Book 1

1. I begin the war by which the glory of Aeneas' sons lifts itself to heaven, and by which fierce Carthage submits to the rule of Oenotria. Grant me, Muse, to recall the renown won by the labours of ancient Hesperia, and how many men Rome raised for war, when the treacherous race of Cadmus broke the sacred pact and stirred contention for empire, and Fortune long debated on what citadel at last she would set the head of the world. Three times, with Mars against them, the Sidonian captains shattered the treaty sworn to Jove and the agreements of the senate, and the impious sword three times urged them to violate the peace they had pledged. But in the midst of war each nation strove in turn to bring the other ruin and destruction, and they came nearer to peril to whom it was granted to prevail: the Dardan commander laid open the towers of Agenor's line, and Rome, her Palatine hemmed in by the Carthaginian rampart, defended her safety behind her walls.

The causes of such great wrath, the hatred kept alive with unending zeal, and the war bequeathed to their descendants — this it is right for me to disclose, and to unseal the minds of the gods above. And now I shall trace the origins of that great upheaval.

Long ago, fleeing across the blue waters from the land of Pygmalion and from a kingdom defiled by a brother's crime, Dido was carried, by fate, to the Libyan shore. Then, buying the ground at a price, she founded her new walls, where she was permitted to gird the coast with a hide cut into strips. Here Juno, before Argos (so ancient belief held), before Agamemnon's Mycenae — homes most dear to her — chose to establish for the exiles a race that should endure for ever. But when she saw that Rome lifted her head high above the noblest cities, and even sent her fleets across the seas to carry her conquering standards through the whole world, then, fearing the nearer danger, she goaded the hearts of the Phoenicians with a frenzy for war. But when, in the first attempt at battle, her endeavour was crushed and her undertakings broken in the Sicilian gulf, the Libyans, taking up arms anew, renewed the war; one leader alone supplied the host to him who would throw the lands into turmoil and make ready to stir the sea.

And now warlike Hannibal clothed himself in all the goddess's wrath: him alone she dares to match against the fates. Then, rejoicing in that man of blood, and not unaware of the disasters he would soon bring in a savage whirlwind upon the realm of Latinus, she said: 'Despite me, the Trojan exile shall have brought into Latium his Dardan land, his household gods twice taken captive, and the conqueror shall have founded the Lavinian sceptre for the Teucrians, provided that your banks, Ticinus, cannot hold the Roman corpses, and that, my servant, through the Celtic fields the Trebia shall flow backward, choked with Trojan blood, with weapons and the bodies of men, and that Trasimene shall dread its own pools, turbid with copious gore, provided that, on high, I look on Cannae as the tomb of Hesperia and on the plain of Iapygia drowned in Ausonian blood, and on you, Aufidus, doubtful of your channel as your banks close in, scarcely breaking your way to the shores of the Adriatic sea through the shields and helmets and the hacked limbs of men.' So she spoke, and inflamed the youth to the deeds of Mars.

Eager in temper and false to good faith was that man, surpassing in cunning, but a stranger to justice. When armed he had no reverence for the gods: a reckless valour, and contempt for the honours of peace; and deep in his marrow burned a thirst for human blood. Beyond all this, in the flower of his prime, he longed to wipe out the Aegates — his fathers' disgrace — and to sink the treaty beneath the Sicilian sea. Juno fed his purpose and wearied his heart with hope of glory. And now in the night he would enter the Capitol in a vision, or be borne with swift strides over the heights of the Alps. Often, too, his servants, their sleep disturbed at his threshold, shuddered through the vast silence at a savage cry, and found the man bathed in profuse sweat, mingling battles yet to come and waging empty wars.

This madness against the bounds of Italy and the fields of Saturn had been instilled in him even as a boy by his father's frenzy. He counted, of the ancient Sarranian stock of old Barca, his forefathers' line back from Belus. For when, robbed of her husband, Dido fled from enslaved Tyre, the impious arms of the cruel tyrant a young son of Belus had escaped, and had joined her as partner in all her fortunes. Of this noble birth, and proved by his right hand, Hamilcar, as soon as it was given to Hannibal to speak and to shape his first words with his tongue, cunning to feed his furies, sowed war against Rome in the boy's heart.

