Virgil · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
1| When Turnus sees the Latins broken by the war going against them and losing heart, his own promise now being called in, himself marked out by every eye, he blazes up, implacable, of his own accord and raises his courage. Like the lion in the fields of Carthage, wounded in the chest by hunters with a heavy wound, which only then rouses itself to fight, delighting in shaking the shaggy mane on its neck, fearlessly snaps the spear the hunter has fixed in it and roars with bloody jaws: just so violence swells in Turnus once he is fired. Then he addresses the king and begins in turmoil: "There is no delay on Turnus' part; there is no reason for the cowardly followers of Aeneas to take back their words or refuse what they agreed. I will meet him. Bring the sacred offerings, father, and draw up the treaty. Either with this right hand I will send the Dardan, the deserter of Asia, down to Tartarus — let the Latins sit and watch — and alone with my sword refute the charge against us all, or let him have us as his conquered, and let Lavinia go to him as his wife."
18| Latinus answered him with a calm heart: "Young man of outstanding spirit, the more you excel in fierce courage, the more it is right for me to deliberate carefully and weigh every chance in fear. Your father Daunus' realms are yours, and many towns taken by your hand; Latinus too has gold and goodwill. There are other unmarried girls in Latium and the Laurentine fields, and not of low birth. Let me tell you this, hard as it is to say, without pretense, and at the same time take it into your heart: I was not permitted to give my daughter to any of the suitors she had before; all gods and men foretold this. Overcome by love for you, overcome by the blood we share and the tears of my grieving wife, I broke every bond: I snatched the promised bride from my son-in-law, I took up unholy arms. Since then you see, Turnus, what misfortunes, what wars pursue me, what hardships you above all are suffering. Twice beaten in a great battle, we scarcely protect the hopes of Italy within our city; the streams of the Tiber are still warm with our blood, and the vast plains are white with bones. Why do I keep drifting back? What madness changes my mind?
38| If I am ready to take the Trojans as allies once Turnus is dead, why not rather end the conflict while he is unharmed? What will our kinsmen the Rutulians say, what will the rest of Italy say, if I betray you to death — may fortune prove my words wrong! — while you seek my daughter in marriage? Consider the shifting fortunes of war; pity your aged father, whom his native Ardea now keeps far from you in his grief." Turnus' violence is not bent at all by these words; it grows worse and becomes sicker for the cure. As soon as he could speak, he began: "The concern you feel for me, best of men, I beg you, put it aside for my sake, and let me bargain death for glory. I too, father, scatter weapons and steel with no weak right hand, and blood flows from the wounds I give too. His goddess mother will be far away, to cover him with a woman's cloud as he runs and hide herself in empty shadows."
54| But the queen, terrified by the new terms of combat, was weeping and, ready to die, held back her fiery son-in-law: "Turnus, by these tears, by any regard for Amata that touches your heart — you are now my only hope, you are the rest of my unhappy old age; the honor and power of Latinus are in your hands, the whole house leans and rests on you — one thing I beg: do not engage the Trojans hand to hand. Whatever fate awaits you in that combat, Turnus, awaits me too; I will leave this hateful light with you, and never as a captive see Aeneas as my son-in-law." Lavinia heard her mother's words, her burning cheeks bathed in tears; a deep blush set fire to her and ran across her heated face. As when someone stains Indian ivory with blood-red purple, or when white lilies blush mixed with many roses: such colors the maiden showed on her face. Love throws him into turmoil, and he fixes his eyes on the girl; he burns all the more for battle and speaks briefly to Amata: "Do not, I beg you, mother, do not send me off with tears or such an ill omen as I go to the contests of harsh war; for Turnus is not free to delay his death. Idmon, take my message as herald to the Phrygian tyrant; he will not like it. As soon as tomorrow's Dawn, riding her crimson wheels, grows red in the sky, let him not lead the Trojans against the Rutulians; let the arms of Trojans and Rutulians rest; let us settle the war with our own blood. On that field let Lavinia be sought as a bride."
81| When he had said this and quickly gone back into the house, he calls for his horses and takes delight in seeing them neigh before his face, those that Orithyia herself gave to Pilumnus as an ornament, which would outstrip snow in whiteness and the winds in speed. Eager charioteers stand around and with hollowed palms slap their chests and comb their manes. Then he puts on his shoulders his breastplate, stiff with gold and pale orichalc, and at the same time fits to himself his sword and shield and the horns of his red crest, the sword which the fire-lord, the god himself, made for his father Daunus and plunged, glowing, into the water of the Styx. Next, the mighty spear that stood in the middle of the hall, braced against a huge pillar, he seizes with force, the spoil taken from Actor the Auruncan, and brandishes it as it quivers, shouting: "Now, spear that has never failed me when I called you, now the time is here: great Actor carried you, now the right hand of Turnus carries you; grant that I lay low the body of the half-man Phrygian and tear away his breastplate with my strong hand, and defile in the dust his hair, curled with hot iron and dripping with myrrh." He is driven by these furies, and sparks fly off from his whole blazing face, and fire flashes from his keen eyes, as when a bull bellows terribly before its first battle, or tries to vent its anger on a tree trunk with its horns, pushing against it, and provokes the winds with blows, or practices for the fight by scattering sand.
107| No less meanwhile, Aeneas, fierce in the arms his mother gave him, sharpens his war-spirit and rouses himself with anger, glad that the war is being settled by the treaty offered. Then he comforts his comrades and the fear of sorrowing Iulus, teaching them the fates, and orders men to carry back to King Latinus a sure reply and to state the terms of peace.
