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helms and shapely swords and bridle-reins and glowing
wheels; some bring in offering the things the dead men
wore, their own shields and the weapons that sped so ill.
Many carcases of oxen are sacrificed round the piles:
bristly swine and cattle harried from the country round are 5
made to bleed into the flame. Then along the whole line
of coast they gaze on their burning friends, and keep
sentry over the half-quenched fire-bed, nor let themselves
be torn away till dewy night rolls round the sky with its
garniture of blazing stars. 10

With like zeal the ill-starred Latians in a different quarter
set up countless piles; of the multitude of corpses
some they bury in the earth, some they lift up and carry
off to neighbour districts, and send them home to the city;
the rest, a mighty mass of promiscuous carnage, they burn 15
uncounted and unhonoured; and thereon the plains
through their length and breadth gleam with the thickening
rivalry of funeral fires. The third morrow had withdrawn
the chill shadows from the sky: the mourners were
levelling the piles of ashes and sweeping the mingled bones 20
from the hearths, and heaping over them mounds of earth
where the heat yet lingers. But within the walls, in the
city of Latium's wealthy king, the wailing is preëminent,
and largest the portion of that long agony. Here are
mothers and their sons' wretched brides, here are sisters' 25
bosoms racked with sorrow and love, and children orphaned
of their parents, calling down curses on the terrible
war and on Turnus' bridal rites; he, he himself, they cry,
should try the issue with arms and the cold steel, who
claims for himself the Italian crown and the honours of 30
sovereignty. Fell Drances casts his weight into the scale,
and bears witness that Turnus alone is challenged by the
foe, Turnus alone defied to combat. Against them many
a judgment is ranged in various phrase on Turnus' side,
and the queen's august name lends him its shadow; many 35
an applauding voice upholds the warrior by help of the
trophies he has won.

Amid all this ferment, when the blaze of popular tur-*