Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/327

 setting his foot on his neck, wrests the sword from his hand, bathes it flashing deep in his throat, and thus accompanies the blow: "Lie there, Trojan, and measure the Hesperian soil you came to invade: such are their guerdons who draw their swords on me; so build they up their city." 5 Then with a spear throw he sends Asbutes to join the dead. Chloreus and Sybaris and Dares and Thersilochus, Thymœtes too, thrown off by a restiff horse. As when the blast of Thracian Boreas roars on the deep Ægean and drives the billows to the shore, wherever the winds push             10 on, the clouds scurry over the sky, so when Turnus cleaves his path, the ranks give way, the armies turn in rout; the motion bears him along, and the gale which blows on the car tosses his flickering crest. Phegeus, indignant at his overweening onset, meets the car and grasping the bridle             15 wrenches aside the foaming jaws of the impetuous steeds. While he is dragged along clinging to the yoke, the broad spear-head reaches his unguarded breast, cleaves the two-plated corslet, and tastes the surface of the flesh. Yet he, his shield before him, kept fronting and threatening the             20 foe, and protecting himself with his drawn sword, when the wheel careering onward strikes and flings him on the ground, and Turnus with a sweep of his blade between the bottom of the helmet and the breastplate's topmost rim has lopped the head and left the trunk to welter. 25

While Turnus thus is dealing havoc over the field, Mnestheus, true Achates, and Ascanius have helped Æneas to the camp, all bleeding, and staying his halting steps by the help of a spear. There he frets and struggles to pull out the broken shaft, and calls for help the readiest           30 way, bidding them enlarge the wound with a broad sword, cut the weapon's lodgment to the bottom, and send him to combat again. And now at his side was Iapis, son of Iasus, dearest of mankind to Phœbus, he to whom the god in his passionate fondness would fain have given his             35 own function, his own hand's cunning, the augur's insight, the lyre, the weapons of archery; but he, wishing to lengthen out the span of his bed-rid sire, chose rather