113| The next day had barely started to strew light across the mountain tops, when the horses of the Sun first lift themselves from the deep water and breathe out light from raised nostrils: the Rutulian and Trojan men, having measured out a field for the contest beneath the walls of the great city, were making preparations, and in the middle hearths and grass altars to the gods they shared. Others carried spring water and fire, wearing aprons and with their temples bound with sacred verbena. The legion of the Ausonians marches out, and columns armed with javelins pour from the crowded gates. From the other side the whole Trojan and Etruscan army rushes up, in varied arms, equipped with iron just as though the harsh fighting of Mars were calling. And amid the thousands the leaders themselves dart about, proud in gold and purple, both Mnestheus of Assaracus's line, and brave Asilas, and Messapus the horse-tamer, Neptune's offspring; and when the signal was given each withdrew into his own space, they fix their spears in the ground and lean their shields. Then mothers, pouring out in eagerness, and the unarmed crowd and feeble old men, occupied the towers and the roofs of houses, and others stand at the high gates.
134| But Juno, looking out from a summit (which is now called Alban; at that time the mountain had neither name nor honor nor glory), was gazing from the hill over the plain and both the lines of the Laurentines and the Trojans, and the city of Latinus. At once the goddess addressed the sister of Turnus, herself a goddess, who presides over pools and noisy rivers (high Jupiter, king of the sky, consecrated this office to her in return for her stolen virginity): "Nymph, glory of rivers, most pleasing to my heart, you know that I have preferred you alone above all the Latin women who ever climbed into the thankless bed of great-hearted Jupiter, and gladly placed you in a part of heaven: learn your grief, Juturna, so that you do not blame me. As long as Fortune seemed to allow it and the Fates permitted things to go well for Latium, I protected Turnus and your walls; now I see the young man meeting with unequal fates, and the day of the Fates and a hostile force draw near. I cannot look on this battle, or this treaty, with my eyes. If you dare anything more effective on behalf of your brother, go on; it is fitting. Perhaps better things will follow the wretched." She had hardly spoken when Juturna poured out tears from her eyes and three and four times struck her fair breast with her hand. "This is no time for tears," says Juno, daughter of Saturn: "hurry, and snatch your brother from death, if there is any way; or stir up war yourself and shake loose the treaty they have made. I am the one who urges you to dare." With this encouragement she left her, uncertain and troubled by the grievous wound in her heart.
161| Meanwhile the kings come forth: Latinus, borne in a four-horse chariot of great size (around whose temples twelve gilded rays encircle the gleaming head, a token of the Sun, his ancestor); Turnus goes in a white pair of horses, brandishing in his hand two spears with broad iron heads. From the other side father Aeneas, source of the Roman line, blazing in his starry shield and heavenly arms, and beside him Ascanius, the second hope of great Rome, advance from the camp, and a priest in pure garments brought the young of a bristly pig and a two-year-old sheep unshorn, and brought the animals up to the blazing altars. They, with their eyes turned toward the rising sun, put salted grain in their hands and mark the tops of the victims' foreheads with iron, and pour libations from bowls onto the altars.
175| Then dutiful Aeneas, sword drawn, prayed in these words: "Let the Sun be my witness now as I call on him, and this earth, for whose sake I have been able to bear such great hardships; and the almighty Father, and you, Juno, his wife (now more kindly disposed, now, goddess, I pray); and you, renowned Mars, father, who turn all wars under your divine will. I call on the springs and the rivers, and whatever sanctity the high heavens hold, and whatever powers are in the deep blue sea. If victory should chance to fall to the Ausonian Turnus, it is agreed that the defeated will withdraw to Evander's city; Iulus will yield the fields, and the Aeneadae will never again come back in rebellion after this war or attack this kingdom with the sword. But if victory grants our side the war (as I think more likely, and may the gods confirm it more readily by their will), I will not order the Italians to obey the Trojans, nor do I seek the kingdom for myself: let both peoples, unconquered, enter into an eternal treaty on equal terms. I will give the sacred rites and the gods; let Latinus, my father-in-law, hold the arms, let my father-in-law hold the traditional sovereignty; the Trojans will build walls for me, and Lavinia will give her name to the city."
195| So Aeneas spoke first; then Latinus followed, looking up to the sky and stretching his right hand toward the stars: "By these same things, Aeneas, I swear: earth, sea, stars; the twofold offspring of Latona and two-faced Janus; the power of the gods below and the shrines of harsh Dis. Let the Father hear this, he who ratifies treaties with his thunderbolt. I lay my hand on the altars, I call the fires between us and the gods to witness: no day will break this peace and this treaty with the Italians, however things may fall out; and no force will turn me from it against my will, not even if it should pour the earth out into the waves in a flood, mixing everything, and dissolve the sky into Tartarus; just as this scepter" (for by chance he was holding a scepter in his right hand) "will never again put out shoots with light foliage or give shade, now that it was once cut from the deepest part of the stock in the woods and lacks its mother, and has laid down its leaves and branches under the iron. Once a tree, it has now been enclosed in fine bronze by the hand of a craftsman, who gave it to the Latin elders to carry." With such words they confirmed the treaty between them, in full view of the leaders. Then, according to the rite, they slaughtered the consecrated animals over the flames, tore out their entrails while still alive, and heaped the altars with loaded platters.
216| But to the Rutulians the contest had for some time seemed unequal, and their hearts were stirred by shifting feelings, all the more now that they saw at closer range how poorly matched the men were in strength. Turnus added to this as he advanced with silent step and, with lowered gaze, worshiped at the altar like a suppliant, with his youthful cheeks and the pallor on his young body. As soon as his sister Juturna saw this talk spreading and the wavering hearts of the crowd shifting, she took on the form of Camers, whose family descended from great ancestors and whose father's name was famous for valor, and who was himself a most fierce fighter in arms; and, well versed in such matters, she threw herself into the middle of the ranks, sowing various rumors, and spoke as follows: "Are you not ashamed, Rutulians, to put one life at risk for all of us? Are we not their equals in numbers or in strength? Look, these are all of them, the Trojans and the Arcadians, and the fate-led band, and Etruria, hostile to Turnus: if we fought them man against man, we would scarcely have an enemy each. He will indeed rise to the gods above, to whose altars he devotes himself, and will live on in fame and be carried on men's lips; but we, with our homeland lost, will be forced to obey arrogant masters, we who now sit idle in the fields."
