Book 2

2. Now the Dardan ship, sped over the blue shoals, was bearing the stern commands of the great-hearted senate and the foremost of the fathers. Fabius, of Tirynthian stock, recalled three hundred ancestors whom in the whirlwind of Mars a single day swept away, when Fortune, unfair to their patrician labour, stained the banks of the Cremera with blood. With him as companion, in equal duty, Publicola shared the cares — the Spartan offspring of mighty Volesus. He, tracing the people refined by his illustrious name, drew Ausonian honours from a consular forefather.

When word was brought to Hannibal that these men, their sails struck, had reached the harbour, and were carrying the decrees of the senate that demanded peace, now late, in the midst of war, and at the same time the punishment laid by treaty upon the leader, swiftly he bids the armed squadrons everywhere along the shore display their threatening standards, and their shields lately drenched, and their weapons reddened with slaughter. There is no room now for words, he cries; all things resound with the blare of the Tyrrhenian trumpet and the groans of the dying. While it is granted them, let them reskim the deep, nor hasten to add themselves to the besieged: it is known what wrath may dare, when arms are hot with slaughter, and what the stirred sword ventures. So, driven from the inhospitable shores by their leader's words, the fathers turned their oarsmen back and made for the Tyrians.

Here the Carthaginian, assailing with his right hand the vessel that spread its sails, 'Our own, by Jove!' he cried — 'our own head that ship makes ready to carry over those waters. Alas, blind minds, and hearts puffed up by success! The impious land seeks Hannibal in arms for punishment! Do not demand him; I shall be there. You will be given your fill of me sooner than you expect, and you will fear, Rome, for your gates and hearths, you who now defend the household gods of strangers. The Tarpeian crags and the steep rocks again you may climb, and migrate to your lofty citadel: once taken, you will redeem your lives with no gold now.'

His words inflamed their spirits, and frenzy was added to their arms. At once the air is hidden with clouds of weapons, and the towers resound with the dense hail of stones. Ardour drives them, while they can see the walls of the ship now sped away and ply war before their eyes on the fleeing keel. But the leader himself, conspicuous, his wound laid bare, demands of the kindled squadrons the promised sacrifice, and renewing his complaints he thunders with frenzied mouth: 'We are demanded, O comrades, and Fabius from his stern displays chains, and the wrath of a lordly senate calls us. If the undertaking wearies you, or we have stirred a war to be blamed, recall the Ausonian ship swiftly to the deep: I do not delay; behold, with bound right hand hand me over to be torn apart. For why should I, drawn from the origin of Eastern Belus, ringed by so many peoples of Libya, so many Iberians, refuse to bear servitude? Nay, let the Trojan rule the peoples for ever and, fierce, extend his realm through the ages; let us tremble at the commands and the nod of men.' They pour out groans and turn dark omens against the stock of Aeneas, and goad his wrath with shouts.

Among the ungirt Libyans and the bilingual peoples bold Asbyte had come to the Oenotrian war with Marmaric standards, the offspring of Garamantian Hiarbas. He, born of Hammon, ruled far and wide with empire and sceptre the cave of Phorcys's daughter Medusa, and the Cinyphian Macae, and the Battiadae hot beneath the unkind sun. To him his native Nasamon was subject, and Barce ever parched, to him the groves of the Autololes and the shores of the faithless Syrtis, and the light Gaetulian who rides with no rein. And he had founded his marriage with the Tritonian nymph, whence the queen traced her race and Jove as forefather, and recalled her own name from the prophetic grove. She, knowing no man and used to an empty couch, had spent her first years in hunting and the woods; her hand was not softened by baskets nor busy with the spindle — Dictynna, the glades, and to drive the horn-hoofed steed panting beneath her foot, and to lay low wild beasts, she loved, unsoftened. Such are the unwed bands of Thracian women who range the high groves of Rhodope and Pangaeus on their rocky ridges and weary the Hebrus with running: scorned are the Cicones and Getae, and the house of Rhesus, and the Bistones with their crescent shields.

So, conspicuous in her native dress, her flowing hair bound with a knot of the Hesperides, her right side bared for fierce Mars, her left gleaming under its covering, fortified for battle with a Thermodontian shield, she shook the smoking axle in her swift coursings. Part of her company is borne in a two-horse car, the rest on horseback; and women who have already known the bonds of Venus ring the queen, but the maiden squadron is denser. She herself, before the line, displayed steeds chosen from the herds through the long huts, and while she followed a near hill in her circling, hurling darts whirled through the air across the plain, she set them planted in the topmost citadel.

