Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/288

 as he was wont, and charged his two hands with pointed javelins, his head shining with brass and shaggy with horse-hair crest. So he bounded into the midst—his heart glowing at once with mighty shame, madness and agony commingled. Then with a loud voice he thrice               5 called on Æneas: aye, and Æneas knew it, and prays in ecstasy: "May the great father of the gods, may royal Apollo grant that you come to the encounter!" So much said, he marches to meet him with brandished spear. The other replies: "Why terrify me, fellest of foes, now         10 you have robbed me of my son? this was the only way by which you could work my ruin. I fear not death, nor give quarter to any deity. Enough: I am coming to die, and send you this my present first." He said, and flung a javelin at his enemy: then he sends another and another          15 to its mark, wheeling round in a vast ring: but the golden shield bides the blow. Three times, wheeling from right to left, he rode round the foe that faced him, flinging darts from his hand: three times the hero of Troy moves round, carrying with him a vast grove planted on his             20 brazen plate. Then, when he begins to tire of the long delay and the incessant plucking out of darts, and feels the unequal combat press him hard, meditating many things, at last he springs from his covert, and hurls his spear full between the hollow temples of the warrior-steed. The             25 gallant beast rears itself upright, lashes the air with its heels, and, flinging the rider, falls on and encumbers him, and itself bowed to earth presses with its shoulder the prostrate chief. Up flies Æneas, plucks forth his sword from its scabbard, and bespeaks the fallen: "Where now is             30 fierce Mezentius and that his savage vehemence of spirit?" To whom the Tuscan, soon as opening his eyes on the light he drank in the heaven and regained his sense: "Insulting foe, why reproach me and menace me with death? You may kill me without crime: I came not to battle to be            35 spared, nor was that the league which my Lausus ratified with you for his father. One boon I ask, in the name of that grace, if any there be, which is due to a vanquished