238| By such words the resolve of the young men was inflamed more and more, and a murmur crept through the ranks: even the Laurentines and the Latins themselves had changed. Those who had just been hoping for rest from the fighting and safety for their affairs now wanted arms, and prayed for the treaty to be undone, and pitied the unfair lot of Turnus. To this Juturna added something greater still, and gave a sign in the high sky, than which none did more to confuse the minds of the Italians, deceiving them with a portent. For flying across the red sky, the tawny bird of Jupiter was chasing the birds of the shore and the noisy crowd of the winged flock, when suddenly it swooped down to the water and, ruthless, seized in its hooked talons a magnificent swan. The Italians' spirits were raised, and all the birds wheeled around in flight with a cry (a marvel to see), darkened the sky with their wings, and, forming a cloud, pressed their enemy through the air, until, overcome by their force and by the very weight, it gave out and the bird dropped its prey from its talons into the river, and fled far off into the clouds.
257| Then indeed the Rutulians hailed the omen with a shout and drew their weapons, and the augur Tolumnius was the first to speak: "This is it, this is what I have so often asked for in my prayers! I accept it and recognize the gods. Follow me, me as your leader, seize your swords, poor men, whom the shameless foreigner frightens with war like weak birds, and ravages your shores by force. He will seek flight and set his sails far out to the deep sea. You, close up your ranks with one mind, and defend in battle the king who has been taken from you." He spoke, and ran forward and hurled his spear at the enemy facing him; the whistling cornel wood gave a sound and cut the air true to its mark. At the same moment there was a huge shout, and all the ranks were thrown into disorder, and hearts were fired by the uproar. As the spear flew, nine splendid brothers happened to be standing opposite, all of whom a single faithful Tyrrhenian wife had borne to the Arcadian Gylippus; at one of these, at the middle, where the stitched belt rubs against the stomach and the buckle bites into the joins of the sides, a young man outstanding in beauty and in gleaming armor, the spear pierced through the ribs and laid him out on the tawny sand.
277| But his brothers, a spirited phalanx fired by grief, some drew their swords in their hands, some seized javelins of iron and rushed on blindly. The ranks of the Laurentines ran out against them; from the other side the Trojans and Agyllines and the Arcadians in their painted armor flooded in again in dense masses: so a single desire possessed them all, to settle it with the sword. They tore down the altars; a storm of missiles went swirling across the whole sky and an iron rain came pouring down; they carried off mixing bowls and braziers. Latinus himself fled, carrying away his gods, which had been struck, now that the treaty was undone. Others bridled their chariots, or vaulted onto their horses, and stood ready with drawn swords. Messapus, eager to throw the treaty into confusion, charged his horse at the king, the Etruscan Aulestes, who was wearing the insignia of a king, and drove him back; as he retreated, the poor man fell backward over the altars behind him, tangled in them, head and shoulders first. Then Messapus flew up, fiery, with his spear, and from above, tall on his horse, struck him hard with the beam-like weapon as he begged for much, and said: "He has it, this better victim given to the great gods."
297| The Italians ran together and stripped the still-warm limbs. Corynaeus, meeting him, snatched a charred brand from the altar and, as Ebysus came at him and was about to strike, he caught his face with the flames: his huge beard blazed up, and the singeing gave off a stench. Then he followed up, seized the hair of his bewildered enemy with his left hand, and, pressing with his knee and bearing down, pinned him to the ground; with his stiff sword he struck him in the side. Podalirius, following with drawn sword, loomed over the shepherd Alsus as he charged through the weapons in the front line; Alsus swung back his axe and split open the forehead and chin of the man facing him, and drenched his armor far and wide with scattered blood. A hard rest and an iron sleep weighed on Podalirius's eyes, and his eyes were buried in eternal night.
311| But dutiful Aeneas was holding out his unarmed right hand, his head bare, and calling to his men with a shout: "Where are you rushing? What is this sudden quarrel that is rising up? Oh, hold back your anger! The treaty has already been struck, and all the terms have been settled. The right to fight is mine alone; let me do it, and take away your fears. I will make the treaty firm with my own hand; these rites already owe Turnus to me." In the middle of these words, in the middle of such speech, look, an arrow whirring on its wings glided to the man, uncertain by what hand it was driven or by what whirlwind it was sped, who brought the Rutulians such great glory, whether chance or a god; the renown of the deed was suppressed, and no one boasted of having wounded Aeneas. When Turnus saw Aeneas withdrawing from the ranks and the leaders in confusion, he blazed up, fired by sudden hope; he called for his horses and his arms together, and with a proud leap sprang into his chariot and worked the reins with his hands. Flying along, he gave many brave bodies to death. He rolled over many half-dead: either he crushed the ranks under his chariot, or he seized spears and hurled them at the fleeing.
331| As when, beside the streams of cold Hebrus, bloody Mars, roused, clashes on his shield and, stirring up wars, lets loose his raging horses, and they fly over the open plain faster than the south wind and the west wind, and farthest Thrace groans with the beat of their feet, and around him are driven the faces of black Dread, and Wrath, and Treachery, the god's retinue: just so Turnus, eager, drove his horses steaming with sweat through the middle of the fighting, pitifully insulting the slain enemies; their swift hoof scattered bloody dew, and blood was trodden in with the sand. And now he gave to death Sthenelus, and Thamyrus, and Pholus, the one at close quarters, another at close quarters, and the third from a distance; from a distance both of them sons of Imbrasus, Glaucus and Lades, brought up in Lycia by Imbrasus himself and furnished with matching arms, whether to fight hand to hand or to outrun the winds on horseback.
