the sacred shields which fell from heaven: chaste matrons

were making solemn progress through the city in their 30

soft-cushioned cars. At distance from these he introduces

too the mansions of Tartarus, Pluto’s yawning portals,

and the torments of crime, and thee, Catiline, poised on

the beetling rock and quailing at grim Fury-faces: and

the good in their privacy, with Cato as their lawgiver. 35

Stretching in its breadth among these swept the semblance

of the swelling sea, all of gold, but the blue was made to

foam with whitening billows; and all about it dolphins