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 propels with his oars the enormous Centaur: the monster stands lowering over the water, and threatens the billows with a huge rock from his towering eminence, as he ploughs the deep sea with the length of his keel.

Great Ocnus too is leading an army from the coasts of his            5 fathers, Ocnus, son of Manto the prophetess and the Etruscan river, who bestowed on thee, Mantua, thy city walls and the name of his mother, Mantua rich in ancestral glories: but not all her sons of the same blood; three races are there, and under each race range four nations:             10 herself the queen of the nations, her strength from Etruscan blood. Hence, too, Mezentius draws against his life five hundred unfriendly swords—Mincius, child of Benacus, with his gray covering of reeds, ushers into the deep their hostile bark. 15

On moves strong Aulestes, lashing the water as he rises with the stroke of a hundred oars: the sea spouts foam from its upturned surface. His bearer is a huge Triton, whose shell strikes terror into the green billows; his shaggy front, breasting the water, down to the side bespeaks         20 the man: the belly ends in a sea monster: under the half bestial bosom the wave froths and roars.

So many chosen chiefs were journeying in thirty vessels to the succour of Troy, and ploughing with brazen beak the expanse of brine. 25

And now the day had withdrawn from the sky, and gracious Dian was trampling over the cope of heaven with her night-flying steeds: Æneas the while, for care refuses slumber to his frame, is seated at his post, himself guiding the rudder and trimming the sail—when lo! in the middle             30 of his voyage he is met by a fair bevy of comrades of his own: the Nymphs whom gracious Cybele had invested with the deity of the sea, and changed from ships to goddesses, were swimming abreast and cleaving the billow, a Nymph for each of the brazen prows that erst had                   35 lined the shore. Far off they recognize their king, and come dancing round him in state: Cymodoce, their skilfullest in speech, swimming up behind, lays her right hand on