Obsidere alii telis angusta viarum
Oppositi: stat ferri acies mucrone corusco
Stricta parata neci.
Æneis, ii. 322.
Thus translated by Dryden:
To several posts their parties they divide,
Some block the narrow streets, some scour the wide:
The bold they kill, th’ unwary they surprise;
Who fights finds death, and death finds him who flies.
Of these four lines, there are scarcely more than four words which are warranted by the original. “Some block the narrow streets.” Even this is a faulty translation of Obsidere alii telis angusta viarum; but it fails on the score of mutilation, not redundancy. The rest of the ideas which compose these four lines, are the original property of the translator; and the antithetical witticism in the concluding line, is far beneath the chaste simplicity of Virgil.