Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/207

 the last touch that brings down the war. From the battlefield there pours into the city the whole company of shepherds, with their slain in their arms, young Almo and Galæsus' disfigured countenance, calling on the gods and adjuring Latinus. Turnus is on the spot, and, in the fury     5 and fire of the blood-cry, sounds again and again the note of terror: "The Teucrians are invited to reign in Latium; a Phrygian shoot is to be grafted on the royal tree; the palace-gate is closed on himself." Moreover, the kinsmen of the matrons, who in Bacchic madness are footing the     10 pathless woods—for Amata's name weighs not lightly—muster from all sides, and strain the throat of Mars to hoarseness. All at once, defying omens and oracles, under the spell of a cursed deity, they clamour for an atrocious war. With emulous zeal they swarm round     15 Latinus' palace; he, like a rock in the sea, stands unshaken; like a rock in the sea before the rush and crash of waters, which, amid, thousands of barking waves, is fixed by its own weight; the crags and the spray-foamed stones roar about it in vain, and the lashed seaweed falls idly     20 from its side. But when he finds no power given him to counterwork the secret agency, and all is moving at relentless Juno's beck, then with many an appeal to the gods and the soulless skies, "Alas!" exclaims the good sire, "shattered are we by destiny and whirled before the storm!     25 On you will come the reckoning, and your impious blood will pay it, my wretched children! You, Turnus, you will be met by your crime and its fearful vengeance, in a day when it will be too late to pray to Heaven. For me, my rest is assured; my ship is just dropping into port; it is      30 but of a happy departure that I am robbed." No more he spoke, but shut himself in an inner chamber, and let the reins of empire go.

A custom there was in the Hesperian days of Latium, observed as sacred in succession by the Alban cities, and     35 now honoured by the observance of Rome, the greatest power on earth, when men first stir up the war-god to battle, whether their purpose be to carry piteous war