346| In another part of the field Eumedes was carried into the thick of the fighting, a famous son of old Dolon in war, recalling his grandfather by his name, and his father by his courage and strength; Dolon, who once dared to ask for the chariot of the son of Peleus as his reward for going to the Greek camp as a spy. For such daring the son of Tydeus paid him a different price, and Dolon no longer aspires to the horses of Achilles. When Turnus caught sight of Eumedes far off on the open plain, he first pursued him across the long space with a light javelin; then he stopped his pair of horses, jumped down from the chariot, and came upon the fallen, half-dead man; planting his foot on his neck, he wrenched the sword from his hand, dipped its gleaming blade in his throat, and added these words: "Look, Trojan, measure out the fields and the Hesperia you sought by war, lying there: this is the prize for those who dared to challenge me with the sword; this is how they found their walls." With a thrown spear he sent Asbytes to join him, then Chloreus, Sybaris, Dares, Thersilochus, and Thymoetes, thrown from the neck of his unruly horse. And just as, when Thracian Boreas blasts and howls over the deep Aegean and drives the waves toward the shore, the clouds scatter in flight across the sky wherever the winds have bent down upon them,
368| so, wherever Turnus cuts a path, the ranks give way, and the battalions turn and rush off; his own momentum carries him on, and the breeze shakes his crest as it streams out, as his chariot faces the enemy. Phegeus could not bear him bearing down, raging in spirit; he threw himself in front of the chariot and with his right hand wrenched aside the foaming mouths of the galloping horses. While he was dragged along, hanging from the yoke, a broad lance caught him unprotected, and, driven in, broke through his double-linked corselet and grazed the surface of his body with a wound. Yet he turned toward the enemy with his shield held out and went forward, seeking help with his sword drawn, when the wheel and the axle, spun by the rush, struck him headlong and flung him on the ground; and Turnus, following, struck off his head with the sword between the lowest edge of the helmet and the top of the corselet, and left the trunk on the sand.
383| And while victorious Turnus was dealing out death on the plains, meanwhile Mnestheus and faithful Achates and Ascanius, his companion, took Aeneas, bleeding, to the camp, supporting his steps alternately on a long spear. He raged and struggled to pull out the weapon from its broken shaft, and demanded the nearest way to relief: that they cut open the wound with a broad blade, tear out the hiding place of the weapon deep down, and send him back to the war. And now Iapyx was there, son of Iasus, loved above others by Phoebus; once, seized by keen love for him, Apollo himself gladly offered him his own arts and gifts, augury, the lyre, and swift arrows. In order to prolong the life of his father, who lay at death's door, he chose instead to know the powers of herbs and the craft of healing, and to ply his silent arts without glory. Aeneas stood, bitterly fuming, leaning on his huge spear, amid a great gathering of young men and the grieving Iulus, unmoved by tears. The old man, his robe tucked up and pulled back in the manner of Paeon, labored with his healer's hand and Phoebus's powerful herbs, in vain; in vain he stirred up the barbed point with his right hand and gripped the iron with his tenacious forceps. No fortune guided his way, Apollo, the author of his art, gave no help at all, and the savage terror grew more and more on the plains, and the danger was closer. Already they saw the sky stand thick with dust: horsemen approached, and thick missiles fell in the middle of the camp. A grim shout rose to the sky from the young men fighting and the men falling in hard war.
411| Then Venus, his mother, shaken by her son's undeserved pain, plucked dittany from Cretan Ida, a stalk with downy leaves, flowering with purple blossoms; the wild goats know this plant well when winged arrows have lodged in their backs. Venus, her face wrapped in a dark cloud, brought it down; with it she secretly infused the water poured into a shining basin, healing it, and sprinkled in the juices of healing ambrosia and fragrant panacea. Old Iapyx, not knowing, bathed the wound with this water, and suddenly all pain left the body, and all the blood stopped deep in the wound. And now the arrow, following his hand with no one forcing it, fell out, and his strength returned and was as it had been before. "Quickly, bring arms for the man! Why are you standing?" Iapyx shouted, and was the first to fire their spirits against the enemy. "This does not come from human resources, nor from the teaching of my art, and it is not my hand that saves you, Aeneas: a greater god is at work and sends you back to greater deeds." Eager for battle, Aeneas had encased his shins in gold on both sides, hated delay and brandished his spear. When the shield was fitted to his side and the corselet to his back, he threw his armored arms around Ascanius and, kissing him lightly through the helmet's rim, said: "Learn courage from me, boy, and true toil; fortune from others. Now my right hand will protect you in war and lead you among great rewards. See that you remember, when your age has matured, and as you recall the examples of your own, let your father Aeneas and your uncle Hector rouse you."
441| When he had said this, he strode out through the gates, huge, brandishing an enormous spear in his hand; at the same moment Antheus and Mnestheus rushed out in dense formation, and the whole crowd streamed out of the abandoned camp. Then the plain was churned up in blinding dust, and the stirred earth shook with the beat of feet. Turnus saw them coming from the rampart opposite, the Ausonians saw them, and a cold shudder ran through the depths of their bones; Juturna, first before all the Latins, heard and recognized the sound, and shrank back trembling. Aeneas flew on, driving his dark column across the open plain. As when a storm cloud, once the constellation has broken, goes across the middle of the sea toward the land (ah, the hearts of the poor farmers, foreseeing it from afar, shudder: it will bring destruction to the trees and ruin the crops, everything will fall far and wide), and the winds fly ahead and carry the sound to the shores: so the Trojan leader drove his column at the enemy, and they pressed together, each man drawing close with his ranks packed. Thymbraeus struck down the heavy Osiris with his sword, Mnestheus cut down Arcetius, Achates killed Epulo, and Gyas Ufens; Tolumnius the augur himself fell, who had been the first to hurl a spear at the enemy. A shout rose to the sky, and the Rutulians, in turn routed, turned their backs in dusty flight across the fields. Aeneas himself did not deign to strike down those who turned away, nor those who met him on equal footing, nor to pursue those who brought weapons: in the thick darkness he searched only for Turnus, tracking him, and called only him to battle.
