Book 4

4. Rumour scatters itself through the troubled cities of Ausonia, that the cloud-bearing mountains and the crags that threaten heaven have taken the yoke, that the Carthaginians have been carried over trackless ways, and that their leader, boasting deeds to rival the labour of Hercules, has come down upon them. Wicked Rumour sings of dreadful upheavals, and swells as she goes, swifter than the winged East Wind, and shakes the stunned strongholds with terrifying reports. Docile fear feeds the people's rumour upon what it hears, piling emptiness on emptiness: men rush into the bitter cares of war in haste, and suddenly throughout all Ausonia Mars roars and rouses arms and men. They forge new javelins, and the steel's fierce gleam, its rust scoured off, is donned again; they restore to laid-by helmets the snow-white glory of the crest; the spear is fitted with its thong, and from a fresh forge the axes are called back. The breastplate is woven, impenetrable guard of the flanks, fated to bear many a blow and many a wound made vain. Some watch over the bow, some break with the lash the panting horse into its circles, and whet the sword on the stone. Nor do they delay to bring help to the walls with which old age has wrestled; they haul up stones and pull back the hollow towers that length of years has eaten away. From these the strongholds take their weapons, and they strive to bring oak for the gates and trusty bars from the forest, and they ring them with ditches. The taskmaster Fear, no sluggard, hurries all things on, and the broad fields are loud with alarm. They have abandoned the hearth: stunned, they carry on their shoulders their ailing mothers, and the aged old men, who draw out their last thread of life, are snatched away; then with hair unbound the wife is driven before them, and to right and left are dragged the little children, keeping no even order as they go. So the crowd; and fear is passed from hand to hand, no source is asked. But the senators, though the monstrous undertaking terrifies them, and war in their very bosom, and the Alps and their passable rocks have failed them, still raise against these hardships a stern, unbroken mind, and lift up their great spirits. It is their joy to go through dangers to glory and to found by the right hand a name worth remembering, such as Fortune never gave to men in her favouring moods.

But the leader of Libya cherishes his troops behind a safe rampart, weary of march and numb in their sinews from much frost, and, by way of comfort, points out to them, glad, that a road still remains across the plains to the city, and Rome within his reach. Yet he does not think it good to let the cares of state and the counsels of war stand idle, nor can he alone endure repose. In ancient times, among the old ages, warlike nations once invaded the side of Ausonia and won themselves blessed seats and made themselves feared by the hand of arms. Then impious wars the Tarpeian father and the captured Quirites felt. While he stirs them with gifts, and warms their empty hearts and their nation loose in its ways, and joins their arms to his, already the consul, sailing past the shores in a swift fleet, Scipio was bringing himself back from the Phocaean coast, and the mighty leaders, having measured out the toil of sea and of land in opposite ways, were now drawing nearer to dangers closer to the rampart, and the first beginnings of a great disaster were at hand. For when, the camps drawn together as the consul advanced, Fortune had taken away delay, and the cohorts, kindled at the sight of the foe, demanded the signal for their fury, the Tyrian leader, in a great voice, sounds through his numerous columns that all is conquered far and wide, whatever bears the name of Iberian: that neither the Pyrenees nor the fierce Rhone spurned his orders, that Rutulian Saguntum smoked in ashes, that his march was forced through the Celts, and that where it had been a labour for the son of Amphitryon to set his step, there under arms the Carthaginian squadrons had gone, and the horseman, borne over the heights, had trampled the ridge, and the Alps had echoed with neighing.