This woman, entering the walls so often with her spear, Mopsus could not endure, and old, from the high walls, with sounding string he routs her Gortynian darts, and through the clear air he aims deadly wounds with winged iron. He was a Cretan, brought from the bronze-sounding caves of the Curetes, a boy used to range the Dictaean glades with lighter arms, Mopsus, with the feathered reed. He often brought down from the sky the roving bird, he far off on the plain stayed with a wound the stag leaving the nets, and the beast would fall, unlooked-for, beneath the stroke before the bow set down its whistling for the unwary thing. Nor did any quiver then boast itself more justly, though Gortyn vie with Eastern arrows. But, the poorer in means, when he refused to prolong his life by hunting, and his straitened fortunes drove him over the sea, with his wife Meroe and his sons, an inglorious guest, he had entered wretched Saguntum as fate led him. From the shoulders of his brothers hung the quivers and his father's reeds and the winged steel, the weapons of Minos. Here, amid the young men, into the line of the Massylian race he poured thick darts from his Cydonian bow. Already Garamus and bold Thyrus, and at the same time rushing Gisgo, and light Baga, and Lixus, unworthy of the arrow, beardless in his cheeks, so swift to meet it, he had laid low, and waged war with a full quiver. Then, bending his face and his weapon against the maiden's countenance, he called, through vows ungrateful to him, on Jove who had forsaken him. For as he sees the death-bearing bow turned, Harpe, throwing her Nasamonian body before the snares from afar, snatched the death and the flying reed away, and, as she cried out, catching it, sent it through her open mouth, and her foremost sisters saw the iron from behind her. But the maiden, gnashing at her comrade's fall, lifts the slipping limbs, and bedews with tears the eyes now swimming in their little light, and, straining with all the strength of her grief, hurls the deadly Cornel-shaft against the walls. That, flying, pierces with swift stroke the shoulder of Dorylas as he tried, his bow's horns now joined and the arrow filling the span of the drawn string, to shake out the iron upon the winds with loosened thumb. Then, headlong, he rolls down to his sudden wound from the high mounds of the wall, and beside his falling limbs his reeds streamed forth from the overturned quiver, scattered. His neighbour brother in like arms cries out, Icarus, and prepares to avenge the lamentable fate. And him, hastily bringing out his weapon for the fight, Hannibal forestalled with the whirl of a hurled stone. His limbs slip, numb with icy cold, and his failing hand let fall its own weapons from the quiver.

But the father, Mopsus, at the twofold death of his sons, thrice in mournful wrath plied the bows he had snatched up, thrice his right hand fell, and grief took away his familiar skill. He repents, alas too late, of having left his sweet home, and seizing eagerly the very stone by which you fell, Icarus, after the old man feels his years and that his beaten breast is beaten in vain, and that, to quell such great griefs by death, there is no help in his right hand, from the top of a vast tower he flings himself headlong, and, fallen with his weight bearing down, he spreads his dying limbs over the limbs of his son.

While the Gortynian stranger falls in a foreign war, now Theron, having set new work in motion with his goaded soldiery, the warden of Alcides's temple and the priest of the altar, had poured forth an army the Tyrians did not expect, and, the gate flung open, was joining fierce battles. And he had no spear in his hand, no helmet on his head, but, trusting in his broad shoulders and the bulk of his youth, he laid waste the lines with a club, needing no sword. The spoils set on his head, the lion's hide, raise their terrible gaping jaws on his lofty crown. The same man bore a hundred snakes and the Lernaean monster on his shield, and the twofold Hydra with its severed serpents. He had driven from the walls Juba, and Thapsus his father, and Micipsa, famous in his grandsire's name, and Maurish Saces, and, scattered in flight, headlong in their course to the shore he had driven them, and the seas foamed beneath his single right hand. Not content with the death of Idus and the death of Cotho the Marmarid, nor with the slaughter of Rothus nor of Jugurtha, he demanded with vows the chariot of Asbyte and the coverings of her gleaming left arm and the jewelled bosses of her shield, and turned his mind upon the warrior maiden. When the queen saw him rushing on with bloody weapon, she wheels her horses aside, and through the leftward circle she cuts the plain in a deceiving curve, and like a bird is swept, wheeling, with her car turned across the level ground. And while she takes herself from his eyes, and swifter than the East wind her driven hoof draws a dusty cloud over the plain, her wheel, whistling far and wide, crushes the opposing line, and the maiden flings thick spears upon the trembling men. Here fell Lycus and Thamyris, and the noble name Eurydamas, drawn from the line of a famous parent, who, daring once to hope for a proud marriage (alas, the madman!) and the bed of the Ithacan; but by the chaste craft of the deceiving web so often unwoven in its thread, deceived, he had spread the tale that Ulysses was sunk in the sea. But the Ithacan visited that prater with a real death for the feigned one, and the marriage-torches were turned to a funeral. This man's house, the last of his line, is destroyed on the Iberian fields, Eurydamas, by the Numidian's right hand: the black axle roars above him and keeps its course over his shattered bones.

