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 band, leaps into the river, and in triumph plucks from the grassy bank his offering to Trivia, the javelin and the maid. No cities opened to him house or stronghold, for his wild nature had never brooked submission: among the shepherds' lonely mountains he passed his days. There in the               5 woods, among beasts' savage lairs, he reared his daughter on milk from the breast of an untamed mare, squeezing the udder into her tender lips. And soon as the child first stood on her feet, he armed her hands with a pointed javelin, and hung from her baby shoulder a quiver and a         10 bow. For the golden brooch in her hair, for the long sweeping mantle, there hang from her head adown her back a tiger's spoils. Even then she launched with tiny hand her childish missiles, swung round her head the sling's well-turned thong, and brought down a crane from Strymon        15 or a snow-white swan. Many a mother in Tyrrhene town has wooed her for her son in vain: with no thought but for Dian, she cherishes in unsullied purity her love for the hunter's and the maiden's life. Would she had never been pressed for warfare like this, essaying to strike a blow     20 at the Teucrians: so had she still been my darling and a sister of my train. But come, since cruel destiny is darkening round her, glide down, fair nymph, from the sky, and repair to the Latian frontier, where now in an evil hour the tearful battle is joining. Take these arms, and draw        25 from the quiver an avenging shaft: therewith let the foe, whoever he be, Trojan or Italian, that shall profane with the stroke of death that sacred person, make to me in like manner the atonement of his blood. Afterwards in the hollow of a cloud I will bear off the body of my lost favourite     30 undespoiled of its arms, and lay her down in her own land." Thus she: and Opis hurtled downward through the buoyant air, a black whirlwind enswathing her form.

But the Trojan band meanwhile is nearing the walls with the Etruscan chiefs and the whole array of cavalry,        35 marshalled into companies. Steeds are prancing and neighing the whole champaign over, and chafing against the drawn bridle as they face hither and thither: the field,