BOOK X

MEANTIME the palace of strong Olympus is thrown open, and the sire of gods and monarch of men summons a council to the starry chamber, whence, throned on high, he looks down on the length and breadth of earth, the 5 camp of the Dardans and the people of Latium. They take their seats in the double-gated mansion; he himself opens the court: "Mighty denizens of heaven, wherefore is your judgment turned backward, and whence such discord in your unkindly souls? I had forbidden that Italy IO should meet the Teucrians in the shock of war. What strife is this in defiance of my law? What terror has prompted these or those to draw the sword and provoke the fight? There shall come a rightful time for combat no need for you to hasten it when fierce Carthage one 15 day shall launch on the hills of Rome mighty ruin and the opening of Alpine barriers. Then will your rancours be free to contend, your hands to plunder and ravage; for the present let be, and cheerfully ratify the peace that I have willed."

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Thus Jupiter in brief; but not brief was the answer of golden Venus: "O Father! O eternal sovereignty of man and nature! for what else can there be which is left us to implore? Seest thou how the Rutulians insult? how Turnus is whirled through the battle by his haughty 25 coursers, borne on the floodtide of war? No longer are the Teucrians safe even in the shelter of their walls; within the gates, amidst the very mounds of the ramparts combat is waged, and the trenches overflow with carnage. Æneas is away in his ignorance. Wilt thou never let us have 30 respite from siege? Once more the enemy is stooping over

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the walls of our infant Troy, with a second army; once more Tydeus' son from his Ætolian Arpi is rising against the Teucrians. Ay, my wounds, I ween, are yet in the future, and I, thine own offspring, am delaying the destined course of a mortal spear. If it is without your leave and 5 despite your will that the Trojans have won their way to Italy, let them expiate the crime and withdraw from them thine aid: but if they have but followed those many oracles given by powers above and powers underground, how can any now be able to reverse thine ordinance and write 10 anew the page of fate? Why should I remind thee of our fleet consumed on Eryx' shore? why of the monarch of the storms and his raving winds stirred up from Æolia, or of Iris sent down from the clouds? Now she is even rousing the ghosts below - that portion of the world till then was 15 untried and on a sudden Allecto is launched on upper air, and rages through the Italian cities. It is not for empire that I am disquieted; for that we hoped in the past, while our star yet shone: let them conquer whom thou wouldst have conquer. If there is no country on earth 20 which thy relentless spouse will allow the Teucrians, I adjure thee, father, by the smoking ruins of Troy overthrown, let me send away Ascanius safe from the war let my grandson survive in life. Æneas, indeed, may be tossed on unknown waters, and follow such course as chance may 25 give him: him let me have the power to screen and withdraw from the horrors of battle. Amathus is mine, and lofty Paphos, and high Cythera, and the mansion of Idalia : there let him pass his days unwarlike and inglorious. Let it be thy will that Carthage shall bow Ausonia beneath 30 her tyrannous sway; the Tyrian cities need fear no resistance from him. What has it advantaged him to have escaped the plague of war and fled through the hottest of the Argive fires, to have drained to the dregs all those dangers by sea and on broad earth, while the Teucrians 35 are in quest of Latium and a restored Pergamus? Give back, great sire, to our wretched nation their Xanthus and their Simois, and let the Teucrians enact once more the old

tragedy of Ilium." Then outspoke queenly Juno, goaded by fierce passion: "Why force you me to break my deep silence, and give forth in words my buried grief? Your Eneas was it any man or god that compelled him to 5 draw the sword, and come down as a foe on the Latian king? Grant that he went to Italy at the instance of fate, at the impulse, in truth, of mad Cassandra; was it our counsel that he should leave his camp and place his life at the mercy of the winds? that he should trust the control Io of battle and his city to a boy should tamper with Tyrrhenian loyalty and stir up a quiet nation? What god, what cruel tyranny of ours, drove him thither to his hurt? is there a trace of Juno here, or of Iris sent down from the clouds? Ay, it is foul shame that the Italians should 15 throw a belt of flame round the infant Troy that Turnus should plant a foot on the soil of his fathers, Turnus, whose grandsire was Pilumnus, whose mother the goddess Venilia. How call you it for the Trojans to invade Latium with their smoking torches, to put their yoke on a 20 country that is none of theirs, and harry away its plunder to choose at will those whose daughters they would wed, and drag the plighted bride from the bosom -to bear suppliant tokens in the hand and arm their vessels to the teeth? You have power to withdraw Æneas from the 25 hands of the Greeks, and offer them clouds and thin winds for the man they seek- power to turn a fleet of ships into a bevy of Nymphs; and is it utterly monstrous for us to give the Rutulians a measure of aid in return? Æneas