And now the maiden was returning, and after she sees Theron hard-pressed amid the battle, balancing her savage axe at the middle of his brow, she was vowing the proud spoil thence and the Herculean hide to you, Dictynna. Nor slack was Theron: in hope of so great a praise, against the very horses he rises up, and thrusts the shaggy face of the tawny lion forward at the trembling steeds. Astonished by the strange terror and the threatening jaws, the team toss the chariot with backward weight. Then, as Asbyte tries to leave the fight with a leap, he forestalls her, his club driven between her twin temples, and scatters the hot wheels and the reins disordered by panic, her brain dashed out through the crushed bones, and, snatching up the axe, hastening to display the slaughter, he cuts from the chariot the head of the fallen maiden. Nor yet is his wrath laid down. For the head is fixed on a high spear to be gazed at: he bids it be borne before the Carthaginian lines, and the chariots quickly turned toward the walls.

Such battles Theron waged, blind to fate, with death close at hand, the favour of the gods departing. For Hannibal was there, bearing in all his face wrath and threats, and grieved with maddened mind for Asbyte slain and the unspeakable trophy of her fixed head. And at once the boss of his brazen shield shone out, and his arms, shaken far off by his swift limbs, thundered death; struck suddenly, they turn their flight to the walls in a panic-stricken course: as evening with light wings through the late twilight drives the birds from their feeding to their known nests; or, when Cecropian Hymettus, at the dread of a watery cloud, gathers up its swarms scattered over the flowers, to the sweet honeycombs and the caves of fragrant bark the bees, heavy with honey, hasten, and in a dense flight, joined together, mass their hoarse murmur at the entrances. Fear hurries on the astonished men, and blind they are borne along. Alas, the sweet light of heaven! Is death, that must return, guarded against with such great fear, and the doom added at our birth? They condemn their plan, and groan that they have burst forth from the gates and the safe mound: scarcely Theron holds the lines back, now with his hand, now with shouting and threats: 'Stand, men; that foe is mine; mine, stand, is the glory of the great battle that comes. From the wall and the houses of Saguntum with this right hand I shall drive the Carthaginians; only bring, men, your gaze; or, if a keen fear hurries you all into the city (alas, the shame!), shut the gates against me alone.'

But the Carthaginian, headlong in his swift course, was making for the walls, while they trembled, doubtful of their fortunes and worn for their safety. He resolves to assault the city's outworks and the open walls, the slaughter postponed and the battle deferred. When the tireless warden of the Herculean altar saw this, he darts forth and, swift, forestalls the foe out of fear. His wrath swells more violent than Elissa's tyrant's: 'Pay me meanwhile, good doorkeeper of the city, your penalty,' he said, 'that you may open your walls to death.' Nor does his wrath allow him to say more, and he whirls his flashing blade; but first, with a vast onset, the Daunian youth hurls his hurled oak-club at him. The arms, struck with a heavy crash, groaned hoarsely, and the weight of the knotty club rebounds high, dashed against the hollow bronze. But, bereft of his weapon and betrayed by the frustrated stroke, swift in his nimble course he hurries his quickened limbs along and, fleeing, traverses the walls with rapid foot. The fierce victor presses on, chiding the fleeing back. The mothers cry out, and from the high top of the wall a voice mingled with laments resounds: now they call him by his known name, now they wish, too late, that they could open the gates for the weary man; terror shakes the hearts of those exhorting, lest they admit the mighty foe along with him to the walls. The Carthaginian strikes his boss against the weary man and leaps upon him as he sinks, and, displaying the city that looks on from the walls, 'Go, console wretched Asbyte with a death near hers' — saying this, into the throat of the man longing to give up his life he buries his hostile blade, and joyful drives the royal team, the spoil snatched from the very walls, where the throng of trembling men had barred the gateway, and, victor, flies through the cheering camp in his chariot.