Against him the consul calls his own men to noble trial: "You have, soldier, a foe broken and scorched by the snowy crags, dragging along with difficulty his numbed limbs. Come now, let him who leaped across the sacred mountains and the deep cliffs learn how much more loftily our rampart stands than the Herculean height, and whether it is more to scale the hills or to break your ranks. Let him grant rumour its empty boast, so long as, when the battle is poured out and he rushes back the way he came, the Alps stand in his path. Over the heights the gods have driven him on and led him here, that he might dye the bounds of Latium with his blood, and that a hostile land might hide his bones. I would gladly learn whether now a new and second Carthage sends out this war against us, or the same that lies sunk beneath the sea, buried in the vast deep among the Aegates." This he says, and turns his column toward the waves of Ticinus. Clear Ticinus keeps its waters sky-blue and its pools, with their shallow bed, never knowing to be stirred, and slowly draws its bright liquid in a green stream. You would scarcely believe it glides: so gentle between its shady banks, amid the tuneful rivalry of the birds' song, it leads its sleep-bringing water in a shining flood.

And now, as the shadows fled at the very edge of night, the light was at hand, and Sleep had finished out his hours. The consul was preparing to explore the ground, the nature of the neighbouring hill, and what kind of soil the plains might have. Equal zeal was in the Carthaginian, and like cares in his breast. And so they were at hand, with swift wings of cavalry attending them. But when the clouds of stirred-up dust had shown that the foe was advancing, and nearer and nearer the ground groaned with the ringing horn of hooves, and at the same time the keen neighing of the conquering horses raged louder than the trumpets, "To arms, men, seize your arms, men! Both leaders press on!" In both was swift valour and a twin desire for praise, and a madness for battle and war alike resolved. No delay. Now only so much field divided them from striking range as a hurled lance, driven by its thong, can reach, when suddenly, from a clear sky with no clouds at all, an omen turned their minds and eyes toward the stars. A hawk, holding its way from the mid-path of the sun, was violently troubling the birds beloved of Venus and famed for the honour of Dione, and with talons, now with beak, now with hard buffets of the wing, it had given fifteen of them to death amid its cruel wounds. Nor was there end or surfeit, but a thirst for new blood kept swelling, and now it pressed the dove, trembling at the slaughter of those before, and uncertain in her flight as the feathers slipped, until the bird of Jove, coming from the eastern source of Phoebus, forced it at last to turn its back into the thin clouds. Then victorious it turned its glad flight toward the Roman standards, and where the fair son of the leader, young Scipio, was brandishing arms with his boyish arms, it gave its cry twice and three times, and grazing with its beak the gleaming crest of his helmet, returned itself to the stars.

Liger cried out (his was the art of feeling the gods' warnings and of showing things to come, the bird his teacher): "Carthaginian, for twice eight years within Italy's bounds, like the bold bird, you will hunt the youth of Ausonia, and carry off much plunder with blood. But check your threats: the armour-bearer of Jove, see, denies you the realm of Daunus. I know you, highest of the gods: be at hand, father, and confirm the omen of your bird. For for you, unless the soaring bird with empty flight falsely belies the gods, are kept, my boy, the last fates of subdued Libya and a name greater than Carthage." Against him Bogus sings glad omens to the Tyrian king, that the favouring hawk and the birds slain in the cloud portend disaster to the sons of Aeneas and to the race of Venus. Then he is first to hurl, as if a god urged him on and he were privy to the fates, his spear at the foe as its companion. That spear, flying far through the open spaces of the broad field, would have lost its blow for the distance, had not Catus, his reins loosed, while he strives to pluck the glory of the first fight, borne his headlong horse's face into its path. So, growing faint and now about to fall, the cornel shaft found the wound it sought and took its slaughter from the foe, and stood between the temples of the brow it met.