is away in ignorance, and in ignorance let him bide away. 30 You have your Paphos, your Idalium, your lofty Cythera : why meddle with a city brimming with war and with ungentle hearts? Is it we that are labouring to overturn from the foundation your feeble Phrygian fortunes? We? or the gallant who brought Greece down on the 35 wretched Trojans? What reason was there that Europe and Asia should stand up to fight, and a league be broken by treachery? Did I lead your Dardan leman to take Sparta by storm? did I put weapons in his hand, or fan the

flame of war with the gales of love? Then had there been decency in your fears for your friends; now you are rising too late with unjust complaints, and flinging idly the language of quarrel."

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Such was the appeal of Juno: and the whole body of immortals murmured assent on this side or on that, like newborn gales when they murmur, caught in the forest, and roll about mysterious sounds, disclosing to the sailor a coming storm. Then begins the almighty sire, whose is the chief sovereignty of the universe: at opening of his 10 mouth the lofty palace of the gods grows still, and earth shakes to her foundations; silent is the height of ether; the Zephyrs are sunk to rest, and Ocean subdues its waves to repose. "Take then to your hearts and engrave there these my words: since it may not be that Ausonian and Teucrian should be united by treaty, and your wranglings brook no conclusion, be each man's fortune to-day what it may, be the span of each man's hope long or short, Trojan or Rutulian, I will show favour to neither, whether it be by destiny that the Italian leaguer encompasses the 20 camp, or by Troy's baneful error and the warnings of hostile intelligence. Nor leave I the Rutulians free. Each man's own endeavours shall yield him the harvest of labour or fortune. Jove, as king, is alike to all. Destiny shall find her own way." By the river of his Stygian brother, by the 25 banks that seethe with pitch and are washed by the murky torrent, he nodded confirmation, and with his nod made all Olympus tremble. So ended their debate. Then from his golden throne rises Jove, and the immortals gathering round him usher him to his chamber.

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Meantime the Rutulians press round each and all of the gates, eager to slaughter the soldiery and belt the ramparts with flame. But Eneas' army is hemmed within the leaguered encampment, without hope of escape. In unavailing wretchedness they stand guarding the turret's 35 height, and form a thin circle round the walls. Asius son of Imbrasus, and Hicetaon ́s child Thymotes, and the two Assaraci, and Castor and aged Thymbris are their front

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rank, by their side the two brethren of Sarpedon, Clarus and Themon both, come from noble Lycia. There is one carrying with the whole strain of his body a mighty rock, no small portion of a mountain, Acmon of Lyrnessus, a 5 worthy peer of his father Clytius and his brother Menestheus. Some repel the foe with javelins, some with stones: they launch the firebrand, they fit the arrow to the string. In the midst is he, Venus' most rightful care, the royal boy of Dardany, his beauteous head uncovered: see him shine 10 like a jewel islanded in yellow gold, an ornament for neck or head, or as gleams ivory set by artist skill in box-wood or Orician terebinth°: his flowing hair streams over a neck of milky white and is gathered up by a ring of ductile gold. Thou, too, Ismarus, wast seen by tribes of warriors dealing 15 wounds abroad and arming thy arrows with venom, gallant branch of a Lydian house, from the land whose rich soil is broken up by the husbandmen and washed by Pactolus' golden stream. Mnestheus, too, was there, whom yesterday's triumph over Turnus repulsed from the ram20 part exalts to the stars, and Capys, who gives his name to Campania's mother city.

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So they on this side and on that had waged all day the conflict of stubborn war; and now at midnight Æneas was ploughing the main. For soon as, leaving Evander, he entered the Etruscan camp, accosted the king, and told him of his name and his race, for what he sues and what he offers, explains what arms Mezentius musters on his side, and what the excess of Turnus' violence, warns him how little faith man can place in fortune, and seconds 30 reasoning by entreaty, without a moment's pause Tarchon combines his forces and strikes a truce; and at once, freed from the spell of destiny, the Lydian race embarks according to heaven's ordinance, under the charge of a foreign leader. First sails the vessel of Æneas, Phrygian lions 35 harnessed on the prow; above them Ida spreads her shade, of happiest augury to exiled Troy. There sits great Æneas brooding over the doubtful future of the war: and Pallas, close cleaving to his left side, keeps questioning him,