Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/282

 escape, he looks back, his hands and his voice addressed to the sky: "Almighty sire! hast thou judged me worthy of an infliction like this, and sentenced me to this depth of suffering? Whither am I bound? whence have I come? what is this flight that is bearing me home, and     5 what does it make of me? Shall I look again on Laurentum's camp and city? what of that warrior troop who followed me and my standard? Are they not those whom I left—horror to tell—all of them in the jaws of a cruel death—whom I now see scattered in rout, and      10 hear their groans as they fall? What can I do? what lowest depth of earth will yawn for me? Nay, do you, ye winds, have compassion—on reef, on rock—see, it is I, Turnus, who am fain to plead—dash me this vessel, and lodge it on the sandbank's ruthless shoal, where none      15 that know my shame, Rutuli or rumour, may find me out!" So speaking, he sways in spirit to this side and to that: should he for disgrace so foul impale his frenzied breast on the sword's point, and drive the stark blade through his ribs, or fling himself into the midst of the     20 waves, and make by swimming for the winding shore, and place himself again among the Teucrian swords? Thrice he essayed either way: thrice mighty Juno kept him back, and of her great pity withheld the youth from action. On he flies, ploughing the deep with wave and     25 tide to speed him, and is borne safely to the ancient town of Daunus his sire.

Prompted meanwhile by Jove, Mezentius, all on fire, takes up the war, and charges the triumphant Teucrians. The Tyrrhene host flocks to the spot, bending all their     30 fury, all their showering darts on one, one only man. Even as a rock which juts into the mighty deep, exposed to the rage of the wind and braving the sea, bears all the violence and menace of heaven and ocean, itself unshaken, he stands unmoved; now he lays low Hebrus, Dolichaon's     35 child, and with him Latagus and craven Palmus: Latagus he strikes on the face and front with a stone, a hill's enormous fragment, Palmus he suffers to roll ham-strung