In the middle of the city there stood a shrine, sacred to the shade of mother Elissa, honoured by the Tyrians with ancestral awe, which yews and pines had hidden round about with their squalid shade and shut off from the light of heaven — a temple. Here, as they say, the queen long ago freed herself from mortal cares in that place. There stand, in mournful marble, the images: father Belus, and all the line of descendants back from Belus; there stands Agenor, the glory of the race, and Phoenix, who gave the lands their lasting name. She herself sits, joined at last for ever with Sychaeus. Before her feet lies the Phrygian sword; in a row stand a hundred altars, to the gods of heaven and to Erebus the mighty. Here, with hair unbound and in Stygian robe, the priestess calls upon the powers of the Hennaean goddess and on Acheron. The earth bellows, and dreadful hissings burst through the gloom; fires that none have kindled blaze upon the altars. Then by magic chant the shades fly through the void, summoned, and the face of Elissa sweats upon the marble.

Hannibal, by his father's command, was brought to this inner shrine, and as he entered Hamilcar searched his bearing and his face. He did not pale at the raving wrath of the Massylian priestess, nor at the temple's grim rites, nor at the threshold sprinkled with gore, nor at the flames that rose at the sound of the chant. Caressing his head, his father pressed kisses on him, and roused his spirit with urging and filled it with such words: 'The reborn race of the Phrygians oppresses with unfair treaties the sons of the Cadmean stock. If the fates have refused to let our right hand drive that disgrace from our country, let this be your glory, my son: be willing. Come, conceive a war to bring destruction on the men of Laurentum: let the Tyrrhenian youth already dread your birth, and let the matrons of Latium refuse, when you arise, my boy, to bring their children to the light.' With these spurs he sharpened him, and prompted words not soft to utter: 'Romans on land and sea, when my years are ripe, I shall pursue with fire and sword, and bring back the doom of Troy. Not the gods above, nor the pacts that restrain Mars, not the high Alps nor the Tarpeian rock shall stand in my way. This is my mind: I swear it by the godhead of our Mars, and by your shade, O queen.' Then a black victim is sacrificed to the threefold goddess, and swiftly the priestess lays open the living limbs, demanding answers, and consults the fleeing life in the entrails she has hastened. But when, by the rite of the ancient art, she had entered the minds of the gods above as she sought, she then declared: 'I see the Aetolian fields strewn far and wide with soldiery, and lakes of the Idaean land blazing with blood. How great a mass, far off, rises by its crags to the stars, on whose airy summit your camp hangs poised! And now the host is swept down from the ridges: the trembling walls smoke, and the earth that stretches beneath the Hesperian sky glows with Sidonian flames. See, the Eridanus flows red with blood. There lies, with grim face, above arms and men, he who as the third should bear on high the spoils to the Thunderer. Alas, what storm grows turbid with sudden cloudbursts, and the sky bursts open, and the fiery air flashes! The gods above prepare great things: the palace of high heaven thunders, and I behold Jove doing battle.' What fates were coming Juno forbade her to know further, and the entrails suddenly fell silent: the events and the long labours lie hidden.

So, leaving the war shut up in his secret heart, and having followed Gades and Calpe, the limit of mankind, while he bore the standards from the Garamantes to the pillars of Hercules, the Tyrian commander fell in fierce conflict.

Meanwhile the reins of power are handed to Hasdrubal, who drove the wealth of the western sun, the Iberian throng, and the men who dwell by the Baetis with unjust furies. The leader had a gloomy heart, and a wrath beyond all cure, and his savagery was the fruit he reaped from rule; bitter in his love of blood, and mad, he thought to be feared an honour, nor was he apt to glut his furies with any familiar punishment. Tagus, of ancient stock, distinguished in countenance and famed for brave deeds, forgetful of gods and men alike, he displayed, fastened upright on an oak, to the mourning peoples, exulting — a king without burial. Tagus, who takes his name from the gold-bearing spring, is wailed for by the Iberian nymphs through caves and along the banks. He would not have preferred the Maeonian shallows, nor the Lydian pools for his own, nor the river that floods the plain with watering gold and grows yellow with the sands that Hermus brings down. First to begin the fight by hand, last to lay down the sword of Mars. When on high he drove his swift steed with loosened reins, it was not possible to stop the man with sword, nor from afar with spear: he flew about exulting, and through both the lines Tagus was already known by his golden armour. When his servant saw him hanging deformed in death on the cruel oak, secretly he seized the sword beloved by his master, and burst swiftly into the hall, and struck the pitiless breast with a doubled wound. But the Carthaginians, inflamed with rage and confounded by grief — a race that delights in cruelty — rush in and bring their engines. Neither fires nor white-hot steel, nor scourges everywhere rending the mangled body with countless blows, nor the hangmen's hands, nor the plague poured deep into his marrow, nor the flames glowing in the midst of his wound, gave any respite; horrible to see and to tell, by the craft of cruelty drawn out, his limbs grew as great as the tortures demanded, and, all his blood drained away, his bones, hot, smoked while his limbs were melted. His mind stays untouched: he prevails and mocks at his agonies like a spectator, and chides the attendants worn out with their toil, and clamouring demands his master's cross.

