stanching his wounds with water, and giving ease to his frame, leaning on a tree's trunk. His brazen helmet is hanging from a distant bough, and his heavy arms are resting on the mead. Round him stand his bravest warriors: he, sick and panting, is relieving his neck, while his flowing 5 beard scatters over his bosom: many a question asks he about Lausus, many a messenger he sends to call him off and convey to him the charge of his grieving sire. But Lausus the while was being carried breathless on his shield by a train of weeping comrades, a mighty spirit quelled by 10 a mighty wound. The distant groan told its tale to that ill-boding heart. He defiles his gray hairs with a shower of dust, stretches his two palms to heaven, and clings to the body. "My son! and was I enthralled by so strong a love of life as to suffer you, mine own offspring, to meet the 15 foeman's hand in my stead? Are these your wounds preserving your sire? is he living through your death? Alas! now at length I know the misery of banishment! now the iron is driven home! Aye, it was I, my son, that stained your name with guilt, driven by the hate I gendered 20 from the throne and realm of my father! Retribution was due to my country and to my subjects' wrath: would that I had let out my forfeit life through all the deathwounds they aimed! And now I live on, nor as yet leave daylight and humankind but leave them I will." So 25 saying, he raises himself on his halting thigh, and though the deep wound makes his strength flag, calls for his warhorse with no downcast mien. This was ever his glory and his solace: this still carried him victorious from every battle-field. He addresses the grieving creature and be-30 speaks it thus: "Long, Rhæbus, have we twain lived, if aught be long to those who must die. To-day you shall either bear in victory the bloody spoils and head of Æneas yonder, and join with me to avenge my Lausus' sufferings, or if our force suffice not to clear the way, we will lie down 35 together in death: for never, I ween, my gallant one, will you stoop to a stranger's bidding and endure a Teucrian lord." He said, and mounting on its back settled his limbs

as he was wont, and charged his two hands with pointed javelins, his head shining with brass and shaggy with horse-hair crest. So he bounded into the midst - his heart glowing at once with mighty shame, madness and 5 agony commingled. Then with a loud voice he thrice called on Æneas: aye, and Æneas knew it, and prays in ecstasy: "May the great father of the gods, may royal Apollo grant that you come to the encounter!" So much said, he marches to meet him with brandished spear. 10 The other replies: "Why terrify me, fellest of foes, now you have robbed me of my son? this was the only way by which you could work my ruin. I fear not death, nor give quarter to any deity. Enough: I am coming to die, and send you this my present first." He said, and flung a 15 javelin at his enemy: then he sends another and another to its mark, wheeling round in a vast ring: but the golden shield bides the blow. Three times, wheeling from right to left, he rode round the foe that faced him, flinging darts from his hand: three times the hero of Troy moves 20 round, carrying with him a vast grove planted on his brazen plate. Then, when he begins to tire of the long delay and the incessant plucking out of darts, and feels the unequal combat press him hard, meditating many things, at last he springs from his covert, and hurls his spear full 25 between the hollow temples of the warrior-steed. The gallant beast rears itself upright, lashes the air with its heels, and, flinging the rider, falls on and encumbers him, and itself bowed to earth presses with its shoulder the prostrate chief. Up flies Æneas, plucks forth his sword from its scabbard, and bespeaks the fallen: Where now is fierce Mezentius and that his savage vehemence of spirit?" To whom the Tuscan, soon as opening his eyes on the light he drank in the heaven and regained his sense: "Insulting foe, why reproach me and menace me with death? You 35 may kill me without crime: I came not to battle to be spared, nor was that the league which my Lausus ratified with you for his father. One boon I ask, in the name of that grace, if any there be, which is due to a vanquished

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enemy: suffer my corpse to be interred. The hot hatred of my subjects, well I know, is blazing all round me screen

me, I pray, from their fury, and vouchsafe me a share in the tomb of my son. So saying, with full resolve he welcomes the sword to his throat, and spreads his life over his 5 armour in broad streams of blood.

BOOK XI

MEANWHILE, the Goddess of Dawn has risen and left the ocean. Eneas, though duty presses to find leisure for interring his friends, and his mind is still wildered by the scene of blood, was paying his vows to heaven as conqueror 5 should at the day-star's rise. A giant oak, lopped all round of its branches, he sets up on a mound, and arrays it in gleaming arms, the royal spoils of Mezentius, a trophy to thee, great Lord of War: thereto he attaches the crest yet raining blood, the warrior's weapons notched and 10 broken, and the hauberk stricken and pierced by twelve several wounds: to the left hand he binds the brazen shield, and hangs to the neck the ivory-hilted sword. Then he begins thus to give charge to his triumphant friends, for the whole company of chiefs had gathered to his side: 15 "A mighty deed, gallants, is achieved already dismiss all fear for the future: see here the spoils, the tyrant's first-fruits see here Mezentius as my hands have made him. Now our march is to the king and the walls of Latium. Set the battle in array in your hearts and let hope 20 forestall the fray, that no delay may check your ignorance at the moment when heaven gives leave to pluck up the standards and lead forth our chivalry from the camp, no coward resolve palsy your steps with fear. Meanwhile, consign we to earth the unburied carcases of our friends, 25 that solitary honour which is held in account in the pit of Acheron. "Go," he says, "grace with the last tribute those glorious souls, who have bought for us this our fatherland with the price of their blood: and first to Evander's sorrowing town send we Pallas, who, lacking nought of 30 manly worth, has been reft by the evil day, and whelmed in darkness before his time.'

So he says weeping, and returns to his tent-door, where the body of breathless Pallas, duly laid out, was being watched by Acœtes the aged, who had in old days been armour-bearer to Evander his Arcadian lord, but then in an hour less happy was serving as the appointed guardian 5 of the pupil he loved. Around the corpse were thronging the retinue of menials and the Trojan train, and dames of Ilion with their hair unbound in mourning fashion. But soon as Æneas entered the lofty portal, a mighty wail they raise to the stars, smiting on their breasts, and 10 the royal dwelling groans to its centre with their agony of woe. He, when he saw the pillowed head and countenance of Pallas in his beauty, and the deep cleft of the Ausonian spear in his marble bosom, thus speaks, breaking into tears: "Can it be, unhappy boy, that Fortune at the 15 moment of her triumphant flood-tide has grudged you to me, forbidding you to look on my kingdom, and ride back victorious to your father's home? Not such was the parting pledge I gave on your behalf to your sire Evander, when, clasping me to his heart, he sent me on my way to mighty 20 empire, and anxiously warned me that the foe was fierce and the race we should war with stubborn. And now he belike at this very moment in the deep delusion of empty hope is making vows to Heaven and piling the altars with gifts, while we are following his darling, void of life, and 25 owing no dues henceforward to any power on high, with the vain service of our sorrow. Ill-starred father! your eyes shall see what cruel death has made of your son. And is this the proud return, the triumph we looked for? has my solemn pledge shrunk to this? Yet no beaten 30 coward shall you see, Evander, chastised with unseemly wounds, nor shall the father pray for death to come in its terror while the son survives. Ay me! how strong a defender is lost to our Ausonian realm, and lost to you, my own Iulus!"

So having wailed his fill, he gives order to lift and bear the poor corpse, and sends a thousand men chosen from his whole array to attend the last service of woe, and lend

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