Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/153

 and again, at the word of command, they wheel round, and charge each other with levelled lances. Then they essay other advances and other retreats in quarters still opposite, each entangling each in circles within circles, and in their real armour raise an image of battle. Now they expose     5 their backs in flight, now they turn their spear-points in charge, now as in truce they ride along side by side. Even as men tell of that old labyrinth[o] in lofty Crete, its way cunningly woven with blind high walls, and the ambiguous mystery of its thousand paths, winding till the pursuer's     10 every trace was baffled by a maze without solution and without return, not unlike are the courses in which these sons of the Teucrians interlace their movements—a gamesome tangle of flying and fighting, as it were dolphins that swimming the watery seas dart through the Carpathian     15 and the Libyan, and sport along the billows. Such was the form of exercise, and such the game that Ascanius, when he built the cincturing walls of Alba the Long, was the first to revive, and taught the early Latians to celebrate it as he had done in his boyhood, he and the youth of Troy     20 with him; the men of Alba taught their sons; from them mighty Rome received the tradition and maintained the observance of her sires; and the boys still bear the name of Troy, and their band is styled the band of Troy. Thus far went the solemn[o] games in honour of the deified sire. 25

Now it was that Fortune exchanged her old faith for new. While they are rendering to the tomb the due solemnities of the varied games, Juno, Saturn's daughter, has sped down Iris from heaven to the feet of Ilion, with breath of winds to waft her on her way—Juno, deep-brooding     30 over many thoughts, her ancient wrath yet unsated. Speeding along her many-coloured bow, seen of none, runs swiftly down the celestial maid. She beholds that mighty concourse; she looks round on the coast, and sees harbour abandoned and fleet forsaken. Far away, in the privacy     35 of a solitary beach, the Trojan dames were weeping for lost Anchises, and, as they wept, were gazing, one and all, wistfully on the great deep. Alas, that wearied souls