Amid this — a pitiable expiation for a punishment despised — the army, trembling at the loss of its leader, with one voice and in eager rivalry calls for Hannibal. On this side the image of his father's valour kindled their zeal, on that the report spread among the peoples of the sworn war, on this his years green for daring, and his comely fervour, and a mind armed with stratagems, and an inborn power of speech.

First the Libyans hail him as leader with a shout, then the peoples of the Pyrenees, and the warlike Iberian. And at once a fierce confidence rose in his mind, that so vast a power of land and sea had passed into his command.

White-hot with the Aeolian south winds and the torch of Phoebus, Libya is scorched, lying beneath the heat-bringing Crab, either the huge flank of Asia, or the third part of the lands. Its boundary toward the rosy dawn is the river of Lagus, driving the swollen sea forward with its sevenfold flood. But where, more kindly, it looks upon the far-off Bears, with the Herculean strait dividing, it sees the lands of Europe spread out along the neighbouring ridges. Beyond, the ocean shuts it in, and Atlas suffers not its name to be carried further — Atlas, who with his sunken summit will draw down the sky. His cloud-bearing head props up the stars, and his lofty neck holds up for ever the framework of the heavens. His beard is white with frost, and a forest of pine presses his brow with monstrous shadows. The winds lay waste his hollow temples, and from his storm-filled jaws rush foaming rivers. Then the deep seas wear away the twin crags of his flanks, and when the weary Titan has plunged his panting steeds, they hide the flame-bearing chariot in the smoking gulf. But where Africa stretches into squalid plains, it is teeming, ripened by the abundant venom of serpents, yet blessed where a mild region tempers its rich fields, conquered neither by Hennaean Ceres nor by the Egyptian tiller. Here the Nomads range everywhere, a race that knows no bridle, who, between its two ears, with a switch nimbly at play, turn the steed, as yielding as if it bore the curb. A land that nurses wars and warrior men, and trusts not the bare sword without stratagems.

Spanish cohorts filled the other camp, auxiliaries of Europe won by the father's trophies. On this side the war-horse fills the fields with neighing, on that the rearing horn-hoofed steeds snatch up the yoke of war: not more fiercely would the Elean axle run upon the course. A race prodigal of life, and most ready to hasten death. For when a man has passed the years that flower with strength, impatient of age he scorns to know old age, and the measure of his fate is in his own right hand. Here is every metal: veins grow pale with the twin seed of amber-gold, and the harsh soil nurses the black brood of steel. But the god conceals the causes of crimes. The greedy Asturian is plunged into the deepest entrails of the torn earth, and returns, unlucky, the colour of the gold he has dug out. Here, Pactolus, the Durius and the Tagus vie with you, and the stream that rolls its shining sands above the Gravii, bringing to the peoples the forgetfulness of infernal Lethe. The land is not untaught of Ceres nor unwelcoming to Bacchus, and by no tree does it raise itself higher than by Pallas's.

When these peoples had yielded to the Tyrian lord, and the reins of rule were given him, then by his father's art he won the men over, now overturning the decrees of the senate by arms, now by gifts. He was the first to take up toil, the first to make the march on foot and to bear his share, if the work of the rampart pressed for haste. Nor in other things was he slack, in whatever spurs a man to renown; and he denied to nature sleep, and wakeful passed the night in arms. At times, stretched on the ground, he would vie, conspicuous in his cloak, amid the hardy companies of the Libyan throng; and high, advancing before the great column, as their leader he endured his own command; then, with head bare, he met the maddened rains and the downfall of the sky. The Carthaginians watched, and the terrified Asturian trembled, when, as Jove hurled his weapons and mingled his lightnings with the clouds and the fires shaken out by the blasts of the winds, he rode across on his troubled horse, nor did the heat wear him out with the dust of the march, when the Dog-star blazed with its burning constellation. When the earth, scorched by the flame-bearing rays, gapes open, and the heat, glowing in mid-orb, bakes the upper air, he thought it womanish to have lain in the moist shade, and he exercised his thirst, and drew back when he had looked upon a spring. The same man, his bridle gripped, for battle would break the plunging horse, and would love the fame of a deadly arm, and would swim across the sounding rocks of an unknown river, and from the opposite bank summon his comrades. The same man stood first on the mound of a stormed wall, and as often as, swift, he joins the fierce battles on the field, wherever he scattered his steel, the line grew red across the plain.

