Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/283

 in his cowardice; their harness he gives to Lausus to wear on his shoulders, their crests to adorn his head. Euanthes, too, the Phrygian, and Mimas, Paris' playmate, borne by Theano to Amycus his sire, the self-same night when Cisseus' royal daughter, teeming with a firebrand,     5 gave birth to Paris; he sleeps beneath his father's walls, while Mimas has his rest on Laurentum's unknown shore. Like as the mighty boar driven by fangs of hounds from mountain heights, the boar whom pine-crowned Vesulus or Laurentum's pool shelters these many years, pastured     10 on the reedy jungle, soon as he finds himself among the nets, stands at bay, snorting with fury and bristling his back; none has the courage to flame forth and come near him; at safe distance they press him with their darts and their cries; even so of them who hate Mezentius with     15 a righteous hate, none has the heart to face him with drawn steel; with missiles and deafening shouts they assail him from afar; while he, undaunted, is pausing now here, now there, gnashing his teeth, and shakes off the javelins from his buckler's hide. There was one     20 Acron from Corythus' ancient borders, a Grecian wight, who had fled forth leaving his nuptials yet to celebrate; him, when Mezentius saw at distance scattering the intervening ranks, in pride of crimson plumage and the purple of his plighted bride, even as oft a famished lion ranging     25 through high-built stalls—for frantic hunger is his prompter—if he chance to mark a flying goat or towering-antlered deer, grins with huge delight, sets up his mane, and hangs over the rent flesh, while loathly blood laves his insatiate jaws—so joyfully springs Mezentius     30 on the foe's clustering mass. Down goes ill-starred Acron, spurns the blackened ground in the pangs of death, and dyes with blood the broken spear. Nor did the chief deign to strike down Orodes as he fled, or deal from a spear-throw a wound unseen; full in front he meets him,     35 and engages him as man should man, prevailing not by guile but by sheer force of steel. Then with foot and lance planted on the back-flung body: "See, gallants, a