Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/203

 Laughing scornfully at the old seer, the youth thus spoke in reply: "The news that a fleet has arrived in the Tiber has not, as you imagine, escaped my ear. Conjure me no such mighty terrors, nor think that queen Juno has forgotten me. No, it is you, good mother, whom mouldering                    5 dotage, drained dry of truth, is vexing to no end, mocking your prophetic soul with false alarms in an atmosphere of royal armaments. You are in your place watching over statues and temples; but war and peace must be wielded by men, whose work war is." 10

At these words Allecto kindled into wrath. Even in the act of speaking a shudder seized the youth's frame and his eyes grew stiff and stony, so fierce the hissing of the Fury's thousand snakes, so monstrous the features that rose on his view. Instant with a roll of her fiery orbs she        15 thrust him back as he faltered and tried to speak further; on either brow she upreared a serpent lock, and cracked her whip, and with infuriate lips followed thus: "Here is the mouldering mother, whom dotage, drained dry of truth, is mocking with false alarms in an atmosphere of royal armaments.    20 Turn your eyes hither; I am come from the dwelling of the Dread Sisters: war and death are wielded by this hand."

Saying thus, she hurled a torch full at the youth, and lodged in his breast the pine-wood with its lurid smoke and        25 glare. The bonds of sleep are broken by the giant terror, and a burst of sweat all over bathes the whole man, bone and limb. "My sword!" he screams in frenzy; for his sword he searches pillow and palace: the fever of the steel, the guilty madness of bloodshed rage within him, and angry        30 pride tops all: even as when loud-crackling a fire of sticks is heaped round the sides of a waving caldron, and the heat makes the water start; there within is the flood, steaming and storming, and bubbling high in froth, till at last the wave cannot contain itself, and the black vapour         35 flies up into the air. So then, trampling on treaties, he gives the word to the chiefs of his soldiery for a march upon King Latinus, and bids arms be got ready. Italy