Therefore he presses on toward the fates, and, resolved to break the treaty, where it is given him, he rejoices meanwhile to grip Rome in war, and from the world's end he assails the Capitol.

The first trumpets disturbed the gates of Saguntum, and war was taken up by a man from love of a greater war. Not far off, the Herculean walls rise from the shore, the ridge swelling gently, on which Zacynthus, buried, hallowed with a noble name a lofty hill. He, a companion of Alcides, was returning in the column to Thebes, Geryon slain, and was bearing those deeds to heaven. For that monster had three lives, three right hands armed upon his body, and bore his head on a triple neck. The earth saw no other man for whom a single death could not set the end, and for whom the cruel sisters would twice break the thread and spin a third strand. From here the conqueror, exulting, displayed his spoils and the captive herds, and called them to the springs in the midst of the heat, when a serpent, its swollen jaws kindled by the sun with venom, being trodden on, broke loose and with a deadly wound laid the man of Inachus low on the Iberian land. Then, with the South wind guiding them, exiled settlers turned their course, men whom an island bore, ringed by the Greek sea, and Zacynthus, which once enlarged the realm of Laertes. Soon the youth of Daunia confirmed the slender beginnings, men in want of a home, sent by that city rich in many a son, ruled by great-hearted men — Ardea is now its name. Freedom was kept for the peoples by the pact, and the honour of their fathers, and to the Carthaginians it was forbidden to lord it over the city.

The Sidonian leader, the treaty broken, brings up his flaming camp, and shakes the broad fields with his column. He himself, tossing his head, circled the walls savagely on his panting horse, and, having measured the fearful houses, commands them long since to open the gates and yield the rampart, and that far off are their treaties for the besieged, far off is Ausonia, and that for the conquered in war there is no hope of pardon: the decrees of the senate, the laws, the rights, faith, and the gods are now in his own right hand. Swiftly the fierce man seals his words by hurling a javelin, and pins through his armour Caicus, who stood for the wall and uttered vain threats. He fell, pierced through the midst of his vitals by the driven shaft, and as his limbs at once spilled from the steep mound he, dying, brought back to the victor the spear warmed with his blood. But many, following the example of their leader, with a great shout wrap the walls in a black cloud of weapons. Nor in that number does conspicuous valour lie hidden: each man, carrying his face full at the leader, takes up the war as if alone. Here one pours thick the slingshot of a Balearic lash, and three times, raising the supple thong high about his head, he hides in the air the bolt loosed to the winds; here one hurls whistling stones with a mighty arm, this one's lance is whirled, driven by a light loop. Before them all the leader, conspicuous in his father's arms, now hurls a torch smoking with pitch-black flame, now with stake, now with javelin, now with stones presses on untiring, or, drawing back the string, lets fly arrows steeped in serpent's blood, twice-deadly weapons, and exults in the treachery of his quiver, as a Dacian on the war-bearing coasts of the Getic land, who rejoices to have sharpened his darts with his fathers' venom, pours them forth, unlooked-for, by the banks of the two-named Hister.

The care comes upon him to gird the hill with a turreted front, and to ring the city round with a close-set fort. Alas, a deity to peoples of old, but by name alone now known on earth — Faith! The unflinching youth stand fast, and see flight taken from them and the walls shut in by the mound, yet they think a death worthy of Ausonian Saguntum to have fallen with faith preserved. And now more keenly all strain their strength: with the cords drawn back, the whistling Phocaean ballista hurls out vast millstones; and the same engine, the weight of its missile changed, shaking out an iron-shod ash-shaft, breaks through the midst of the lines. The clash resounds by turns. In so great a contest they joined battle, as if Rome herself were ringed by the rampart, and they cried out above: 'So many thousands, races born among weapons, do we stand against an enemy already taken captive? Are we not ashamed of our beginning, ashamed of the omen? Behold the fine valour and the first-fruits of our leader! Is it with such fame that we mean to fill Italy, and is it such battles that we send ahead?'