468| Shaken in her mind by this fear, the warrior maiden Juturna knocked Turnus's charioteer Metiscus out from between the reins and left him far off, fallen from the chariot pole; she herself took his place and, with her hands, guided the flowing reins, taking on everything of Metiscus, his voice, his body, and his arms. Just as a black swallow flies through the great house of a rich master and with its wings skims the high halls, gathering tiny scraps and food for its chattering nestlings, and now sounds in the empty colonnades, now around the damp pools: so Juturna was carried by her horses through the midst of the enemy and, flying, went all around in her swift chariot, and now here, now there, showed off her rejoicing brother and did not let him engage in combat, flying off far away from the path. No less did Aeneas, coming to meet him, follow his winding circles, tracked the man and, through the scattered ranks, called him with a loud voice. As often as he cast his eyes on his enemy and tried by running to match the flight of the winged-footed horses, so often Juturna turned the chariot away. Alas, what can he do? He swayed to and fro in vain with his shifting tide, and different cares called his mind in opposite directions.
488| Messapus, who happened to be carrying two supple spears tipped with iron in his left hand, light on his feet, hurled one of them at him and aimed it with a sure throw. Aeneas stopped and gathered himself behind his armor, crouching down on one knee; yet the speeding spear took the very tip of the helmet and knocked the topmost crest from his head. Then indeed his anger rose, and, driven by treachery, when he saw the horses drawn off in another direction and the chariot being carried away, calling Jupiter and the altars of the broken treaty to witness again and again, he at last plunged into the middle of the fray and, terrible with Mars favoring him, stirred up a savage slaughter without distinction, and let loose all the reins of his anger.
500| What god can now relate to me in song so many bitter deaths, the different ends of leaders, whom now Turnus, now the Trojan hero drives in turn across the whole plain? Was it your pleasure, Jupiter, that peoples who would live in eternal peace should clash in so great a turmoil? Aeneas caught the Rutulian Sucro (this was the first fight that checked the Trojans' charge) in the side as he lingered not long, and, where fate is swiftest, drove his cruel sword through the ribs and the lattice of the chest. Turnus, meeting on foot Amycus, thrown from his horse, and his brother Diores, struck the one as he came with his long spear, the other with his sword, and hung their two severed heads from his chariot and carried them dripping with blood. Aeneas sent Talon and Tanais and brave Cethegus to death, three in a single encounter, and sad Oniter, whose name was Echionian and whose mother was Peridia; Turnus sent the brothers sent from Lycia and the fields of Apollo, and the young Menoetes, who hated war in vain, an Arcadian, whose craft had been fishing around the streams of fish-rich Lerna, and whose home was poor, who did not know the gifts of the powerful, and whose father sowed leased land. And as fires let loose from different directions into dry woodland and crackling thickets of laurel, or when foaming rivers rushing down from high mountains make a roar and run down to the sea, each ravaging its own path: no less eagerly do Aeneas and Turnus both rush through the battle; now, now their anger surges within, their hearts that know no defeat burst, now they go at the wounds with all their strength.
529| Here Aeneas knocked Murranus, who boasted of ancestors and the ancient names of his forefathers, and whose whole line was traced through Latin kings, headlong from a rock with a whirling mass of huge stone, and sent him sprawling on the ground; the wheels rolled him forward under the reins and the yoke, and the hooves of the horses, forgetful of their master, trampled over him with frequent, hurrying blows. Turnus met Hyllus as he charged and raged immensely in spirit, and hurled his spear at his gilded temples: the spear passed through the helmet and stayed fixed in his brain. Nor did your right hand save you from Turnus, Cretheus, the bravest of the Greeks, nor did his own gods shelter Cupencus when Aeneas came: he offered his chest to the blade, and the delay of his bronze shield did not help the poor man. You too, Aeolus, the Laurentine fields saw fall and cover the ground with your back far and wide. You die, whom the Argive phalanxes could not strike down, nor Achilles, destroyer of Priam's kingdom; here was the limit of your life, your high home beneath Ida, your high home at Lyrnesus, your tomb in Laurentine soil. And so the whole armies were turned to the fight, all the Latins, all the Trojans, Mnestheus and fierce Serestus, and Messapus the horse-tamer, and brave Asilas, and the phalanx of the Etruscans and the Arcadian squadrons of Evander, each man for himself straining with the utmost force of his strength; there is no delay and no rest, and they struggle in a vast contest.
554| Here Aeneas's most beautiful mother put it into his mind to go to the walls and quickly turn his column against the city and throw the Latins into confusion by a sudden disaster. As he searched for Turnus through the scattered ranks and turned his gaze this way and that over the lines, he saw the city unharmed by so great a war and quiet without penalty. At once the vision of a greater battle fired him: he called the leaders Mnestheus, Sergestus, and brave Serestus, and took a mound where the rest of the Trojan legion was gathering, and they did not lay down their shields or spears, standing packed together. Standing in the middle on the high rampart, he said: "Let there be no delay to my words, Jupiter is on our side; and let no one go more slowly because of this sudden undertaking. Today I will tear down the city, the cause of the war, the kingdom of Latinus himself, unless they admit they accept the bridle and obey as the defeated, and I will lay its smoking roofs level with the ground. Am I to wait, I suppose, until it pleases Turnus to endure our fighting, and the defeated man wants to fight again? This, citizens, is the head of the matter, this is the sum of this abominable war. Bring torches quickly, and demand the treaty back with fire."
574| He had spoken, and all with equally eager spirits formed a wedge and were carried in a dense mass toward the walls; ladders and sudden fire appeared without warning. Some ran off to the gates and slaughtered the first men there, others hurled iron and darkened the sky with missiles. Aeneas himself, among the first, stretched his right hand toward the walls, loudly accused Latinus, and called the gods to witness that he was being forced into battle a second time, that the Italians were now enemies for the second time, that this was a second treaty broken. Discord broke out among the frightened citizens: some ordered the city to be opened and the gates thrown wide to the Trojans, and dragged the king himself to the walls; others brought arms and went on to defend the walls, just as when a shepherd has tracked bees shut in a hollow of pumice rock and filled it with bitter smoke; inside they run back and forth in panic through their waxen camp and sharpen their anger with loud buzzing; a black smell rolls through the dwelling, then inside the rocks echo with a dim murmur, and the smoke goes out to the empty air.
