Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/232

 ready to burst on Laurentum's wretched sons! what vengeance, Turnus, shall be mine from thee! how many a warrior's shield and helm and stalwart frame shalt thou toss beneath thy waters, father Tiber! Aye, clamour for battle, and break your plighted word!"                      5

Thus having said, he rises from his lofty seat, and first of all quickens the altars where the Herculean fires were smouldering, and with glad heart approaches the hearth-god of yesterday, and the small household powers; duly they sacrifice chosen sheep, Evander for his part and the     10 Trojan youth for theirs. Next he moves on to the ships and revisits his crew: from whose number he chooses men to follow him to the war, eminent in valour: the rest are wafted down the stream and float lazily along with the current at their back, to bring Ascanius news of his father     15 and his fortunes. Horses are given to the Teucrians who are seeking the Tyrrhene territory, and one is led along, reserved for Æneas; a tawny lion's hide covers it wholly, gleaming forth with talons of gold.

At once flies rumour, blazed through the little city,     20 that the horsemen are marching with speed to the gates of the Tyrrhene king. In alarm the matrons redouble their vows; fear treads on the heels of danger, and the features of the war-god loom larger on the view. Then Evander, clasping the hand of his departing son, hangs     25 about him with tears that never have their fill, and speaks like this: "Ah! would but Jupiter bring back my bygone years, and make me what I was when under Præneste's very walls I struck down the first rank and set a conqueror's torch to piles of shields, and with this my      30 hand sent down to Tartarus king Erulus, whom at his birth his mother Feronia endowed with three lives—fearful to tell—and a frame that could thrice bear arms: thrice had he to be struck down in death: yet from him on that day this hand took all those three lives, and      35 thrice stripped that armour—never should I, as now, be torn, my son, from your loved embrace. Never would Mezentius have laid dishonour on a neighbour's crest,