Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/337

 frame on the uplifted sword, and strikes, Trojans and eager Latians shout aloud: both armies gaze expectant. But the faithless sword snaps in twain and fails its fiery lord midway in the stroke, unless flight should come to his aid. Off he flies swifter than the wind, seeing an unknown       5 hilt in his defenceless hand. Men say that in his headlong haste, when first he was mounting the car harnessed for battle, he left behind his father's falchion and snatched up the steel of Metiscus, his charioteer: so long as the Teucrians fled straggling before him, the weapon              10 did good service; soon as it came to the divine Vulcanian armour, the mortal blade, like brittle ice, flew asunder at the stroke: the fragments sparkle on the yellow sand. So now in his distraction Turnus flies here and there over the plain, weaving vague circles in this place and in           15 that: for the Trojans have closed in circle about him, and here is a spreading marsh, there lofty ramparts to bar the way.

Nor is Æneas wanting, though at times the arrow wound slackens his knees and robs them of their power                20 to run: no, he follows on, and presses upon the flier foot for foot: as when a hound has got a stag pent in by a river, or hedged about by the terror of crimson plumage, and chases him running and barking: the stag, frighted by the snare and the steep bank, doubles a thousand times:           25 the keen Umbrian clings open-mouthed to his skirts, all but seizes him, and as though in act to seize, snaps his teeth, and is baffled to find nothing in their gripe. Then, if ever, uprises a shout, echoing along bank and marsh, and heaven rings again with the noise. Turnus, even as               30 he flies, calls fiercely on the Rutulians, addressing by name, and clamors for his well-known sword. Æneas, for his part, threatens death and instant destruction, should any come near, and terrifies his trembling foes, swearing that he will raze their city to the ground, and             35 presses on in spite of his wound. Five times they circle round, five times they retrace the circle: for no trivial prize is at stake, no guerdon of a game: the contest is