Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/254

vents her rage on the darts and flings herself deliberately
on death, and springs from high on the line of spears, even
thus the doomed youth rushes on the midst of the foe,
making for where he sees the darts are thickest. But
Lycus, far swifter of foot, winds among ranks of foes and 5
showers of steel and gains the wall, and strives to clutch
the fabric's summit and reach the hands of his friends.
Whom Turnus, following him at once with foot and javelin,
taunts in victorious tone: "Dreamed you, poor fool, that
you could escape my hands?" and with that he seizes him 10
as he hangs in air, and pulls him down with a great fragment
of the wall; just as the bearer of Jove's thunder
trusses in his hooked talons a hare or a snow-white swan
and soars into the sky, or one of Mars' wolves snatches
from the fold a lamb which its mother's bleatings reclaim 15
in vain. On all sides rises the war-shout. They rush on
the trenches and fill them with shattered earthworks,
while others fling brazen firebrands to the roofs. Ilioneus
with a rock, broken from a mighty mountain, brings
down Lucetius as he assails the gates and waves his torch. 20
Liger kills Emathion, Asilas Corynæus, one skilled with the
javelin, one with the arrow that surprises from a distance.
Cæneus slays Ortygius, Turnus the conqueror Cæneus,
Turnus Itys and Clonius, Dioxippus and Promolus, and
Sagaris, and Idas, who was standing on the turret's top. 25
Capys kills Privernus: Themilla's flying spear had grazed
him first; he, poor fool, dropped his buckler and clapped
his hand to the wound, so the arrow came on stealthy
wing, and the hand was pinned to the left side, and the
inmost seat of breath is rent asunder by the deadly wound. 30
There stood the son of Arcens in conspicuous armour,
his scarf embroidered with needlework, in the glory of
Hiberian purple, fair of form, sent to war by his father
Arcens, who had reared him in his mother's grove by the
streams of Symæthus, where stands Palicus' rich and 35
gracious altar: flinging his spears aside, Mezentius
whirled the strained thong of the whizzing sling thrice
round his head, and with the molten bullet burst in twain