The guilty madness warriors feel,
And jealous wrath yet more:
As when piled high a caldron round
The wood-fire sends a crackling sound,
And makes the waters start and bound,
In wild turmoil with smoke and steam
Seethes, hisses, froths the imprisoned stream,
Till the vexed wave o’erleaps control,
And vaporous clouds to heaven uproll:
So, proudly trampling treaties down,
He sounds a march to Latium’s town:
To king Latinus he will go,
Protect the realm, expel the foe:
Though Latium’s force unite with Troy’s.
Himself will bring the counterpoise.
This said, to Heaven he makes appeal:
The Rutule hosts with emulous zeal
Their martial rage inflame:
And one the chief’s young beauty fires,
One kindles at his hero sires,
One at his deeds of fame.
The Rutules’ warlike might,
Alecto on her Stygian vans
Turns to Troy’s camp her flight.
New cunning in her breast, a place
She in the distance eyed,
Where young Iulus led the chase
Along the river-side:
Then sudden to his hounds’ keen smell
Presents the lure they know so well,
A gallant stag to start:
’Twas thence a nation’s sorrow flowed,
And kindling into madness glowed
The savage rustic heart.
Of beauteous form and branching head
A stag in human haunts was bred,
From mother’s milk withdrawn,
By Tyrrheus and his children reared,
Tyrrheus, who ruled the royal herd,
The ranger of the lawn.
Fair Silvia, daughter of the race,
Its horns with wreaths would interlace,
Comb smooth its shaggy coat, and lave
Its body in the crystal wave.
Tame and obedient, it would stray
Free through the woods a summer’s day,
And home again at night repair
E’en of itself, how late soe’er.
So now ’twas wandering when the pack
Gave tongue and followed on its track,
As sheltered from the noontide beam
It floated listless down the stream.
Ambition fired Ascanius too;
The shaft he aimed, the bow he drew:
Fate guides his hand: with whirring speed
Through flank and belly flies the reed.
Homeward the wounded creature fled,
Took refuge in the well-known shed,
And bleeding, crying as for aid,
Through all the house its moaning made.
With flat hand smiting on each arm
Poor Silvia gives the first alarm,
And calls the rural folk:
They—for the fury-pest unseen
Is lurking in the woodland green—
Or ere she deems, are close at hand;
One grasps a charred and hardened brand,
And one a knotted oak:
Whate’er the seeker’s haste may find
Does weapon’s work for fury blind.
Stout Tyrrheus, as he splits in four
With wedge on wedge a tree’s tough core,
Leaps forth, his hatchet still in hand,
And, breathing rage, arrays his band.
The Goddess from her vantage tower
Perceives, and seizes mischief’s hour,
Flies to the summit of the stall,
And thence shrills out the shepherd’s call,
With harsh Tartarean voice in air
Pitching on high the horn’s hoarse blare.
That sound the forest line convulsed:
The long vibration throbbed and pulsed
Through all the depth of wood;
’Twas heard by Trivia’s lake afar,
Heard by the sulphurous waves of Nar
And Velia’s fountain flood;
And terror-stricken mothers pressed
Their children closer to their breast.
The rustics from the country round,
Snatch up their arms and run:
The Trojan youth, their gates displayed,
Stream forth to give Ascanius aid,
And battle is begun.
No longer now ’tis village feud,
Waged with seared stakes and truncheons rude
Another game they try:
’Tis two-edged iron: swords and spears
Bristle the field with spiky ears:
Responsive to the sun’s appeal
Flash glittering brass and burnished steel,
And fling their rays on high:
As when beneath the wind’s first sweep
The white foam gathers on the deep,
The waters gradual rise,
High and more high the billows grow,
Till from the very depth below
They mount into the skies.
Young Almo, Tyrrheus’ heir till then,
Falls mid the foremost fighting men,
By whizzing shaft laid low:
Deep in his gullet lodged the death
And choked the ways of voice and breath
With life-blood’s gushing flow:
Around him many a warrior bleeds,
And old Galæsus, as he pleads
In vain for peace: no juster son
Had fair Ausonia, richer none:
Each night within his cotes were penned
Five flocks of sheep, five herds of cows,
And his broad lands from end to end
Were furrowed by a hundred ploughs.
The fiend, her promise now fulfilled,
Soon as the first hot blood is drawn
And war in thunder ’gins to dawn,
Up from Hesperia flies,
And riding on the rack of cloud,
Thus with triumphant voice and proud
To mighty Juno cries:
‘Behold, ’tis finished! strife full-blown
Has issued forth in fight:
Now bid the hosts their hate atone
And friendly treaty plight.
The hands of Troy, thou seest, are dyed
Deep in Ausonian blood;
A guerdon I will add beside,
If so thy will holds good:
The neighbouring cities I will fill
With thick-sown rumours rife,
And wake in each unruly will
The frantic lust of strife,
Till aid they bring from every side,
And battle’s seeds be scattered wide.’
Juno returns: ‘Enough is spread
Of treachery and panic dread:
The roots of war are firmly set:
The fight is raging hilt to hilt:
The arms that chance supplied
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