Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/274

 its master; the fingers, half alive, are quivering yet and closing again on the steel.

Arcadia's sons, stung by their chief's rebuke and gazing on his glorious deeds, rush on the foe, strong in the armour of mingled rage and shame. Then Pallas strikes                5 through Rhœtus as he flies past him on his car. So much space and respite from his end did Ilus gain; for 'twas at Ilus he had launched from the distance his stalwart spear: Rhœtus comes between and catches it, flying from thee, noble Teuthras, and Tyres thy brother; and                10 tumbled from his car he beats with his dying heel the Rutulian plains. Even as when the winds have risen at his wish on a summer's day, a shepherd lets loose his scattered flames among the woods, in a moment catching all that comes between, the Fire-god's army in one bristling         15 line stretches over the broad plains: he from his seat beholds the triumphant blaze with a conqueror's pride: even so the valour of thy friends musters from all sides on one point to aid thee, Pallas. But Halesus, that fiery warrior, moves against their opposing ranks, gathering               20 himself up into his arms. Ladon he massacres, and Pheres, and Demodocus: Strymonius' right hand, raised against his throat, he lops away with his gleaming sword; with a stone he strikes the front of Thoas, and has crushed the bones mixed with gory brain. Halesus had been                    25 hidden in the woods by his prophetic sire; when the old man closed his whitening eyes in death, the Fates claimed their victim, and devoted him to Evander's darts. And now Pallas aims at him, after these words of prayer: "Grant, Father Tiber, to the flying steel poised in my               30 hand a prosperous passage through Halesus' hardy breast; thine oak shall have his arms and his warrior spoils." The god gave ear: while Halesus shielded Imaon, he gives his own breast in evil hour unarmed to the Arcadian lance. 35

But Lausus, himself a mighty portion of the war, suffers not his troops to be dismayed by the hero's dreadful carnage: first he slays Abas, who had met him front to