Their kindled spirits exult, and Hannibal, drunk to the marrow, stirs them on, and the wars that follow goad them. With their hands they assail the rampart, and, flung from the walls, leave behind their severed right hands. The steep mound rises, and sets bands of fighters down upon the city from above. A many-handed weapon, wont to be hurled, armed the besieged and warded the enemy from the gates — the phalarica, a tree-trunk dreadful to see, chosen from the high ridges of snowy Pyrene, with a great spear-point, a plague the walls could scarcely bear, but its rest is smeared with greasy pitch and coated round with black sulphur, and it smokes. This, in the manner of a thunderbolt, hurled from the topmost walls of the citadel, cleaves the furrowed air with a quivering flame, just as, with bloody trail, a fiery torch running down from the sky to earth dazzles the eyes. This, with swift stroke, often through the air — their leader thunderstruck — carried off smoking limbs; this, fixed with a whirl to the side of a vast tower, while deep within it set Vulcan working on the consumed planks, crushed weapons and men together in blazing ruin. At last, with the arms of a tight testudo packed close, the Carthaginians, drawn up under the rampart and in a hidden lurking-place, lay open the city, sunk down by their undermined walls. The Herculean labour, falling with a terrible crash as the mound was overcome, and loosing its monstrous stones, gave a vast bellowing to the sky. In the high Alps, when the airy crags are torn away by the mass of rock, not otherwise do they cleave the mountain with a resounding shatter. Even then the heaped mound rose where it had been overthrown, and the fallen rampart stood in the way, had not at once the lines press on from this side and that, to fight upon the very ruin.

Conspicuous before all in the first flower of youth darts forth Murrus, of Rutulian blood (yet he too, a Greek by a Saguntine mother, with twofold parentage mingled Dulichian grandsons with Italian stock). He, watching Aradus, who with a great shout called on his comrades, as he tried to move where the body is laid bare between the cuirass and the helmet, halted him with his spear-point, and pressing him down with his weapon, urged him further with his voice: 'Treacherous Carthaginian, you lie low; surely you were the first to climb the Capitol as conqueror. What licence in so great a vow? Now carry your war to Stygian Jove!' Then, glowing, hurling his spear against another, he fixed it in the groin of the Iberian, and while he trod on his face, now sobbing in death, 'This,' he said, 'is the road for you to the walls of Rome, O company to be feared. Thus must you go where you hasten.' Soon he leaps about the arms of those renewing the fight, and, the shield snatched away, drains the bare flank of the Iberian. Rich in land, rich in cattle, but denied renown, the Iberian had hunted wild beasts with bow and javelin, happy, alas, in his groves, praiseworthy for his shaded life, had he but kept his darts within his fathers' glades. Pitying him, Ladmus comes up with a deadly wound. At whom, smiling cruelly, 'You shall tell the shades of Hamilcar of this right hand,' he said, 'which now, after the slaughter of the rabble, shall give you Hannibal for a companion,' and, rising high, struck with his sword the bronze of the plumed helmet, and through the very covering scattered the crackling bones. Then Chremes, his unshorn brow shaded with hair, and fashioning his bristling caps from his locks, then Masulis, and Kartalo, green for war in his raw old age, not afraid to stroke the lionesses heavy with young, and Bagrada, his shield engraved with the river-urn, and Hiempsal, ravager of the vast Nasamonian Syrtis, bold to seize the broken ships in the surf — all fall together, slain by his right hand and his wrath; and Athyr too, skilled to disarm the serpent of its dire venom and by his touch to lull the heavy water-snake, and to test his doubtful offspring by the horned viper brought near. You also, Garamantian dweller by the prophetic groves, conspicuous, your helmet pierced at the temples by a curved horn — alas, in vain reproaching the oracles that so often told you of return and the Jove that had lied to you — you fall, Hiarbas. And now, heaped with bodies, the mound had grown, and the ruins, drenched, smoked with black slaughter. Then with greedy shouting they call their leader to the battles: as a hound, driven by Spartan baying, when it has lost the wood at the hunters' coming, with its bristling back rough with hair, takes on the last battles, the boar champing the white foam in its mouth, and groans now against the hunting-spears at its twin tusk.

