Aeneidos XII

When Turnus sees the Latins broken, with the war gone against them,

and giving way; that his own promises are now called in;

that he is the one their eyes mark out; of himself he burns, not to be appeased,

and lifts his spirit. As in the fields of the Carthaginians

a lion, wounded in the breast by a heavy blow of the hunters,

rouses himself to fight only then, and rejoices as he shakes out

the maned muscles of his neck, and unafraid snaps off the shaft

the robber planted in him, and roars with a bloodied mouth:

no otherwise does the violence swell in Turnus, kindled.

Then he addresses the king, and begins, stormy, like this:

“There is no delay in Turnus; there is no cause for the cowardly

followers of Aeneas to take back their words, or refuse what they bargained for.

I go to meet him. Bring the holy things, father, and draw up the treaty.

Either with this right hand I will send the Dardanian down below Tartarus,

Asia's deserter (let the Latins sit and look on),

and alone, with iron, refute the charge that is laid on us all;

or let him hold us beaten, and let Lavinia go to him as wife.”

To him Latinus answered with a settled heart:

“Young man, outstanding in spirit: by however much you go beyond us

in fierce courage, by so much the more is it right for me

to take counsel, and in fear to weigh out every chance.

You have the kingdom of your father Daunus, you have many towns

taken by your own hand; and Latinus has gold too, and the will to give it.

There are other unmarried girls in Latium and the Laurentine fields,

and not of dishonorable stock. Let me open these things, not soft to say,

with all deceit put aside; and drink this in with your mind as well.

It was not lawful for me to join my daughter to any of the old suitors,

and all of them, gods and men alike, kept singing it.

Beaten by love of you, beaten by the blood we share

and by my grieving wife's tears, I broke every bond:

I tore the promised girl from her bridegroom, I took up unholy arms.

From that day you see what disasters, what wars, Turnus,

follow me, and what labors you, first of all, endure.

Twice beaten in a great battle, we barely keep Italy's hopes

inside the city; the Tiber's waters are warm again

with our blood, and the enormous plains go white with bones.

Where am I carried back to, so often? What madness turns my mind?

If I am ready to take them as allies once Turnus is dead,

why do I not rather end the fighting while he is unharmed?

What will your Rutulian kinsmen say, what will the rest of

Italy say, if I have handed you over to death (may chance make a lie of the words!)

you who were asking for my daughter and a marriage in my house?

Look at how war turns; have pity on a father

far on in years, whom his own Ardea now keeps apart from us,

grieving.” Not at all is the violence of Turnus

bent by the words: it rises higher, and sickens under the cure.

As soon as he could speak, he pressed on so:

“The care you carry for me, I beg you, best of men, for my sake

lay it down, and let me bargain death away for glory.

I too scatter spears, father, and the iron in my right hand

is not feeble; blood follows out of the wound we make as well.

His goddess mother will be far off then, who covers him as he runs

in a woman's cloud and hides herself in empty shadows.”

But the queen, terrified at the new turn the fighting had taken,

wept, and held her burning son-in-law back, herself about to die:

“Turnus, by these tears, by any regard for Amata

that touches your mind (you are the one hope now, you the rest

of my wretched old age; the honor and the rule of Latinus

are in your keeping, and on you the whole leaning house rests).

one thing I beg: do not close hands with the Teucrians in battle.

Whatever chances wait for you in that contest,

wait for me too, Turnus: I will leave this hated light

at that same moment, and not see Aeneas as my son-in-law, a captive.”

Lavinia took in her mother's words, her burning cheeks

drenched in tears; a deep blush had lit a fire

beneath them, and ran across her heated face.

As if someone had stained Indian ivory with blood-red

purple, or as when white lilies blush, many of them

mixed in with a rose: such colors the girl gave from her face.

Love troubles him, and he fixes his eyes on the girl;

he burns for arms the more, and says a few words to Amata:

“Do not, I beg you, do not send me off with tears, nor with an omen

so heavy, as I go into the contests of hard war,

mother; Turnus is not free to put death off.

Idmon, herald, carry these words of mine to the Phrygian tyrant,

they will not please him: as soon as tomorrow's Dawn

reddens in the sky, riding on her crimson wheels,

let him not drive Teucrians at Rutulians; let Teucrian arms rest

and Rutulian; with our own blood let us break the war off,

on that field let Lavinia be sought as a wife.”

When he had given these words and withdrawn quickly indoors,

he calls for his horses, and rejoices to see them snorting before his face,

the ones Orithyia herself gave to Pilumnus for his glory,

which would go past snow for whiteness, and past the winds for running.

