Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/204

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must be protected, the foe must be driven from the frontier; he and his men will be enough for both, Teucrians and Latians. So he says and appeals to Heaven: and the Rutulians with emulous zeal encourage each other to the fight. This one is fired by his leader's peerless beauty 5 and youth; this by the kings in his pedigree; this by the glorious deeds of his hand.

While Turnus is filling the Rutulians with the spirit of daring, Allecto is putting her infernal wings in motion against the Teucrians. A new device working in her 10 mind, she fixed her eye on the spot where on the winding coast Iulus was hunting game with the snare and the course. Hereon the maiden of Cocytus suddenly presents to the hounds a maddening lure, and touches their nostrils with the scent they know so well, making them chase a 15 stag in full cry; which was the first origin of the trouble, and put the spark of war to the spirit of the countryside. There was a stag of beauteous form and lofty horns, taken by the sons of Tyrrheus from its mother's breast, and brought up by them and their father Tyrrheus, 20 who had the control of the royal herds and the charge of the whole range of lawn. Trained to obey, it was the chief care of their sister Silvia; she would deck and wreathe its horns with delicate festoons, and comb its rough coat, and wash it in the clear stream. Grown tame 25 to the hand, and accustomed to its master's table, it would run free in the forest and take itself back home to the well-known door, however late the night. Now, in one of its wanderings the maddened hounds of Iulus started it in the hunt, as it happened to be floating down the 30 stream or allaying its heat on the verdant bank. Ascanius himself, fired with a proud ambition, bent his bow and levelled a shaft: nor did his hand err for want of heavenly aid: the reed sped with a loud hurtling sound and pierced the belly and the flank. The wounded creature took refuge 35 under the roof it knew, and moaning crept into its stall, and bleeding all over filled, like a human suppliant, the house with its piteous plaints. Sister Silvia first,