But on the other side, where unlooked-for the young men had burst from the gates, as if no darts and no hands could bring force or destruction, mingled with both the armies Hannibal rages everywhere and shakes his sword, which lately the aged Temisus had wrought with a chanted fire on the shore of the Hesperides, who, mighty in song, trusted that the iron grew fierce by his magic tongue: as great as Gradivus, swept far over the Bistonian coasts in his war-chariot, brandishing the weapon by which the Titans' host was routed, he tames the blazing wars with the breath of his horn-hoofed steeds and the screeching of his axle. And now Hostus and Pholus the Rutulian and huge Metiscus, now Lygdus and Durius together and golden-haired Galaesus, and the twins, Chromis and Gyas, he had sent down to the shades, Daunus too, than whom no other was more renowned for stirring the assemblies with his voice and shaping minds by pleading, nor any more skilled as guardian of the laws, mingling harsh words with his weapons: 'What Furies of your father, Carthaginian, drive you here? These are no Sidonian dwellings built by a woman's hand or bought with a price, nor a shore given to exiles, measured out in sands. You behold the foundations of the gods and the treaties of Rome.' But him, hurling such words over the whole field, snatched with a mighty effort and torn from the midst of the men amid the weapons, and his hands bound behind his back, Hannibal had handed over to the punishment of his slow-burning wrath, and, chiding his own men, he bade the standards be borne forward, and through the very heaps of slaughter and the carnage of the fallen he, raging, pointed out the road, and called on all by name, and in his recklessness gave the city, still standing, over to plunder.

But when it was brought to him from the trembling soldiers that on the opposite side the battle was raging under an ill-starred Mars, and that to Murrus the gods above had granted the advantage of that day, he rushed the more swiftly, beside himself, in a frenzied course, and abandoned his great endeavours. The gleaming crests upon his helmet sway, death-bringing, as a comet, with its flame-bearing trail, terrifies the wild realms, scattering bloody fire: the dark torch vomits ruddy rays into the sky, and the star, glittering with savage light, sparkles and threatens the lands with the last of things. The weapons give way before the headlong man, the standards and the men give way, and both armies tremble. The fiery point of his spear casts a dreadful gleam, and his boss flashes far and wide. So, when the sea rises to the stars from the Aegean swell, and the wave, with a vast roar of the North-west wind, carries the sea, hanging high, far over the land, the cold hearts of the sailors tremble: it sounds afar, and, swelling with the blast, it sends across the frightened Cyclades with its curving waves. Not all the weapons from the walls assailing him alone, nor the torches smoking before his face, nor the stones cast by art from the engines, hold him back. As soon as first he caught sight of the covering of the gleaming helmet, and the arms ruddy against the sun with their bloodstained gold, in turmoil he began: 'Behold the man who would delay the Libyan cause and so great an enterprise, Murrus, the obstacle of the Roman war! Your treaties, I warrant, you shall soon learn — what idle things can do, and your Iberian. Take with you your chaste faith and your preserved rights: leave me the gods you have deceived.' To whom Murrus thus replied: 'Long-wished-for, you are come. My mind has long demanded battle and burns with the hope of your head: take the deserved reward of your frauds, and seek Italy deep beneath the earth. A long journey to the Dardan borders, and snowy Pyrene and the Alps, my right hand grants you.'

Amid this, seeing the enemy drawing on at close quarters, and the broken ground faithful to himself, the huge man seizes a stone wrenched from the mound, and rolls it down upon the face of the man straining upward, and the flint falls, hurled with a downward stroke. The other crouched, struck by the hard fragment of the wall. Then shame kindled his mind, nor did his conscious valour fail him, hard-pressed though it was on that ground; gnashing, he struggles, and with painful effort climbs against the slope, over the stones that bar his way. But when, nearer, the other shone with a light close by and bore himself in all his bulk, as though the swift ranks of the Carthaginians were ringing him in, the man shut up, and all the camp were pressing on him in his fear, Murrus is blinded by the broad foe. A thousand right hands at once, and a sword thick-glittering, seem to flash, and crests beyond counting to nod upon the helmet. The armies shout from both sides, as though all Saguntum flashed with fire. Murrus, in terror, drags his limbs languid before the pressing death, and takes up his last vows: 'Founder, Alcides, whose sacred footsteps we dwell upon, turn aside the storm that threatens the land, if with no sluggish right hand I defend your walls.' And while he prays and lifts his eyes to heaven in supplication, 'See,' the other says, 'whether the Tirynthian will far more justly stand by my daring. If a rival valour displeases you not, you will know me, Alcides, not unlike yourself in your first years, O unconquered. Bring your friendly godhead, and, once renowned at the first fall of Troy, stand by me, propitious, as I blot out the sons of the Phrygian stock.' So the Carthaginian, driven by wrath, drives his sword home where the hilt set the limit, and, the weapon drawn back, the bristling arms of the falling man are drenched with gore. At once the youth, thrown into confusion by the great disaster, rush forward: they refuse to let the proud conqueror despoil the man's well-known arms and body. The band, swelling in turn, gathers, urged on by exhortation, and they are borne in a massed throng. On this side the helmet rings with stones, on that the bronze shield with spears. They assail him with stakes, and vie in hurling weighted masses of lead. The crests are cut from his helmet, and the glory of the nodding plumes is torn away in the slaughter. And now copious sweat runs down his flowing limbs, and the weapons stand thick in the scales of his cuirass. No rest is given, nor leave to change his covering under the blow. His knees give way, and his weary shoulders loosen their burden. Then, thick and drawing his breath deep, the vapour smokes from his dry mouth, and, forced out by his panting effort, a groan is heard, and a broken murmur within his helmet. With opposing mind he masters it, and rejoices that his valour shines bright in hardships, and weighs the perils against the prize of honour.