But the maddened band of the Numidians hasten the wretched office of burial, and add the honour of a mound, and snatching up the body, thrice they purify the ashes round about. Then the man's deadly oak-club and his dreadful covering they cast into the flames, and, his face and cheeks scorched, they left the corpse, hideous, to the Iberian birds.

Meanwhile those who held the supreme power among the Carthaginians take counsel upon the war, and what answer should be carried to the peoples of Ausonia, and at the threatening arrival of the envoys they tremble. On this side the treaty and good faith move them, and the gods as witnesses and the sworn pacts of their fathers, on that the people's love for the young man undertaking great things, and it is pleasing to hope better of the war. But Hanno, who long had harried the leader with hatred for his clan, thus reproves their zeal and their reckless favour: 'All things indeed, fathers (for the wrath of those who threaten could not restrain itself), press down my voice with fear: yet I will not hold back. Though arms bring death near, I will call the gods above to witness, and leave noted to heaven what the last safety of our state and of our country demands. Nor does Hanno, a tardy seer, sing this only now, when Saguntum is at last besieged and smoking. I burst my anxious breast lest in the camp and in arms there be nursed a deadly head; I warned, and, while I have life, will warn, knowing the inborn venom and the father's airs, as one who watches the stars in the star-bearing sky foretells to the wretched sailors the coming fury of the sea and the blasts of the North-west to come, not falsely. He has sat on the throne and seized the reins of power: therefore by arms the treaty and all right is broken by arms, towns are battered, and far off, toward our walls, the minds of the sons of Aeneas are roused, and the peace is scattered. The ghosts and the father's Furies harry the young man, and the funeral rites, and the gods turned, the treaty broken, against his faithless head, and the Massylian seer. Or does that man now, blind in the dark of new dominion, batter foreign citadels or the dwellings of Tirynthius? So let him pay for this with his own punishment, nor mix the fate of cities with his own: now is this — this, I say — the time when he besieges your walls, Carthage, and beleaguers you with arms. We have washed the Hennaean valleys with our high-spirited blood and barely waged war with a hired Spartan. We filled the caves of Scylla with our broken ships, and on the ebbing sea, our fleets snatched away, we watched Charybdis vomit back the thwarts wrenched from the bottom. Look back, mad as you are, breast empty of the gods, on the Aegates and the limbs of Libya drifting far off! Where do you rush, and seek yourself a name by the ruin of your country? Forsooth, at the sight of a youth's arms, the immense Alps will subside, and the Apennine will subside, raising its head with snowy mass to match the Alps. But grant, vain man, that the plains are given. Are the spirits of those nations mortal, or do they grow weary by sword or flame? You will not see your toil there, as with the offspring of Neritos. The soldier comes of age in the camp, and the cheeks not yet marked with golden down are worn by the helmet, nor is any rest of age known, and old men, bloodless, stand among the foremost standards by long service and provoke death. I myself saw the Roman squadrons, their bodies pierced through, hurling the weapons snatched from their wounds, I saw the spirits and the deaths of the men, and the frenzy for glory. If you hold off from war and do not offer yourself to the conquerors, how much blood, alas, Carthage, does Hanno grant you!'

