No More Learning

He stoops cunningly;
the spear flies quivering over him; and, clasping his knees, he speaks
thus beseechingly: 'By thy father's ghost, by Iulus thy growing hope, I
entreat thee, save this life for a child and a parent. My house is
stately; deep in it lies buried wealth of engraven silver; I have masses
of wrought and unwrought gold. The victory of Troy does not turn on
this, nor will a single life make so great a difference. ' He ended; to
him Aeneas thus returns answer: 'All the wealth of silver and gold thou
tellest of, spare thou for thy children. Turnus hath broken off this thy
trafficking in war, even then when Pallas fell. Thus judges the ghost of
my father Anchises, thus Iulus. ' So speaking, he grasps his helmet with
his left hand, and, bending back his neck, drives his [536-572]sword up
to the hilt in the suppliant. Hard by is Haemonides, priest of Phoebus
and Trivia, his temples wound with the holy ribboned chaplet, all
glittering in white-robed array. Him he meets and chases down the plain,
and, standing over his fallen foe, slaughters him and wraps him in great
darkness; Serestus gathers the armour and carries it away on his
shoulders, a trophy, King Gradivus, to thee. Caeculus, born of Vulcan's
race, and Umbro, who comes from the Marsian hills, fill up the line. The
Dardanian rushes full on them. His sword had hewn off Anxur's left arm,
with all the circle of the shield--he had uttered brave words and deemed
his prowess would second his vaunts, and perchance with spirit lifted up
had promised himself hoar age and length of years--when Tarquitus in the
pride of his glittering arms met his fiery course, whom the nymph Dryope
had borne to Faunus, haunter of the woodland. Drawing back his spear, he
pins the ponderous shield to the corslet; then, as he vainly pleaded and
would say many a thing, strikes his head to the ground, and, rolling
away the warm body, cries thus over his enemy: 'Lie there now, terrible
one! no mother's love shall lay thee in the sod, or place thy limbs
beneath thine heavy ancestral tomb. To birds of prey shalt thou be left,
or borne down sunk in the eddying water, where hungry fish shall suck
thy wounds.
' Next he sweeps on Antaeus and Lucas, the first of Turnus'
train, and brave Numa and tawny-haired Camers, born of noble Volscens,
who was wealthiest in land of the Ausonians, and reigned in silent
Amyclae. Even as Aegaeon, who, men say, had an hundred arms, an hundred
hands, fifty mouths and breasts ablaze with fire, and arrayed against
Jove's thunders as many clashing shields and drawn swords: so Aeneas,
when once his sword's point grew warm, rages victorious over all the
field. Nay, lo! he darts full in face on Niphaeus' four-horse chariot;
before his long strides [573-608]and dreadful cry they turned in terror
and dashed back, throwing out their driver and tearing the chariot down
the beach. Meanwhile the brothers Lucagus and Liger drive up with their
pair of white horses. Lucagus valiantly waves his drawn sword, while his
brother wheels his horses with the rein. Aeneas, wrathful at their mad
onslaught, rushes on them, towering high with levelled spear. To him
Liger . . . 'Not Diomede's horses dost thou discern, nor Achilles'
chariot, nor the plains of Phrygia: now on this soil of ours the war and
thy life shall end together. ' Thus fly mad Liger's random words. But not
in words does the Trojan hero frame his reply: for he hurls his javelin
at the foe. As Lucagus spurred on his horses, bending forward over the
whip, with left foot advanced ready for battle, the spear passes through
the lower rim of his shining shield and pierces his left groin, knocks
him out of the chariot, and stretches him in death on the fields. To him
good Aeneas speaks in bitter words: 'Lucagus, no slackness in thy
coursers' flight hath betrayed thee, or vain shadow of the foe turned
them back; thyself thou leapest off the harnessed wheels. ' In such wise
he spoke, and caught the horses.