593| This further misfortune also befell the weary Latins, which shook the whole city to its foundations with grief. When the queen saw from her roof the enemy coming, the walls attacked, fire flying to the houses, and nowhere any Rutulian battle line to oppose them, no ranks of Turnus, unhappy woman, she believed the young man had been killed in the fight, and, her mind thrown into confusion by sudden grief, she cried out that she was the cause, the guilt, and the source of the evils; and after saying much in her mad frenzy of sorrow, as she was about to die, she tore her purple robes with her own hand, and tied the noose of a hideous death to a high beam. When the unhappy Latin women learned of this disaster, her daughter Lavinia first tore her golden hair and rosy cheeks with her hand; then the rest of the crowd around her raged, and the house rang far and wide with wailing. From there the report spread, a sad one, through the whole city: hearts sank, Latinus went with torn clothes, stunned by his wife's fate and the ruin of his city, defiling his white hair, soaked in filthy dust.
614| Meanwhile Turnus the warrior, at the far edge of the plain, was chasing a few scattered men, by now slower, and less and less glad of the success of his horses. The breeze brought to him a mingled cry, filled with dim terrors, and the sound of the confused city and an unhappy murmur struck his straining ears. "Alas for me! Why are the walls disturbed by such great grief? What is this loud shout rushing from the other side of the city?" So he said, and in his madness he stopped, drawing in the reins. And his sister, who had taken the form of the charioteer Metiscus and was guiding the chariot, the horses, and the reins, met him with these words: "This way, Turnus, let us pursue the Trojan-born, where the first victory opens a way; there are others who can defend the houses with their hands. Aeneas is pressing hard on the Italians and mixing the fighting; let us too deal savage death to the Trojans with our hands. You will not leave the fight behind in number of kills or in honor." Turnus answered: "O sister, I recognized you long ago, when you first threw the treaty into confusion by your craft and threw yourself into this war, and now you deceive me in vain, goddess. But who wanted you sent down from Olympus to bear such hardships?
636| Was it to see your poor brother's cruel death? For what am I to do? Or what Fortune now promises safety? I saw with my own eyes Murranus, than whom no other is dearer to me, calling on me by name, fall, huge, overcome by a huge wound. Unhappy Ufens fell so as not to see my disgrace; the Trojans hold his body and his arms. Shall I allow our homes to be destroyed (this alone was missing from our affairs), and not refute the words of Drances with my right hand? Shall I turn my back, and will this land see Turnus fleeing? Is it really so wretched to die? You, spirits of the dead, be kind to me, since the will of the gods above has turned away. I will go down to you with a pure soul, ignorant of that guilt, never unworthy of my great ancestors."
650| He had scarcely said this: look, Saces came flying through the midst of the enemy on a foaming horse, wounded by an arrow in the face, and rushed up, calling on Turnus by name: "Turnus, our last hope of safety is in you; take pity on your own people. Aeneas is thundering with his arms and threatens to throw down the highest citadels of the Italians and give them to destruction, and already torches are flying toward the houses. The Latins turn their faces to you, their eyes to you; King Latinus himself hesitates, wondering whom to call his sons-in-law, or to which treaty he should bend. And the queen too, your most faithful supporter, has died by her own hand and fled the light in terror. In front of the gates Messapus and fierce Atinas alone hold the battle lines. Around them, on both sides, dense phalanxes are standing, and an iron harvest bristles with drawn blades; you are turning your chariot in the empty grass." Turnus was stunned, bewildered by the varied picture of events, and stood in silent gaze; a huge shame seethed in his one heart, and madness mixed with grief, and love driven by furies, and the consciousness of his courage. As soon as the shadows were dispelled and light was given back to his mind, he turned his blazing eyes in confusion toward the walls and, from his chariot, looked back at the great city.
672| But look, a column of flame, rolling among the floors, billowed up to the sky and gripped the tower, the tower that he himself had raised of joined beams, and had set on wheels and laid with high bridges. "Now, now fate prevails, sister; stop delaying; let us follow where god and hard Fortune call. I am resolved to meet Aeneas in combat, resolved to suffer, in death, whatever is bitter, and you will not see me dishonored any longer, sister. Let me, I beg, rage this rage before the end." He spoke, and quickly leapt from the chariot to the ground and rushed through the enemy, through the missiles, and left his sorrowing sister, and broke through the middle of the ranks in a swift run. And just as when a rock tears loose from a mountaintop and rushes headlong, wrenched away by wind, or a storm of rain has washed it free or the years have loosened it as they undermined it; the mountain mass, merciless, is carried down the cliff with a great rush and bounds over the ground, rolling forests, herds, and men along with it: so Turnus rushed through the scattered ranks toward the walls of the city, where the earth is wet with much spilled blood and the air whistles with spears, and he signals with his hand and at the same time begins in a loud voice: "Stop now, Rutulians, and you, Latins, hold back your weapons. Whatever the outcome, it is mine; it is more just that I alone should pay for the treaty on your behalf and decide it with the sword." They all withdrew from the middle and gave him space.
