril so evident, O source and spring of Latium's woes? In war is no
safety; peace we all implore of thee, O Turnus, and the one pledge that
makes peace inviolable. I the first, I whom thou picturest thine enemy,
as I care not if I am, see, I bow at thy feet. Pity thine allies;
relent, and retire before thy conqueror. Enough have we seen of rout and
death, and desolation over our broad lands. Or if glory stir thee, if
such strength kindle in thy breast, and if a palace so delight thee for
thy dower, be bold, and advance stout-hearted upon the foe. We verily,
that Turnus [371-406]may have his royal bride, must lie scattered on
the plains, worthless lives, a crowd unburied and unwept. Do thou also,
if thou hast aught of might, if the War-god be in thee as in thy
fathers, look him in the face who challenges. . . . '
At these words Turnus' passion blazed out. He utters a groan, and breaks
forth thus in deep accents:
'Copious indeed, Drances, and fluent is ever thy speech at the moment
war calls for action; and when the fathers are summoned thou art there
the first. But we need no words to fill our senate-house, safely as thou
wingest them while the mounded walls keep off the enemy, and the
trenches swim not yet with blood. Thunder on in rhetoric, thy wonted
way: accuse thou me of fear, Drances, since thine hand hath heaped so
many Teucrians in slaughter, and thy glorious trophies dot the fields.
Trial is open of what live valour can do; nor indeed is our foe far to
seek; on all sides they surround our walls. Are we going to meet them?
Why linger? Will thy bravery ever be in that windy tongue and those
timorous feet of thine? . . . _My conqueror? _ Shall any justly flout me
as conquered, who sees Tiber swoln fuller with Ilian blood, and all the
house and people of Evander laid low, and the Arcadians stripped of
their armour? Not such did Bitias and huge Pandarus prove me, and the
thousand men whom on one day my conquering hand sent down to hell, shut
as I was in their walls and closed in the enemy's ramparts. _In war is
no safety. _ Fool! be thy boding on the Dardanian's head and thine own
fortunes. Go on; cease not to throw all into confusion with thy terrors,
to exalt the strength of a twice vanquished race, and abase the arms of
Latinus before it. Now the princes of the Myrmidons tremble before
Phrygian arms, now Tydeus' son and Achilles of Larissa, and Aufidus
river recoils from the Adriatic wave. Or when the scheming villain
[407-443]pretends to shrink at my abuse, and sharpens calumny by
terror!
peril so evident, O source and spring of Latium's woes? In war is no
safety; peace we all implore of thee, O Turnus, and the one pledge that
makes peace inviolable. I the first, I whom thou picturest thine enemy,
as I care not if I am, see, I bow at thy feet. Pity thine allies;
relent, and retire before thy conqueror. Enough have we seen of rout and
death, and desolation over our broad lands. Or if glory stir thee, if
such strength kindle in thy breast, and if a palace so delight thee for
thy dower, be bold, and advance stout-hearted upon the foe. We verily,
that Turnus [371-406]may have his royal bride, must lie scattered on
the plains, worthless lives, a crowd unburied and unwept. Do thou also,
if thou hast aught of might, if the War-god be in thee as in thy
fathers, look him in the face who challenges. . . . '
At these words Turnus' passion blazed out. He utters a groan, and breaks
forth thus in deep accents:
'Copious indeed, Drances, and fluent is ever thy speech at the moment
war calls for action; and when the fathers are summoned thou art there
the first. But we need no words to fill our senate-house, safely as thou
wingest them while the mounded walls keep off the enemy, and the
trenches swim not yet with blood. Thunder on in rhetoric, thy wonted
way: accuse thou me of fear, Drances, since thine hand hath heaped so
many Teucrians in slaughter, and thy glorious trophies dot the fields.
Trial is open of what live valour can do; nor indeed is our foe far to
seek; on all sides they surround our walls. Are we going to meet them?
Why linger? Will thy bravery ever be in that windy tongue and those
timorous feet of thine? . . . _My conqueror? _ Shall any justly flout me
as conquered, who sees Tiber swoln fuller with Ilian blood, and all the
house and people of Evander laid low, and the Arcadians stripped of
their armour? Not such did Bitias and huge Pandarus prove me, and the
thousand men whom on one day my conquering hand sent down to hell, shut
as I was in their walls and closed in the enemy's ramparts. _In war is
no safety. _ Fool! be thy boding on the Dardanian's head and thine own
fortunes. Go on; cease not to throw all into confusion with thy terrors,
to exalt the strength of a twice vanquished race, and abase the arms of
Latinus before it. Now the princes of the Myrmidons tremble before
Phrygian arms, now Tydeus' son and Achilles of Larissa, and Aufidus
river recoils from the Adriatic wave. Or when the scheming villain
[407-443]pretends to shrink at my abuse, and sharpens calumny by
terror!