Here suddenly, the sky split open amid the thick clouds, a crash burst forth, shaking the earth, and over the very battles the Father thundered twice with a doubled bolt. Then among the clouds, in the blind whirlwind of the winds, the avenging lance of an unjust war was brandished, and, with its point poised, settled in his thigh as he faced it. O Tarpeian crags, O rock that the gods above may dwell upon, and you, O fires of Laomedon's line, the Trojan altars, ever shining on the virgin's hearth, alas, how much the gods promised you by the image of a treacherous weapon! Had the spear, in its fury, been driven closer home, the Alps would have stood closed to mortals, nor would the Allia now, Trasimene, yield to your waters.

But Juno, gazing from the summit of high Pyrene at his eager first essays and his first heats in war, when she sees the wound stamped by the hurled spear-point, flies up, wrapped in a dark cloud, through the air, and tears the strong spear from the hard bones. He covers with his shield the blood poured over his limbs, and, drawing his slow steps by little, with doubtful effort, one after another, he withdraws, turned away from the mound.

Night at last buried the lands and the sea in the wished-for darkness, and, the light taken away, parted the battles. But the unyielding minds keep watch and rebuild the rampart — the work of night. Shut in, they whet themselves with the extremity of peril, and in their broken fortunes the last valour grows more violent. Here boy and feeble old men, here woman strive to bring help in their doubtful state, diligent in pitiable toil, and the soldier carries up stones with his streaming wound. And now the fathers and the noblest of the elders take their tasks to heart: they run together and exhort and entreat the chosen men to come to the aid of their wearied fortunes and call back safety, and in their last extremity to implore the arms of Latium. 'Go swiftly, drive the ship with oars and sails. While the wounded beast is shut up in his camp, the moment of war, now that it is broken, must be used, and we must press on to glory through perils. Go swiftly, weep for our faith and our falling walls, and from our ancient home summon a better fate. The sum of your charge is this: while it stands, return, O Saguntum.' But they hasten their step where the shore is nearest, and flee with swelling sail across the foaming blue.

The dewy bride of Tithonus was driving away sleep, and the ruddy steed, with its first neighings, had breathed upon the high mountains and was shaking the rosy reins. Now from the walls the youth, the raised siege-work built up, display the city shut in by its nocturnal towers. All action hangs in suspense, and with the soldiers in mourning the siege is loosened, and the ardour for fighting halts, and all their cares are turned upon their leader in that great crisis.

Meanwhile, for the Rutulians borne over the far seas the Herculean hills began to rise from the deep, and the cloudy crags of Monoecus to lift on their ridges. Thracian Boreas alone holds these rocks, his pitiless realm, and ever stiff with frost now beats the shores, now lashes the very Alps with his screeching wings, and when he pours from the lands out of the icy North, no other wind has the confidence to rise against him. He twists the sea with his swift whirlpools, and the shattered waters pant, and the mountains are buried in the deluged gulf, and now, flying, he lifts the Rhine and the Rhone into the clouds. When they had escaped this dire fury of Boreas, mournful, they turn over in talk the alternate chances of war and sea, and the doubtful issue of things. 'O fatherland, O famous home of Faith, in what state now are your fortunes? Do your sacred citadels yet stand upon the hills? Or is ash (alas, you gods) all that remains of so great a name? Carry us light breezes, and rouse the favouring blasts, if the Carthaginian fire does not yet leap upon the roofs of the temples, and the fleets of Latium have power to bring aid.' With such complaints they weep through night and day, until the ship is brought to the shores of Laurentum, where father Thybris, made richer by the waters of the Anio he has received, descends into the sea with his yellow flood. From here they approach the walls of kindred Rome.

