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 helms and shapely swords and bridle-reins and glowing wheels; some bring in offering the things the dead men wore, their own shields and the weapons that sped so ill. Many carcases of oxen are sacrificed round the piles: bristly swine and cattle harried from the country round are     5 made to bleed into the flame. Then along the whole line of coast they gaze on their burning friends, and keep sentry over the half-quenched fire-bed, nor let themselves be torn away till dewy night rolls round the sky with its garniture of blazing stars. 10

With like zeal the ill-starred Latians in a different quarter set up countless piles; of the multitude of corpses some they bury in the earth, some they lift up and carry off to neighbour districts, and send them home to the city; the rest, a mighty mass of promiscuous carnage, they burn      15 uncounted and unhonoured; and thereon the plains through their length and breadth gleam with the thickening rivalry of funeral fires. The third morrow had withdrawn the chill shadows from the sky: the mourners were levelling the piles of ashes and sweeping the mingled bones     20 from the hearths, and heaping over them mounds of earth where the heat yet lingers. But within the walls, in the city of Latium's wealthy king, the wailing is preëminent, and largest the portion of that long agony. Here are mothers and their sons' wretched brides, here are sisters'     25 bosoms racked with sorrow and love, and children orphaned of their parents, calling down curses on the terrible war and on Turnus' bridal rites; he, he himself, they cry, should try the issue with arms and the cold steel, who claims for himself the Italian crown and the honours of     30 sovereignty. Fell Drances casts his weight into the scale, and bears witness that Turnus alone is challenged by the foe, Turnus alone defied to combat. Against them many a judgment is ranged in various phrase on Turnus' side, and the queen's august name lends him its shadow; many     35 an applauding voice upholds the warrior by help of the trophies he has won.

Amid all this ferment, when the blaze of popular tur-*