The lines clash, and with a great roar across the plain all check with the rein their horses, reared up high, and then bear them forward of their own will. Risen into the air the steed goes, and flying through the open ground in a swift storm scarcely marks faint traces on the surface of the dust. Before the rest, the swift squadron of the Boii, with Crixus their leader, batters into the foremost and hurls its monstrous limbs against them. He himself, swollen with pride, traced his line from the stock of ancestral Brennus, this Crixus, and dragged the captured Capitol into his titles, and, madman, upon his shield bore the Celts weighing out the gold from the Tarpeian ridge and the sacred summit. The man's milk-white neck glowed with a tawny torque, his garments were striped with gold, his sleeves stood stiff with gold, and his crest quivered with the like metal. With a vast onset the foremost phalanx of the Camertes is struck down and falls, and the close-packed waves of the Boii rush headlong through the crowded ranks: the unspeakable Senones thicken their allied swarms, and bodies, crushed against the breasts of the horses, are rolled over the whole field. The fields swim, and the deep gore of men, the deep gore of horses, swallows the slippery footing of the warring squadron. The heavy hoof finishes off the half-dead with its trampling, and flying about it scatters from the blood foul dews upon the ground, and washes the arms with the wretched men's own gore. The first javelins, boy, of swelling Pelorus, Tyrrhenus, dying you stain with crimson blood, victorious as they are. For while you spur their spirits to battle with the horn and kindle the men anew to wounds with your blast, a barbarian weapon stuck in your panting throat and shut up the hoarse murmur with a deadly wound. But the sound, poured from the dying mouth at its last, wandered through the curved horn over lips now mute.

Crixus slew Picens and Laurus, both not from afar, but Laurus with the sword—to Picens a polished spear, gathered on the banks of the Po, brought death. For while he seeks the byways and plots to deceive with a leftward wheel, the man's spear settled in his thigh and likewise through the panting flank of the flying horse, and gave a double death, the grim thing. The same man, wrenching from the bloody neck of Venulus, lays you low headlong, Farfarus, with the still-warm weapon, and you, Tullus, nursed beneath cold Velinus, a singular glory of Ausonia and a name to be remembered, had the fates granted delay or the Carthaginians kept their pacts; then Remulus, and—once names most renowned in war— the Magii of Tibur and Metaurus of Hispellum, and Clanius, planning with wavering spear a wound.

Nor is there place for the Tyrians for war or battle, but the whole field the Celtic frenzy has filled. The javelins fly vainly for none, and all the steel stands fixed in a body. Here among the trembling, daring a monstrous deed, Quirinius, to whom flight was unknown and who chose, with unconquered mind, in adverse straits to take death upon his breast, fires his horse with the spur and scatters his Gallic darts from his arm, that if a way be given to unbar a passage and to break with the steel through to the king, sure of death he seeks in all his deeds that glory which he could not feel. Down falls Teutalus, his groin pierced, and the earth is shaken beneath the vast weight. Sarmens falls, who, if victor, had vowed to lay his yellow hair and his locks for you, Gradivus, rivalling gold, and the ruddy knot upon his crown. But the Fates, not hearing him vow his unshorn hair, dragged him by it to the shades. Over his white limbs the gore goes steaming, and the drenched earth grows red. But Ligaunus, not slowed by the javelin that met him, rushes in and, facing the man, wheels his sword to meet him, and rising strikes where the sinews bind the supple arm to the shoulder, and the right hand, cut off by the wound, hung dying a little while from the loosened reins, and while it gleams, with a trembling effort it grasps again the strap and, knowing nothing, imitates one guiding the accustomed bridle. Then Vosegus reaps the neck of the turned man, and bearing the helmet hung up with its plume, and the enclosed face of the slain man, hails the gods with the cry of his fathers.

