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 encounter? why so slow? will you never lodge the War-god better than in that windy tongue, those flying feet? What? beaten? I? who, foulest of slanderers, will justly brand me as beaten, that shall look on Tiber still swelling with Ilion's best blood, on Evander's whole house prostrate     5 root and branch, and his Arcadians stripped naked of their armour? It was no beaten arm that Bitias and giant Pandarus found in me, or the thousand that I sent to death in a single day with my conquering hand, shut up within their walls, pent in by the rampart of the foe. No     10 hope from war? Croak your bodings, madman, in the ears of the Dardan and of your own fortunes. Ay, go on without cease, throwing all into measureless panic, heightening the prowess of a nation twice conquered already, and dwarfing no less the arms of your king. See,     15 now the lords of the Myrmidons[o] are quaking at the martial deeds of Phrygia, Tydeus' son, Thessalian Achilles, and the rest, and river Aufidus is in full retreat from the Hadrian sea. Or listen when the trickster in his villany feigns himself too weak to face a quarrel with me, and     20 points his charges with the sting of terror. Never, I promise you, shall you lose such life as yours by hand of mine—be troubled no longer—let it dwell with you and retain its home in that congenial breast. Now, gracious sire, I return to you and the august matter that asks our     25 counsel. If you have no hope beyond in aught our arms can do, if we are so wholly forlorn, destroyed root and branch by one reverse, and our star can never rise again, then pray we for peace and stretch craven hands in suppliance. Yet, oh, had we but one spark of the worth that     30 once was ours, that man I would esteem blest beyond others in his service and princely of soul, who, sooner than look on aught like this, has lain down in death and once for all bitten the dust. But if we have still store of power, and a harvest of youth yet unreaped, if there are cities     35 and nations of Italy yet to come to our aid, if the Trojans as well as we have won their glory at much bloodshed's cost—for they too have their deaths—the hurricane has