697| But father Aeneas, hearing the name of Turnus, left the walls and left the high citadel, cut off every delay, broke off all his work, exulting with joy, and thundered terribly with his arms: as great as Athos, or as great as Eryx, or as great as father Apennine himself, when he roars through his shimmering oaks and rejoices, raising his snowy peak toward the sky. Now indeed the Rutulians, the Trojans, and all the Italians turned their eyes in eager rivalry, both those who held the high walls and those who were battering the base of the walls with a ram, and they laid their arms down from their shoulders. Latinus himself was stunned that two huge men, born in different parts of the world, had come together and were to decide it with the sword. And as soon as the plains lay open on the clear ground, they charged forward at speed, hurled their spears from a distance, and attacked the fight with shields and ringing bronze. The earth groaned; then they redoubled their frequent blows with their swords, and chance and courage were mixed in one. And as on huge Sila or on high Taburnus, when two bulls charge into hostile combat with their foreheads turned against each other, the herdsmen draw back in fear, the whole herd stands silent with terror, and the heifers murmur about who will rule the grove, whom all the cattle will follow;
720| they exchange many wounds with great force, and, thrusting, drive in their horns and bathe their necks and shoulders in plentiful blood, and the whole wood bellows back with their groans: not otherwise the Trojan Aeneas and the Daunian hero clash with their shields, and a huge crash fills the sky. Jupiter himself lifts two scales in even balance and puts on them the different fates of the two men, to judge whom the struggle condemns and toward whom death sinks with its weight.
728| Here Turnus darted forward, thinking he would not be punished, and rising to his full height, lifting his sword high, he struck; the Trojans and the frightened Latins cried out, and the lines of both armies were tense. But the treacherous sword broke and left the blazing man in the middle of the stroke, had flight not come to his aid. He fled faster than the east wind when he saw the unfamiliar hilt and his unarmed right hand. The story is that, in his haste, when he was mounting his yoked horses for the first fight, he left his father's sword behind in his panic and snatched up the blade of his charioteer Metiscus; and this was enough for a long time, while the Trojans were turning their backs in scattered flight; but when it came to the divine arms of Vulcan, the mortal blade shattered at the blow like brittle ice, and the pieces shone on the tawny sand. And so Turnus, out of his mind, sought the far plains in flight, and now here, now there, wove uncertain circles; for on every side the Trojans enclosed him in a dense ring, and on one side a vast marsh, on the other high walls hemmed him in.
746| No less did Aeneas, although at times the arrow slowed him and his knees hindered him and refused to run, pursue him, and in his fury pressed foot to foot against his frightened enemy: as when a hunting dog, finding a stag shut in by a river or hemmed in by the terror of a crimson feather line, presses it with his running and barking; but the stag, frightened by the snares and the high bank, flees and doubles back along a thousand ways, while the keen Umbrian hound hangs on, jaws open, now, now he has him, and, as if he held him, snaps his jaws, and is cheated by an empty bite; then indeed a shout arose, and the banks and lakes echoed all around, and the whole sky thundered with the uproar. As Turnus fled, he at the same time rebuked all the Rutulians, calling each by name, and demanded his familiar sword. Aeneas, in turn, threatened death and immediate destruction if anyone came near, and terrified them as they trembled by threatening that he would raze the city, and, though wounded, pressed on. They completed five circuits at a run and retraced the same number this way and that; for it is no slight or playful prize they seek, but they contend for the life and blood of Turnus.
766| By chance there had stood here a wild olive tree with bitter leaves, sacred to Faunus, once a timber revered by sailors, where those saved from the waves used to fix gifts to the Laurentine god and hang up their vowed clothes; but the Trojans had removed the sacred trunk without distinction, so that they could fight on a clear field. Here Aeneas's spear stood; the force of its flight had carried it here and held it fixed with its tough root. The son of Dardanus bent over it and tried to wrench out the iron with his hand, to follow with the weapon the man he could not catch by running. Then Turnus, truly mad with terror, said: "Faunus, I pray, take pity, and you, kind Earth, hold the iron fast, if I have always honored your rites, which the Aeneadae have profaned by war." He spoke, and called on the help of the god with prayers that were not in vain. For after struggling for a long time and lingering at the tough stump, Aeneas could not by any strength loosen the grip of the wood. While he strained fiercely and pressed on, again the Daunian goddess, changed into the form of the charioteer Metiscus, ran forward and gave her brother back his sword. Venus, indignant that this was allowed to the bold nymph, approached and wrenched the weapon from the deep root. Raised up, with their arms and spirits restored, one trusting in his sword, the other fierce and tall with his spear, they stood against each other, panting, for the contest of Mars.
791| Meanwhile the king of almighty Olympus spoke to Juno, who was watching the fighting from a tawny cloud: "What will the end be now, wife? What, finally, is left? You yourself know, and admit that you know, that Aeneas is owed to heaven as a native god, and is raised by the fates to the stars. What are you plotting? Or with what hope do you cling in the cold clouds? Was it fitting for a god to be violated by a mortal wound? Or for the sword (for what could Juturna do without you?) to be taken away and returned to Turnus, and for strength to increase for the defeated? Stop now at last, and bend to our entreaties, and do not let such great grief eat at you in silence, or your bitter cares come back to me so often from your sweet lips. We have come to the end. You were able to harass the Trojans over lands and waves, to kindle an unspeakable war, to disfigure a house and mingle grief with a wedding: I forbid you to try further." So Jupiter began; so the goddess, daughter of Saturn, answered with lowered face: "Because your will, great Jupiter, was known to me, I left Turnus and the earth against my wishes; and you would not now see me alone in my airy seat, enduring things deserved and undeserved alike, but I would stand girded with flames on the very battle line and draw the Trojans into hostile fighting.
813| I confess I persuaded Juturna to help her unhappy brother, and I approved of her daring greater things for his life, though not that she should hurl spears or draw a bow; I swear by the implacable head of the Stygian spring, the one oath that is rendered to the gods above. And now indeed I yield, and hating the fighting, I leave it. I ask you this, for Latium, for the majesty of your own people, a thing not bound by any law of fate: when they now bring about peace with happy marriages (so be it), when they now join laws and treaties, do not order the native Latins to change their ancient name, or become Trojans and be called Teucrians, or change their speech or alter their dress. Let Latium be, let there be Alban kings through the ages, let the Roman line be powerful with Italian courage: Troy has fallen, and let it be allowed that it has fallen, with its name." Smiling at her, the originator of men and of things said: "You are the sister of Jupiter and the second child of Saturn; such great waves of anger you hold in your heart. But come, put aside the fury you began in vain:
833| I give what you wish, and I yield, both beaten and willing. The Ausonians will keep their ancestral speech and customs, and their name will be as it is; the Trojans will only settle among them, mingled in blood. I will add the custom and rites of sacred worship and make them all Latins with one language. From this the race that will arise, mixed with Ausonian blood, you will see go beyond men, beyond the gods in devotion, and no people will celebrate your honors equally." Juno agreed to this and, glad, turned her mind; meanwhile she left the sky and abandoned the cloud.
