Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/291

 So he says weeping, and returns to his tent-door, where the body of breathless Pallas, duly laid out, was being watched by Acœtes the aged, who had in old days been armour-bearer to Evander his Arcadian lord, but then in an hour less happy was serving as the appointed guardian     5 of the pupil he loved. Around the corpse were thronging the retinue of menials and the Trojan train, and dames of Ilion with their hair unbound in mourning fashion. But soon as Æneas entered the lofty portal, a mighty wail they raise to the stars, smiting on their breasts, and     10 the royal dwelling groans to its centre with their agony of woe. He, when he saw the pillowed head and countenance of Pallas in his beauty, and the deep cleft of the Ausonian spear in his marble bosom, thus speaks, breaking into tears: "Can it be, unhappy boy, that Fortune at the     15 moment of her triumphant flood-tide has grudged you to me, forbidding you to look on my kingdom, and ride back victorious to your father's home? Not such was the parting pledge I gave on your behalf to your sire Evander, when, clasping me to his heart, he sent me on my way to mighty      20 empire, and anxiously warned me that the foe was fierce and the race we should war with stubborn. And now he belike at this very moment in the deep delusion of empty hope is making vows to Heaven and piling the altars with gifts, while we are following his darling, void of life, and      25 owing no dues henceforward to any power on high, with the vain service of our sorrow. Ill-starred father! your eyes shall see what cruel death has made of your son. And is this the proud return, the triumph we looked for? has my solemn pledge shrunk to this? Yet no beaten     30 coward shall you see, Evander, chastised with unseemly wounds, nor shall the father pray for death to come in its terror while the son survives. Ay me! how strong a defender is lost to our Ausonian realm, and lost to you, my own Iulus!"     35

So having wailed his fill, he gives order to lift and bear the poor corpse, and sends a thousand men chosen from his whole array to attend the last service of woe, and lend