The drivers stand round in a hurry and slap at their chests

with cupped hands, and comb out the maned necks.

Then he himself puts round his shoulders the corselet stiff

with gold and white orichalc; and fits to his hand at the same time

sword and shield and the horns of his red crest.

the sword the god who is master of fire had made himself

for his father Daunus, and dipped white-hot in the Stygian water.

Then the spear that stood leaning against a great column

in the middle of the hall, he snatches up by main force,

spoil of Actor the Auruncan, and shakes it till it shudders,

shouting: “Now, spear that has never failed me when I called,

now the time is here. The great Actor carried you once;

now the right hand of Turnus carries you. Grant me to lay out the body,

to tear off the corselet with a strong hand and rip it open,

the corselet of the half-man Phrygian, and to foul in the dust the hair

he curls with a hot iron and soaks with myrrh.”

These are the furies that drive him; from his whole burning face

sparks jump away, and fire flashes in his keen eyes:

as when a bull going into his first fight raises

a terrifying bellowing, and tries to drive his anger into his horns,

shoving against a tree's trunk, and challenges the winds

with his blows, or scatters the sand in rehearsal for the battle.

No less meanwhile, savage in the arms his mother gave him,

Aeneas whets his war and rouses himself with anger,

glad that the war is being settled by the treaty offered him;

then he comforts his companions and the fear of grieving Iulus,

teaching them the fates; and he orders men to carry a firm answer

back to king Latinus and to state the terms of the peace.

The next day, rising, had barely scattered its light on the mountain tops,

at the hour when the horses of the Sun first lift themselves

out of the deep swell and breathe daylight from their raised nostrils:

Rutulian men and Teucrian were measuring out the field

for the contest under the walls of the great city, and making ready

in the middle of it hearths, and altars of turf for the gods

both peoples hold in common. Others were carrying spring water and fire,

aproned in linen, their temples bound with the holy branch.

The levy of Ausonia's sons comes on, and the javelin-armed

columns pour themselves out of the crowded gates. On this side the whole

Trojan and Tyrrhenian army rushes out in its various arms,

equipped with iron no otherwise than if the harsh fighting

of war were calling them; and among the thousands the captains themselves

go flying, splendid in gold and purple:

Mnestheus of the stock of Assaracus, and brave Asilas,

and Messapus, tamer of horses, Neptune's offspring.

And when at the given signal each had drawn back into his own ground,

they fix their spears in the earth and lean their shields down.

Then mothers poured out in their eagerness, and the unarmed crowd,

and old men with no strength left, and they took the towers

and the roofs of the houses; others stand at the high gates.

But Juno, from the top of the hill now reckoned the Alban,

then the mountain had no name, no honor, no fame,

looked out from the mound and watched the plain, and both

battle lines, of Laurentines and of Trojans, and the city of Latinus.

At once, goddess to goddess, she spoke to the sister of Turnus,

who presides over standing pools and sounding rivers,

an honor which the high king of the upper air, Jupiter,

made holy to her in payment for the virginity he took:

“Nymph, glory of the rivers, dearest of all to my heart,

you know how I preferred you, you alone, above every Latin woman

who has climbed into great-hearted Jove's thankless bed,

and gladly set you in a portion of the sky:

learn what your grief is, Juturna, so that you do not charge me with it.

So far as Fortune seemed to permit, and the Fates were allowing

things to go Latium's way, I sheltered Turnus and your walls;

now I see the young man closing with fates that do not match him,

and the day of the Fates and the enemy force come close.

I cannot look at this fight with my eyes, nor at the treaty.

If you dare anything more direct on your brother's behalf,

go on: it is right. Perhaps better things will follow the wretched.”

She had scarcely said it when Juturna poured tears from her eyes

and three times and four times struck her comely breast with her hand.

“This is no time for tears,” says Saturn's daughter Juno.

“Be quick, and if there is any way, snatch your brother out of death,

or else stir up war and shake off the treaty they have drawn.

I stand behind the daring.” Having urged her so, she left her

uncertain, and shaken by the grim wound in her mind.

Meanwhile the kings come on: Latinus, an enormous bulk,

is carried on a four-horse chariot, and around his temples

twice six gilded rays go circling and shining,

the token of the Sun his forebear; Turnus rides in a car of white pairs,

brandishing in his hand two shafts with broad iron heads;

from the other side father Aeneas, the origin of the Roman stock,