Gestar to this (for, impatient and harsh, he had long been seething with savage wrath, and twice had tried to break off, by interruption, the speaker's words in mid-speech): 'In a council of Libya and a Tyrian senate, O you gods, does a Roman soldier sit, and his arms only not yet taken up by the man? For the rest of the foe is no secret. Now he threatens us with the twin Alps and the Apennine, now with the straits of Sicania and the waves of Scylla's shore, nor is he far from already dreading the ghosts and the shades of Troy: such heralding he heaps upon the death and the wounds of men, and lifts the nation to the stars. A mortal foe, believe me — though with base fear our cold hearts may tremble — a mortal foe we take up. I saw, when, his palms bound behind his back with twin chains, amid the cheering crowd he was dragged into the darkness of prison, the hope and confidence of his race — Hectorean Regulus; I saw, when, hanging on the oak, on high upon the cross he gazed at Hesperia from aloft. Nor truly do boyish faces straightway frighten me beneath the helmet, and cheeks pressed early under the casque. We are of no such sluggish stock: behold, how many Libyan squadrons vie to outdo their years in toil and do battle on bare horses; behold, the very leader, when he first uttered a voice from his tender mouth, already swore wars and trumpets and to burn the Phrygian nation with flames, and in his mind he stirred the arms of his country. Therefore let the Alps grow up to the sky, and let the Apennine drive its crags glittering with stars: through rocks and snows (for I will say it, that even empty things may goad the dark mind), there is one who opens a road through the sky: it is shameful to despair of ways trodden by Hercules and to fear a second glory. But the disasters of Libya and the fires of the first war Hanno heaps up, and forbids us to bear again the toils for liberty. Let him lay aside the heat of his fear, and let the unwarlike woman keep within the house's walls her gasping breath; we, we will go against the foe, we who are resolved to drive the masters far from the Tyrian Byrsa, even with Jove unfriendly. But if the fates resist, and Mars has already yielded, Carthage condemned, I would rather fall, nor surrender you, illustrious country, a slave for ever, and free will I look on Acheron. For what, O gods, does Fabius bid! "Swiftly lay aside your arms and come down from the captured citadel of Saguntum. Then let a chosen band kindle the heaps of shields, and let the ships be burned, and withdraw from the whole sea." You gods, oh, if ever Carthage has deserved to suffer such things, forbid the outrage, and keep unbound the hands of our leader!' When he then sat down, and the power of voting was given, after the custom of the fathers, here Hanno presses that what was seized in the conflict be returned swiftly, and adds the author of the violated treaty for surrender. Then indeed, as if the foe were bursting into the temple, the fathers, astonished, sprang up, and prayed the god to turn that omen upon Latium. But when Fabius perceived their hearts at discord and their disloyal minds inclining toward war, no longer able to govern his grief, he swiftly demands the council, and, the fathers summoned, declaring that he carried war in his lap and peace, he bids them choose what they resolve, nor deceive him with ambiguous words, and, the savage senate refusing neither, as though he poured out from his bosom closed-up armies and weapons, 'Receive a war ill-starred for Libya, and equal to the former issue,' he said, and let his loose robes fall open. Then the messenger seeks again his native citadel for the fight.

And while these things are stirred in the realms of fleeing Elissa, swift, the peoples summoned whose faltering faith wavered, sick, beneath a doubtful Mars, and weighed down with plunder, the Carthaginian had recalled his arms to the walls of Saguntum.

But behold, the nations of Ocean were bringing the leader, as gifts, a shield that flashed with savage gleam, the work of the Callaecian land, and a helmet propped on glittering crests, on whose cone, white at the top, snowy feathers quiver with trembling sway, a sword, and a single spear fatal to many thousands; besides this, a cuirass woven with knots and triple-threaded with gold, a covering penetrable by no weapon. These, wrought of bronze and the metal of hard steel, and steeped in the wealth of Tagus, piece by piece with glad and exulting eyes he scans, and rejoices in the origin of his realm.

Dido was founding the citadels of new-built Carthage, and the youth, their fleet drawn up, pressed on with the work. With moles these enclose the harbours; to these you, Bitias, venerable in your righteous old age, allot houses and dwellings. They display the head of a war-horse, found when the earth was dug up, and with a shout hail the omen. Among these scenes one could behold Aeneas, robbed of his fleet and his comrades, driven from the sea and pleading with his right hand: on him the unhappy queen, with serene brow, already gazed eagerly with a friendly face. Here too the cave and the secret bond of the lovers the Callaecian hands had made: a clamour rises to the air, and the baying of hounds, and, terrified by the sudden storm, the bands of huntsmen hide their bodies in the woods. And not far off the fleet of Aeneas's men, the shore now empty, made for the deep, while Elissa vainly called the waters back. Wounded, standing herself above the vast pyre, Dido charged the Tyrians yet to come with avenging wars, and the Dardan from the midst of the wave looked back at the blazing pyre and spread his canvas to a great destiny. On another part, suppliant at the infernal altars, Hannibal pours a secret libation of blood with the Stygian priestess and swore war against the sons of Aeneas from his earliest age. But the aged Hamilcar exults on the Sicilian fields: you would believe him, breathing, to stir the panting contests; ardour is in his eyes, and the image threatens grim.

