Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/318

 Fate to give my daughter to any of her early suitors; so sang gods and men alike. Conquered by my love for you, conquered by the ties of kindred and the sorrow of my weeping queen, I set all pledges at naught, I snatched the bride from her plighted husband. I drew the unhallowed     5 sword. From that fatal day you see what troubles, what wars are let loose upon me; you know the weight of the sufferings which you are the first to feel. Twice vanquished in a mighty conflict, we scarce protect by our bulwarks the hopes of Italy: Tiber's waters are yet steaming        10 with our blood, and the spacious plains are whitened by our bones. Whither am I drifting again and again? what madness turns my brain? If on the death of Turnus I am ready to welcome these new allies, why should I not end the strife while he lives and is safe? What will our     15 Rutulian kinsmen say, what the rest of Italy, if—may Fortune forefend the omen!—I give you up to death, you, a suitor for my alliance, for my daughter's hand? Think of the uncertainties of war; have pity on your aged sire, now biding forlornly far away in his Ardean home!"      20

These words abate not Turnus' vehemence a whit: it starts up fiercer, more virulent for the healing hand. Soon as he can find utterance, he thus begins: "The care you take for my sake, best of fathers, lay down for my sake, I beg, and suffer me to pledge my life for my honour.      25 My hand, too, can scatter darts and fling steel with no feeble force; my blows, too, fetch blood. He will not have his goddess-mother within call, to hide her craven son in an unmanly cloud, and conceal herself by help of treacherous shadows." 30

But the queen, appalled by the new hazard of the combat, was all in tears, clinging to her fiery son-in-law with the convulsive grasp of death: "Turnus, by these my tears, by any regard you cherish for Amata—you are now our only hope, our only solace in our forlorn old age—the      35 honour and power of the king are in your hands; on you, its one pillar, the whole house leans. I ask but this—forbear to cross swords with the Teucrians. What-*