Page:Virgil (Collins).djvu/154

144 The story of Camilla's infancy, which is given us subsequently, is quite in accordance with this description. Her father, driven from his territory, like Mezentius, by an angry people, had carried his infant daughter with him in his flight. Hard pressed by his pursuers, he came to the banks of a river. To swim across the stream, though swollen by winter torrents, were easy for himself: but how to carry his child? With brief prayer and vow to the huntress Diana, he tied her to a spear, and threw her across. The child alighted safely on the other side, and the father followed. Fed on mares' milk, and exercised from infancy in the use of the bow, Camilla had grown up in the forest, vowed to maidenhood and to Diana.