The left side of the shield, too, a Spartan cohort filled, rough with figures; this Xanthippus leads, exulting, coming a victor from Leda's Amyclae. Beside it, a grim glory, Regulus hangs beneath the image of his punishment, and gives great examples of faith to Saguntum. But around, a happier scene: the herds of wild beasts harried in the hunt, and the engraved huts, gleam, and not far off the grim sister of the dark Moor, her skin scorched, soothes with her native speech the lionesses she has tamed. The shepherd goes free over the field, for whom, with no boundary, his unforbidden flock penetrates the glades: all things follow the Carthaginian, the watchman of the herd, after his native custom, his javelins and the barker Cydon, and his roof and hearth in the veins of the flint, and the pipe known to the bullocks. Saguntum stands out, rising on a lofty hill, which immense peoples and dense bands of fighters ring round, and batter with their quivering spears. The Iberus lay still on the outermost rim of the shield, enclosing the vast orb with its curving bends. Hannibal, the treaty broken, having crossed its banks, summoned the peoples of the Carthaginians to war with Rome. Lifted up by such a gift, he fits the new covering, shaking it upon his broad shoulders, and, towering, declares: 'Alas, how you, my arms, will sweat with Ausonian blood! What penalties, O Senate-house, you will pay me, the avenger of war!'

And now the foe, walled in by ramparts, was growing weary, and time was wearing the city away, while, exhausted, they await the standards and the allied hands. At last from the empty sea they turn their eyes, and they set aside the shores that had mocked them and look upon their end more closely. Long since, driven into the marrow, the inmost plague broods and burns through their helpless bodies. There is a famine, hidden for long, that wretchedly drives the vitals, enduring with slow decay, and burns up the veins dried of blood. Now their eyes have fled backward into their hollowed cheeks, now their bones, sallow, the skin alone their roof and ill-joined to their trembling limbs, stand out, hideous to see, their flesh consumed. The moist dews of night and the wet earth they made a solace of their woe, and with wasted labour they pressed in vain juices from the dry oak. Nothing is shameful to defile: the fasting of their raging bellies drives them to feed on strange things, and, loosening their shields and leaving them bare, they chew the coverings of their arms.

Looking down on this from high heaven, the Tirynthian weeps in vain at the misfortunes of the broken city. For fear and the precepts of his mighty parent hold him not to strive against the decrees of his savage stepmother. So, then, concealing his purpose, to the threshold of holy Faith he hastens, and tries her secret heart. The goddess, in her secrets, glad in the remote heaven, was then by chance revolving, aware, the great cares of the gods. Her the tamer of Nemea addresses with such honour: 'Begotten before Jove, glory of gods and men, without whom neither the land nor the seas know peace, partner of justice and a power silent in the breast, can you look upon the dread destruction of your Saguntum, and see, O goddess, the city paying so many penalties for you, unmoved? Your people die, and you alone the mothers, as famine conquers, you the sad mouths of the men call upon, and the children sound your name with their first voice. Bring help from heaven, and grant the weary to rise.'

Thus spoke the son of Alcmena; in answer the maiden: 'I see indeed, nor is it as nothing to me that the treaties are broken, and the day of vengeance stands fixed for deeds once so grievous. But the race of men, fruitful in frauds, drove me, hastening to leave the polluted earth, to retreat to these seats and the dwellings of Jove: I left the impious realms, fearing as much as they terrify, and the frenzies for gold, and the not paltry rewards of fraud, and beyond these, peoples living by the rite and the way of beasts, horrible, by plunder, and all honour loosed in luxury, and shame oppressed by deep night. Force is worshipped, and the sword claims for itself the place of right, and virtue has yielded to reproaches. Behold, look on the nations: none is innocent: the trafficking of guilt keeps the peace. But if it is your care that the walls founded by your right hand should keep a vigour worthy of you, with a memorable end, nor surrendered, that their weary bodies should not pass over to the Carthaginian: that which alone now the fates allow and the sequence of the future, I will prolong the glory of their death and send it down the ages, and myself attend their praised souls among the shades.'

Then the stern maiden, running down through the light air, seeks, inflamed, Saguntum struggling with the fates. She invades their minds and ranges over their familiar hearts and sends her power into their souls. Then, poured into their marrow, she enfolds them and breathes into them a burning love of herself. They want arms, and try, sick, their efforts toward battle. Unhoped-for vigour comes, and deep within recurs the sweet honour of the goddess and a holy death for the maiden. A silent feeling goes through their weary, exulting breasts, to suffer things heavier even than death, and to attempt the savage feasts of beasts and to add a crime to their tables. But chaste Faith forbids them to prolong, defiled, the light by guilt and to quell hunger with limbs like their own.