843| After this the Father considers another thing within himself and prepares to remove Juturna from her brother's arms. They say there are twin plagues called the Furies, whom Night, in the dead of night, bore with the infernal Megaera in one and the same birth, and wound them with equal coils of serpents and added wings swift as the wind. They appear at the throne of Jupiter and on the threshold of the cruel king, and sharpen the terror of sick mortals, whenever the king of the gods brings about horrifying death and diseases, or terrifies guilty cities with war. Jupiter sent one of these swiftly down from the height of heaven and ordered her to meet Juturna as an omen: she flew and was carried to earth in a swift whirlwind. No differently than an arrow driven from the bowstring through a cloud, which a Parthian, a Parthian or a Cretan, has shot, armed with the venom of a cruel poison, an incurable weapon, and it passes whistling through the swift shadows unseen: so the child of Night went and sought the earth. When she saw the Trojan lines and the ranks of Turnus, she gathered herself suddenly into the shape of a small bird, one which, sitting at night on tombs or deserted roofs, sings its late, ill-omened song through the darkness; changed into this form, the plague flew before Turnus's face, back and forth, calling, and beat his shield with her wings. A strange numbness loosened his limbs with fear, his hair stood on end with horror, and his voice stuck in his throat.
869| But when Juturna recognized the shrill cry of the Fury and her wings from afar, the unhappy sister tore her loosened hair, disfiguring her face with her nails and her breast with her fists: "What can your sister do for you now, Turnus? Or what is left for me, hard as I am? By what art can I prolong your life? Can I set myself against such a monster? Now, now I leave the battle line. Do not terrify me, who am already afraid, foul birds: I know the beating of your wings and its deadly sound, and the proud commands of great-hearted Jupiter do not escape me. Is this what he repays me for my virginity? Why did he give me eternal life? Why was the condition of death taken from me? Surely I could end such great sorrows now, and go with my poor brother through the shades! Am I immortal? Or will anything of mine be sweet to me without you, brother? Oh, what earth could open deep enough for me, and send a goddess down to the lowest Shades?" Having said only this, she covered her head with a gray-blue cloak, groaning much, and the goddess hid herself in the deep river.
887| Aeneas presses on against him, brandishing his huge spear, thick as a tree, and speaks from his savage heart: "What delay is there now? Why, Turnus, do you still hang back? This is not a race; we must fight hand to hand with cruel weapons. Turn yourself into every shape, summon whatever you can do by courage or by skill; pray to fly on wings to the high stars, or to hide yourself shut away in the hollow earth." Turnus shakes his head: "Your hot words do not frighten me, fierce one; it is the gods who frighten me, and Jupiter as my enemy." Saying no more, he looks around and sees a huge stone, an ancient, huge stone that happened to lie on the plain, set there as a boundary marker to settle disputes over the fields. Twice six chosen men could scarcely lift it onto their necks, men of such bodies as the earth produces now; the hero snatched it up in a trembling hand and hurled it at his enemy, rising to his full height and running at speed. But he does not know himself as he runs or as he goes, as he lifts the huge stone in his hand or moves it; his knees give way, his blood is frozen and congealed with cold. And the man's stone itself, whirled through the empty void, neither covered the whole distance nor carried home its blow.
908| And as in dreams, when at night languid sleep has weighed down our eyes, we seem to want in vain to run on eagerly, and in the middle of our efforts we sink down helpless; our tongue has no power, the strength we know fails our body, and no voice or words follow: so, wherever Turnus sought a way by courage, the dread goddess denies him success. Then shifting feelings turn in his heart; he looks at the Rutulians and the city, hesitates in fear, and trembles at the death that looms over him; he sees nowhere to escape, no force with which to go against his enemy, nowhere his chariot or his sister who drove it.
919| As he hesitates, Aeneas brandishes the fatal spear, choosing his chance with his eyes, and hurls it from a distance with his whole body. Stones flung by a siege engine never roar like this, nor do such crashes burst from a thunderbolt. The spear flies like a black whirlwind, carrying dread destruction, and lays open the edge of the breastplate and the outermost circle of the sevenfold shield; hissing, it passes through the middle of the thigh. Struck, huge Turnus falls to the ground, his knee bent under him. The Rutulians rise up with a groan, the whole mountain around bellows back, and the high woods return the cry far and wide. Humbled, a suppliant, he stretches out his eyes and his pleading right hand. "I have deserved it," he says, "and I do not beg to be spared. Use your fortune. If concern for an unhappy parent can move you at all (Anchises was just such a father to you), I beg you, have pity on Daunus in his old age, and give me back to my people, or, if you prefer, my body stripped of the light. You have won, and the Ausonians have seen me, defeated, stretch out my hands. Lavinia is your wife. Do not carry your hatred further." Fierce in his armor, Aeneas stood still, his eyes rolling, and held back his right hand.
940| And now, more and more, the words had begun to sway him as he hesitated, when high on Turnus' shoulder the unlucky belt came into view, and the strap gleamed with its familiar studs — the belt of young Pallas, the boy whom Turnus had defeated, wounded, and laid low, and whose hostile emblem he wore on his shoulders. When Aeneas had drunk in with his eyes this reminder of savage grief, these spoils, set ablaze with fury and terrible in his anger: "Are you, wearing the spoils of my own, to be snatched from me here? With this wound it is Pallas, Pallas himself, who slaughters you as a victim and takes his payment from your criminal blood." Saying this, he buries the steel full in his chest, burning with rage. And Turnus' limbs go slack with cold, and his life, with a groan, flees resentful down to the shades.
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