Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/275

 front, the breakwater and barrier of fight. Down go the sons of Arcadia, down go the Etruscans, and ye, too Teucrians, whose frames Greece could not destroy. The armies clash, their leaders and their powers the same. The rear ranks close up the battle; nor weapon nor hand     5 can be moved for the crowd. Here is Pallas pushing and pressing, there Lausus over against him: their years scarcely differ; each has a comely form; but Fortune had already written that neither should return to his home. Yet were they not suffered to meet man to man by great     10 Olympus' lord: each has his fate assigned him ere long at the hand of a mightier enemy.

Turnus meanwhile is warned by his gracious sister to come to Lausus' aid; and with his flying car he cleaves the intervening ranks. Soon as he met his comrades'     15 eye: "You may rest from battle now; I alone am coming against Pallas. Pallas is my due, and mine alone; would that his sire were here to see us fight." He said; and his friends retired from the interdicted space. But as the Rutulians withdraw, the young warrior, marvelling     20 at the haughty command, gazes astonished on Turnus, rolls his eyes over that giant frame, and sweeps the whole man from afar with fiery glance, and with words like these meets the words of the monarch: "I shall soon be famous either for kingly trophies won or for an illustrious     25 death; my sire is equal to either event; a truce to menace." This said, he marches into the middle space; while the Arcadians' blood chills and curdles about their hearts. Down from his car leaps Turnus, and addresses himself to fight on foot. And as when a lion has seen from a high     30 watch-tower a bull standing at distance in the field and meditating fight, he flies to the spot, even thus looks Turnus as he bounds along.

Soon as he judged his foe would be within reach of his spear-throw, Pallas begins the combat, in hope that Fortune     35 may help the venture of unequal powers, and utters. these words to the mighty heaven: "By my sire's hospitality and the board where thou satest as a stranger, I