When Saturnia, chancing to bear herself to the Libyan camp, caught sight of her, in the citadel of the hated race, she reproves the maidenly frenzy that stirs up war, and, troubled with wrath, swiftly summons the step of black Tisiphone, who plies the lowest shades with her scourge, and stretching out her palms, 'These,' she says, 'nursling of night, these walls drive on with your hand, and the fierce people lay low by their own right hands: Juno commands it. I myself, near at hand, will watch from a cloud your work and your zeal. Those weapons that confound the gods and supreme Jove, by which you stir Acheron, the flame and the monstrous water-snakes and your hiss, by which terrified Cerberus shuts his jaws, and the venoms that foam with mingled gall, and whatever of crimes, whatever of punishments and of wrath is brewed for you in your fruitful breast, heap headlong upon the Rutulians, and send all Saguntum down to Erebus. For this reward let Faith stand, fallen through the air.'

So, urging with her voice, the goddess with her right hand drove the savage Eumenis, roused, against the walls, and suddenly the mountain trembled round about, and a heavier wave sounded along the shores. Rising upon her head and around her swelling neck many a serpent hisses and flashes with squalid hide. Death goes forward, opening her hollow jaws in a vast gape and gaping at the people about to fall: then Mourning, and dark Lamentation stand round, and Grief and Pain, and all the Punishments are present, and with his three-throated shape the sleepless Doorkeeper of the tearful hall roars. At once the changeable monster takes on the face of Tiburna, and at the same time her gait and the sound of her speaking. She mourned her marriage-chamber, empty by war and the whirlwind of savage Mars, robbed of Murrus her husband, illustrious in race, and drawing her name from the blood of Daunus. The Eumenis, having put on a face like hers, her hair disordered, bursts in turmoil into the midst of the assemblies, and, her sad cheeks torn, 'What end is there?' she said. 'Enough has been given to Faith and to our forefathers. I myself saw, bloody, I myself saw my own Murrus, with mangled wound, terrifying our nights and sounding dread: "Snatch yourself away, my wife, from the misfortunes of the pitiable city, and flee, if victory takes the lands from the Carthaginian, to my shades, Tiburna; the household gods have fallen, we Rutulians have perished, the Punic sword holds all." My mind shudders, nor yet does the image withdraw from my eyes. Shall I never henceforth see your dwellings, Saguntum? Happy, Murrus, in your death, and happy with your country surviving. But us, driven to slavery to Sidonian mothers, after the chances of war and the perils of the vast sea, victorious Carthage will look upon, and at last, the last night undergone, I shall lie captive in the lap of Libya. But you, O young men, whom a conscious valour forbade to be taken, for whom against harsh death there is a mighty weapon, rescue your mothers from slavery with your own hands. A steep road brings forth valour: be the first to press on and seize a glory neither easy for peoples nor known.'

When with these exhortations she had stirred their troubled ears, she then seeks the mound which, on the highest summit of the mountain, the son of Amphitryon had built to be gazed at by the sailors from the sea, and had adorned with welcome honour the ashes. Roused from its seat — a horror — there bursts forth from the depth a serpent, dark with spots squalid with gold. Its fiery eyes shone with bloody flame, and hisses whistled from its mouth with quivering tongue. And it, among the trembling assemblies and through the midst of the city, rolls along and slides swiftly down from the high walls, and, like a fugitive, makes for the neighbouring shores and plunges headlong into the foaming waves of the strait.

Then indeed their minds are shaken, as though, their dwellings betrayed, expelled ghosts fled, and the shades refused to lie on captive soil. To hope for safety they are weary, and condemn food: the hidden Fury drives them. The harsh ungentleness of the gods in their hard fortunes is no heavier than to bear the delays of death: to break off life the more swiftly the astonished men seek, and are weary of the light. In rivalry, a pyre, built with its mass rising to the stars, stood in the middle of the city: they carry and drag the wealth of long peace and the prizes won by their right hands, the robes for the matrons embroidered with Callaecian gold, and the Dulichian arms borne by their forefathers from Zacynthus, and the household gods brought from the ancient city of the Rutulians. Hither, whatever remains to the captured, they cast the shields and at the same time the ill-starred swords, and the wealth buried in war they dig deep from the earth, and, proud, rejoice to give the spoil to the highest flames from the victor.

