Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/328

 to know the virtue of simples and the laws of the healing art, and to practise in silence an unambitious craft. There stood Æneas, fretting impatiently, propped on his massy spear, with a warrior concourse about him, and Iulus all in tears, yet himself unmoved by their sorrow. 5 The aged leech, his garments swathed round him in Pæon's fashion, is plying busily the healing hand and Phœbus' sovereign remedies all to no end, all to no end pulling at the dart and griping the steel with the pincer. No Fortune guides the course of skill, no patron Phœbus           10 lends his aid; and meanwhile the fierce alarms of the field grow louder and louder, and the mischief is nearer at hand. They see dust-clouds propping the sky, the horsemen gallop in, darts fall thick in the midst of the camp, and heavenward mounts the cruel din of warriors battling             15 or falling in the stern affray:—when, lo! Venus, struck to the heart by her son's undeserved suffering, with a mother's care plucks dittany[o] from Cretan Ida, a plant with downy leaves and a purple flower: wild goats know that simple well, if the flying arrow should lodge in their          20 flesh. Veiled by a dim cloud, the goddess brings it down; with it she impregnates the spring water gleaming in the caldron, imparting unseen powers, and sprinkles ambrosia's[o] healthful juice and fragrant panacea. The old man rinsed the wound with the water so transformed, all              25 unwitting, and in a moment all pain was fled from the frame, and the blood was stanched in the wound. The arrow obeys the hand, and falls unforced, and strength is restored as before. "Quick! give the warrior his arms! why so tardy?" cries Iapis, himself the first to stir up             30 the martial spirit. "No human aid has done this, no power of leech-craft; it is not my hand, Æneas, that restores you; a mightier power than man's is at work, sending you back to mightier deeds." The chief, greedy for the fight, has cased his legs in gold, chafing at delay          35 and brandishing his spear. Soon as the shield is fitted to his side, the cuirass to his back, he clasps Ascanius to his mailed breast, and kissing his lips through the helmet