Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/236

 of bright silver in joyous circles were lashing the surface with their tails and cutting the tide. In the midst might be seen fleets of brazen ships, the naval war of Actium; you might remark the whole of Leucate aglow with the war-god's array, and the waves one blaze of gold. On this       5 side is Augustus Cæsar leading the Italians to conflict, with the senate and the people, the home-gods and their mighty brethren, standing aloft on the stern: his auspicious brows emit twin-born flames, and his ancestral star dawns over his head. Elsewhere is Agrippa with the         10 winds and the gods at his back, towering high as he leads his column; his brows gleam with the beaked circle of a naval crown, the glorious ornament of war. On that side is Antonius with his barbaric powers and the arms of divers lands, triumphant from the nations of the dawn-goddess          15 and the red ocean's coast, carrying with him Egypt and the strength of the East and the utmost parts of Bactria, and at his side—shame on the profanation!—his Egyptian spouse.[o] All are seen at once in fierce onward motion: the whole sea-floor foams up, torn by the backward      20 pull of the oars and by the three-fanged beaks. On to the deep! you would deem that uprooted Cyclades were swimming the sea, or that tall hills were meeting hills in battle; such the giant effort, with which the warriors urge on their tower-crowned ships. From the hand is             25 scattered a shower of flaming tow and flying steel: the plains of Neptune redden with unwonted carnage. In the midst of them the queen is cheering on her forces with the timbrel of her native land; casting as yet no glance on the twin-born snakes that threaten her rear. There are          30 the portentous gods of all the nations, and Anubis[o] the barking monster, brandishing their weapons in the face of Neptune and Venus and in the face of Pallas. Midmost in the fray storms Mavors,[o] relieved in iron, and fell Fury-fiends swooping from the sky; and Discord sweeps           35 along in the glory of her rent mantle, and at her back Bellona with blood-dropping scourge. There was Actium's Apollo, with his eye on the fray, bending his bow from