No More Learning

But Trivia the bountiful hides Hippolytus in a secret habitation, and
sends him away to the nymph Egeria and the woodland's keeping, where,
solitary in Italian forests, he should spend an inglorious life, and
have Virbius for his altered name. Whence also hoofed horses are kept
away from Trivia's temple and consecrated groves, because, affrighted at
the portents of the sea, they overset the chariot and flung him out upon
the shore. Notwithstanding did his son train his ruddy steeds on the
level plain, and sped charioted to war.

Himself too among the foremost, splendid in beauty of body, Turnus moves
armed and towers a whole head over all. His lofty helmet, triple-tressed
with horse-hair, holds high a Chimaera breathing from her throat Aetnean
fires, raging the more and exasperate with baleful flames, as the battle
and bloodshed grow fiercer. But on his polished shield was emblazoned in
gold Io with uplifted horns, already a heifer and overgrown with hair, a
lofty design, and Argus the maiden's warder, and lord Inachus pouring
his stream from his embossed urn. Behind comes a cloud of infantry, and
shielded columns thicken over all the plains; the Argive men and
Auruncan forces, the Rutulians and old Sicanians, the Sacranian ranks
and Labicians with [797-817]painted shields; they who till thy dells, O
Tiber, and Numicus' sacred shore, and whose ploughshare goes up and down
on the Rutulian hills and the Circaean headland, over whose fields
Jupiter of Anxur watches, and Feronia glad in her greenwood: and where
the marsh of Satura lies black, and cold Ufens winds his way along the
valley-bottoms and sinks into the sea.

Therewithal came Camilla the Volscian, leading a train of cavalry,
squadrons splendid with brass: a warrior maiden who had never used her
woman's hands to Minerva's distaff or wool-baskets, but hardened to
endure the battle shock and outstrip the winds with racing feet. She
might have flown across the topmost blades of unmown corn and left the
tender ears unhurt as she ran; or sped her way over mid sea upborne by
the swelling flood, nor dipt her swift feet in the water. All the people
pour from house and field, and mothers crowd to wonder and gaze at her
as she goes, in rapturous astonishment at the royal lustre of purple
that drapes her smooth shoulders, at the clasp of gold that intertwines
her tresses, at the Lycian quiver she carries, and the pastoral myrtle
shaft topped with steel.




BOOK EIGHTH

THE EMBASSAGE TO EVANDER


When Turnus ran up the flag of war on the towers of Laurentum, and the
trumpets blared with harsh music, when he spurred his fiery steeds and
clashed his armour, straightway men's hearts are in tumult; all Latium
at once flutters in banded uprisal, and her warriors rage furiously.
Their chiefs, Messapus, and Ufens, and Mezentius, scorner of the gods,
begin to enrol forces on all sides, and dispeople the wide fields of
husbandmen. Venulus too is sent to the town of mighty Diomede to seek
succour, to instruct him that Teucrians set foot in Latium; that Aeneas
in his fleet invades them with the vanquished gods of his home, and
proclaims himself the King summoned of fate; that many tribes join the
Dardanian, and his name swells high in Latium. What he will rear on
these foundations, what issue of battle he desires, if Fortune attend
him, lies clearer to his own sight than to King Turnus or King Latinus.

Thus was it in Latium.
And the hero of Laomedon's blood, seeing it all,
tosses on a heavy surge of care, and throws his mind rapidly this way
and that, and turns it on all hands in swift change of thought: even as
when the quivering light of water brimming in brass, struck back
[23-56]from the sunlight or the moon's glittering reflection, flickers
abroad over all the room, and now mounts aloft and strikes the high
panelled roof. Night fell, and over all lands weary creatures were fast
in deep slumber, the race of fowl and of cattle; when lord Aeneas, sick
at heart of the dismal warfare, stretched him on the river bank under
the cope of the cold sky, and let sleep, though late, overspread his
limbs. To him the very god of the ground, the pleasant Tiber stream,
seemed to raise his aged form among the poplar boughs; thin lawn veiled
him with its gray covering, and shadowy reeds hid his hair. Thereon he
addressed him thus, and with these words allayed his distresses:

'O born of the family of the gods, thou who bearest back our Trojan city
from hostile hands, and keepest Troy towers in eternal life; O long
looked for on Laurentine ground and Latin fields! here is thine assured
home, thine home's assured gods. Draw not thou back, nor be alarmed by
menace of war. All the anger and wrath of the gods is passed away . . .
And even now for thine assurance, that thou think not this the idle
fashioning of sleep, a great sow shall be found lying under the oaks on
the shore, with her new-born litter of thirty head: white she couches on
the ground, and the brood about her teats is white. By this token in
thirty revolving years shall Ascanius found a city, Alba of bright name.
My prophecy is sure. Now hearken, and I will briefly instruct thee how
thou mayest unravel and overcome thy present task. An Arcadian people
sprung of Pallas, following in their king Evander's company beneath his
banners, have chosen a place in these coasts, and set a city on the
hills, called Pallanteum after Pallas their forefather. These wage
perpetual war with the Latin race; these do thou take to thy camp's
alliance, and join with them in league. Myself I [57-89]will lead thee
by my banks and straight along my stream, that thou mayest oar thy way
upward against the river.