When the deadly Fury sees these things heaped up, she shakes a torch dipped in the flame-bearing waves of Phlegethon and hides the gods above in infernal darkness. Then they set about the work, noble in all the world, which unhappy glory keeps eternal for the unconquered. Tisiphone first, indignant at the slowness of the fearful, exulting, pressed her sword-hilt and drove the hesitating sword, and dread she sounded twice and thrice with her Stygian scourge. Unwilling, they stain their right hands with kindred blood, and marvel at the outrage done with averted mind, and weep at the crime committed. Here one, turbid with wrath and with the madness of disasters and of a last life endured, turns his sidelong looks across his mother's breast. Here one, balancing the snatched axe at the neck of his beloved wife, chides himself, and, the axe flung amid his frenzy, condemns his own limbs, stupefied. Yet it is not given to escape; for the Fury lashes him with her scourge and hisses black swellings into his mouth. So all love of the marriage-bed flees, and the sweet couch flows away from the husband, and forgetfulness of the wedding-torch comes on. He flings, straining with all his strength, the sick body into the flames, where, dense with a black whirlwind, the pitchy summit, smoking, overflows with darkness. But in the midst of the assemblies, with sinister piety, unhappy Tymbrenus, you rage, and while you hasten to snatch your parent's death from the Carthaginian, his face, that gives back your own form, you mangle, and you outrage limbs most like your own. You also fell, twins, in your earliest years, Eurymedon, your brother, and you, Lycormas, your brother's image, in all things alike; and it was a sweet labour to give their sons their own names and to stand in their offspring's face before their mother. Now the sword, fixed in his throat, had freed you from guilt, Eurymedon, amid the laments of your wretched old age, and while the mother, troubled by woes and deceived by what she saw, 'Where do you rush? Turn the steel hither, Lycormas,' cries, behold, at the same moment Lycormas had pierced his throat with the sword. But with a great cry 'What madness is this, Eurymedon?' she sounded with lamentation, and, deceived by the marks of the twin shape, the mother called back the deaths with the name exchanged, until, the steel driven through her trembling breast, then too she fell, unknowing, over her ambiguous sons.

Who could unfold and command in tears the dire disasters of the city and the deeds to be praised, the punishments of Faith, and the sad fates of the pious? Scarcely would the Punic camp have ceased from weeping, and the foe that knows not to pity. The city, long inhabited by Faith, claiming heaven as the parent of its walls, falls amid the perfidious weapons of the Sidonian race and the monstrous deeds of its own people, neglected by the unjust gods: sword and fire rage, and where there is no flame, there is room for crimes. The pyre raises a cloud, blackening with dark smoke, to the high stars. On the lofty summit of a tall mountain there burns the citadel, untouched before by wars (from here the Punic camp and the shores and all Saguntum they were wont to behold), the houses of the gods burn. The sea shines back with the image of the flame, and the fires quiver in the trembling deep. Behold, in the midst of the frenzies of slaughter, Tiburna, her right hand armed with the gleaming blade of her husband and, unhappy, brandishing in her left a blazing torch, her squalid hair erect, and showing her breasts livid with beating, savage, her arms bared, to the mound of Murrus is borne over the very corpses: as, when the hall of the infernal parent thunders dread, and royal wrath plies the troubled shades, Alecto, before the throne and the dread seat of the god, serves Tartarean Jove and ministers his punishments. The arms of the man, lately defended with much blood, she places, weeping, on the mound, and, having prayed the shades to receive her, sets the blazing torch beneath. Then, snatching death, 'For you I bring these, O best of husbands, to the shades, behold, I myself,' she said; so, the sword taken back, she rushes upon the arms and invades the flames with open mouth.

Half-burnt, with no distinction, everywhere lies the unhappy throng, dead in mingled death: as, when, hunger goading, the lion at last, a victor, has assailed the sheepfolds with dry jaws, he chews the unwarlike flock with gaping mouth, roaring, and from his open throat overflows the gore he has belched in plenty: he broods on the dark heaps of the half-eaten slaughter, or with panting murmur, gnashing, he ranges among the mangled piles: far and wide lie scattered the sheep and the Molossian watchdog and the band of shepherds and the master of stall and flock, and the whole encampment, the huts laid waste, dispersed. The Carthaginians burst into the citadel, emptied by so many disasters. Then at last, the office accomplished, the Fury, to the shades, praised by Juno, returns, and, proud, exults, snatching with her the great throng down to Tartarus.

But you, starry souls, whom no age shall equal, go, glory of the lands, venerable multitude, adorn Elysium and the chaste seats of the pious. But to whom an unfair victory has given a name — (hear, O nations, and break not the bonds of peace, nor set faith below kingdoms!) — a wandering exile in the world he will stray over the whole earth, cast out from his fathers' shores, and trembling Carthage will see him turning his back. Often, his sleep terrified by the Saguntine shades, he will wish to have fallen by his own hand, and, the sword denied, once unconquered, a warrior to the Stygian waves he will bear his limbs disfigured by livid poison.