The consul summons the august council, and the fathers, blessed in their chaste poverty, and the names won by triumphs, and a senate that matched the gods above in virtue. Spirited deeds and the sacred longing for the right exalt the men; rough are their togas and neglected their table, and the right hand, not slack, is from the curved plough at the sword-hilt. Content with little, and with hearts not craving wealth, they would often return in their chariot to their small household gods. On the sacred doors and on the first threshold of the temple hang captured chariots, the glory of war, and arms snatched from the leaders of those who fought, and axes savage in Mars, shields pierced through, and weapons keeping their bloodstains, and the bars of gates: here you may discern the Punic wars, the Aegates, and the beaks that witness the fleet scattered over the seas, and Libya driven from the deep. Here are the helmets of the Senones, and the wicked sword, arbiter of the gold that was weighed out, and, the Gauls driven from the citadel, the arms borne in the procession of Camillus on his return; here the spoils of Aeacides, here the Epirote standards, and the bristling cones of the Ligurians and the small shields brought back, the rude bucklers of the Spanish race, and the Alpine javelins.

But when the squalor of the suppliants laid open the disasters and the dreadful wars, the image of Saguntum, present, seemed to stand before their eyes, entreating in its last extremity. Then the aged Sicoris began thus with mournful face: 'O race made sacred by famous faith, whom the peoples, subdued by the sword, rightly confess to be born of Mars, do not believe that we have crossed the sea for trifling perils. We have seen our country besieged and its walls trembling, and we have seen Hannibal — whom mad straits or a gathering of wild beasts begot. Far from these walls, I beg, ward him off, O you gods above, and hold in our own war the youth of the death-dealing right hand! With what force he drives the sounding beams! And how he grows great in arms! Beyond the ridges of Pyrene, scorning the middle Iberus, he has roused Calpe, and is setting in motion the peoples drowned in the sands of the Syrtis, and seeks greater walls. Every Iberian, all of Gaul fierce with its swift squadrons, all the thirsting Libyan from the heat-bearing sky, looms over us. This foaming wave that rises here from the midst of the sea, if you are loath to stop it, will break upon your own cities. Or do you believe that the price of so great an upheaval, and of the treaty broken by the sword, is this — for a youth rushing into a sworn war — that he should impose terms on conquered Saguntum? Go swiftly, men, and put out the nascent flame, lest the cares return too late, after the perils have grown. And yet, oh, even if there were no terror, even if the seeds of war were not already smouldering, unquenched — would it be a thing to be despised, to stretch out a kindred hand to your own Saguntum? By the long-cherished origins of the Rutulian race, by the Laurentine hearth and the pledges of mother Troy, preserve the pious, who were forced to exchange the Tirynthian heights for Acrisian walls. You it was — a glorious thing — who once helped Zancle against the arms of the Sicilian tyrant; you it was who thought it worthy of your Sigean ancestors to guard the Campanian walls, the strength of the Samnites driven back. An ancient dweller of Daunus, I call you to witness, O springs and secret pools of Numicus, when too-prosperous Ardea sent forth its youth, bearing my rites and home and the inner shrines of grandsire Turnus, beyond Pyrene I carried the Laurentine name. Why am I to be despised like limbs cut off and torn from the body, and why should our blood pay for the treaties?'

At last, when the words were ended (a pitiable sight), their palms lowered, their garments torn, they press their squalid bodies, prone, to the earth. Then the fathers ply their counsels and weary their cares. Lentulus, as one beholding the roofs of Saguntum aflame, urged that the youth be demanded for punishment, and, on his being refused, that the fields of Carthage be burnt up in a swift war. But Fabius, a watcher of the future with cautious mind, not glad in doubtful matters, sparing to provoke Mars, and better at drawing out a war with the sword sheathed, held that in such great affairs these things must first be weighed: whether the madness of the leader had taken up arms, or whether the fathers had decreed the standards to be moved; and that men be sent to bring back word of what had been done. Provident, in the manner of a seer, Fabius poured forth these things from his deep breast, foreseeing the wars that were rising, as often an aged helmsman from the high stern, seeing by signs the North-west wind about to come upon his sails, long since draws in the canvas at the top of the mast. But tears, and grief mingled with wrath, drove them all to hasten the hidden fate; and men were chosen by the senate to approach the leader; and if he persisted, deaf, in arms to the treaties, that they should turn from there to the citadel of Carthage, nor delay to declare war on those forgetful of the gods.