But now the trump with brazen song cast fearful sound aloof,
Chiding to war; and shouts rise up and belloweth back the heaven,
And forth the Volscians fare to speed the shield-roof timely driven.
Some men fall on to fill the ditch and pluck the ramparts down;
Some seek approach and ladders lay where daylight rends the crown
Of wall-wards, and would get them up where stands the hedge of war
Thinner of men: against their way the Teucrian warders pour
All weapon-shot: with hard-head pikes they thrust them down the steep.
Long was the war wherein they learned the battle-wall to keep.510
Stones, too, of deadly weight they roll, if haply they may break
The shield-roof of the battle-rush; but sturdily those take
All chances of the play beneath their close and well-knit hold.
Yet fail they; for when hard at hand their world of war was rolled,
A mighty mass by Teucrians moved rolls on and rushes o'er,
And fells the host of Rutuli and breaks the tiles of war.
Nor longer now the Rutuli, the daring hearts, may bear
To play with Mars amid the dark, but strive the walls to clear
With storm of shaft and weapon shot.
But now Mezentius otherwhere, a fearful sight to see,520
Was tossing high the Tuscan pine with smoke-wreathed fiery heart:
While Neptune's child, the horse-tamer Messapus, played his part,
Rending the wall, and crying out for ladders to be laid.
Speak, Song-maids: thou, Calliope, give thou the singer aid
To tell what wise by Turnus' sword the field of fight was strown;
What death he wrought; what man each man to Orcus sent adown.
Fall to with me to roll abroad the mighty skirts of war,
Ye, Goddesses, remember all, and ye may tell it o'er.
There was a tower built high overhead, with gangways up in air,
Set well for fight, 'gainst which the foe their utmost war-might bear,530
And all Italians strive their most to work its overthrow:
Gainst whom the Trojans ward it well, casting the stones below,
And through the hollow windows speed the shot-storm thick and fast.
There Turnus first of all his folk a flaming firebrand cast,
And fixed it in the turret's flank: wind-nursed it caught great space
Of planking, and amid the doors, consuming, kept its place.
Then they within, bewildered sore, to flee their ills are fain,
But all for nought; for while therein they huddle from the bane,
And draw aback to place yet free from ruin, suddenly539
O'erweighted toppleth down the tower, and thundereth through the sky.
Half-dead the warders fall to earth by world of wrack o'erborne,
Pierced with their own shafts, and their breasts with hardened splinters torn.
Yea, Lycus and Helenor came alone of all their peers
Alive to earth: Helenor, now in spring-tide of his years:
Bond-maid Licymnia privily to that Mæonian king
Had borne the lad, and sent him forth to Troy's beleaguering
With arms forbidden, sheathless sword and churl's unpainted shield.
But when he saw himself amidst the thousand-sworded field
Of Turnus, Latins on each side, behind, and full in face,
E'en as a wild beast hedged about by girdle of the chase550
Rages against the point and edge, and, knowing death anear,
Leaps forth, and far is borne away down on the hunter's spear;
Not otherwise the youth falls on where thickest spear-points lie,
And in the middle of the foe he casts himself to die.
But Lycus, nimbler far of foot, betwixt the foemen slipped,
Betwixt the swords, and gained the wall, and at the coping gripped,
And strove to draw him up with hand, the friendly hands to feel;
But Turnus both with foot and spear hath followed hard at heel,
And mocks him thus in victory: "How was thy hope so grown
Of 'scaping from my hand, O fool?"560
Therewith he plucks him down
From where he hung, and space of wall tears downward with the man.
As when it chanceth that a hare or snowy-bodied swan
Jove's shield-bearer hath borne aloft in snatching hookèd feet;
Or lamb, whose mother seeketh him with most abundant bleat,
Some wolf of Mars from fold hath caught.
Goes up great cry around:
They set on, and the ditches filled with o'erturned garth and mound,
While others cast the blazing brands on roof and battlement.
Ilioneus with mighty stone, a shard from hillside rent,
Lucetius felled, as fire in hand unto the gate he drew.
Then Liger felled Emathion, for craft of spear he knew;570
Asylas Corynæus, by dint of skill in bowshaft's ways,
Cæneus Ortygius fells, and him, victorious, Turnus slays,
And Itys, Clonius, Promolus, Dioxippus withal,
And Sagaris, and Idas set on topmost turret-wall.
Then Capys slays Privernus; him Themilla's light-winged spear
Had grazed, whereon he dropped his shield, and his left hand did bear
Upon the hurt; when lo, thereto the wingèd shaft did win,
And nailed the hand unto the side, and, buried deep within,
Burst all the breathing-ways of life with deadly fatal sore.
But lo, where standeth Arcens' child in goodly weed of war,580
Fair with his needle-painted cloak, with Spanish scarlet bright,
Noble of face: Arcens, his sire, had sent him to the fight
From nursing of his mother's grove about Symæthia's flood,
Whereby Palicus' altar stands, the wealthy and the good.
Mezentius now laid by his spear, and took his whistling sling,
And whirled it thrice about his head at length of tugging string,
And with the flight of molten lead his midmost forehead clave,
And to the deep abundant sand his outstretched body gave.
Then first they say Ascanius aimed his speedy shafts in war,
Wherewith but fleeing beasts afield he used to fright before:590
But now at last his own right hand the stark Numanus slays,
Who had to surname Remulus, and in these latter days
King Turnus' sister, young of years, had taken to his bed:
He in the forefront of the fight kept crying out, and said
Things worthy and unworthy tale: puffed up with pride of place
New-won he went, still clamouring out his greatness and his grace.
"O twice-caught Phrygians, shames you nought thus twice amid the wars
To lie in bonds, and stretch out walls before the march of Mars?
Lo, these are they who woke the war the wives of us to wed!
What God sent you to Italy? what madness hither sped?600
Here are no Atreus' sons, and no Ulysses word-weaver.
A people hard from earliest spring our new-born sons we bear
Unto the stream, and harden us with bitter frost and flood.
Our lads, they wake the dawning-chase and wear the tangled wood;
Our sport is taming of the horse and drawing shafted bow;
Our carles, who bear a world of toil, and hunger-pinching know,
Tame earth with spade, or shake with war the cities of the folk.
Yea, all our life with steel is worn; afield we drive the yoke
With spear-shaft turned about: nor doth a halting eld of sloth
Weaken our mightiness of soul, or change our glory's growth.610
We do the helm on hoary hairs, and ever deem it good
To drive the foray day by day, and make the spoil our food.
But ye—the raiment saffron-stained, with purple glow tricked out—
These are your heart-joys: ye are glad to lead the dance about.
Sleeve-coated folk, O ribbon-coifed, not even Phrygian men,
But Phrygian wives, to Dindymus the high go get ye then!
To hear the flute's twi-mouthèd song as ye are wont to do!
The Berecynthian Mother's box and cymbals call to you
From Ida: let men deal with war, and drop adown your swords."
That singer of such wicked speech, that caster forth of words,620
Ascanius brooked not: breasting now his horse-hair full at strain,
He aimed the shaft, and therewithal drew either arm atwain,
And stood so; but to Jupiter first suppliant fell to pray:
"O Jove Almighty, to my deeds, thus new-begun, nod yea,
And I myself unto thy fane the yearly gifts will bear,
And bring before thine altar-stead a snow-white gilt-horned steer,
Whose head unto his mother's head is evenly upborne,
Of age to spurn the sand with hoof and battle with the horn."