And while the peoples of the Gauls give these dead to the field, the consul, hurrying the squadrons summoned from the camp to battle, was driving them on, and first he was rushing at the foe, high on his gleaming white horse. He draws from every side the choice youth of rich Ausonia, the Marsi and Cora and the glory of Laurentum and the javelin-throwing Sabellian, and the Mars-worshipping man of Tuder from his lofty hill, and the Faliscans clad alike in their national linen, and those whom, beneath Hercules' walls by the silent river, the apple-bearing fields breed, the dwellers of the Anio by Catillus' line, and the Hernican stones, hardened in the ice-cold streams, and the lands of cloudy Casinum used to send. They went into war, the nurslings of the land that rules, a youth condemned by the gods and now never to return. Scipio, where the central whirlpool of the fight devours the columns, drives his horse, and, spurred by the slaughter of his own men, slays as offerings to the dead Labarus and Padus and Caunus and Breucus, scarcely felled by many a wound, and Larus, who rolled his eyes with a Gorgon-like face. You fall too, warlike Lepontius, by a grim fate; for while, fierce, he sets his body in the way to seize the reins, and, standing tall on foot himself, levels with the face of the seated consul, a heavy sword fell into the middle of his brow, and his head, split off, lay upon his shoulders. But Batus, frantic, who wrestles with his horse and blocks the charges with his shield, laid out on the tawny sand by a blow of the steed, his face crushed in by the dashing heels, lost it. The Ausonian leader rages through the troubled plains, as the Getic North Wind, when in victory it has lifted whole the Icarian sea from its lowest depth: the sailor is tossed, scattered over the vast deep with his shattered fleet, and every Cyclad is drenched by the foaming water.

Crixus, since hope was slender and salvation small, . . . arms his mind with contempt of death. His bristling beard glows red with bloody foam, and the gape of the madman's mouth whitens, and his hair is matted with the cast-up dust. He attacks Tarius, who, the consul near, was mixing in the battles, and thunders round the man with fierce arms. That one rolls upon the ground; for the fir-shaft, bringing his utmost fate, pours him forward over his horse's shoulders, and in terror he is dragged along, his limbs bound and tangled to the girths. Long traces of gore the spreading field leaves behind, and the spear-point marks its quivering tracks in the dust. The consul was praising the youth's death and making ready to avenge those noble shades, when through his ears a dread voice came, and he hears Crixus named by the shouting men, though unknown to him by face. His anger rises more violent to close fight, and he fixes his eyes on the longed-for body. Then, urging on his horse with the welcome honour of a stroke to its patted neck, he addresses it: "The common throng and lesser warfare soon, Garganus: the gods call us to greater things. Do you see how great Crixus goes? Even now I set you as your prize that carpet shining with Sidonian flame, a barbarian glory, and you shall be given the tawny reins." So having spoken, with a great shout he summoned Crixus to battle, and demanded combat in the open field. Nor had equal anger failed to kindle the foe, who did not refuse. When the squadrons, ordered, drew back on this side and on that and gave room, and the fight stood in the middle of the plain, as great as Mimas, the nursling of Earth, who in the Phlegraean fields moved his standards and terrified heaven with his arms, so great does Crixus from his half-bestial breast hurl forth his roar, and rouse his wrath with horror-sounding howls: "Has no one survived the burned and captured city, to tell you what right hands the people of Brennus brought to arms against you? Learn now, then," he says, and at once hurls, with its knots and seared oak, the grim beam, fit to shatter even the gates. It sounds with a fearful crash, but, in its over-great cast, improvident, it saved the space of the distant field and flies past the nearer foe. To him the consul: "Remember to carry this to the shades and to your ancestor, how far from the Tarpeian seat you fall, and that to you it was not granted to look upon the Capitol of the sacred mount." Then with knot and light running together he aids the spear, a strain worthy of the man's bulk. It flies through the edges of the many-fold linen and the coverings woven with sinews, and measures the deep breast with its whole point. He sinks down, stretched out in broad ruin upon the fields, and the struck earth groans beneath his huge arms. Not otherwise, on the Tyrrhenian shore, where the mole is built to do battle against the waves and the blind storms beneath, the lofty pier, sounding monstrously, is driven into the sea: Nereus bellows, and the blue waters, parted by the blow, receive beneath their angry surface the rock dashed upon them. Their leader lost, the Celts trust themselves to flight on foot: their one hope and all their great ardour had hung on that one life. And as when a hunter, on the high top of Picanus, rouses the thick coverts, and into the close lairs sends the black plague everywhere through the bramble-tangled wilds, while the fire gathers its silent strength and flame, and the pitch-black summit slowly rolls in murky gloom and twists its clouds with thick smoke: soon the sudden blazes gleam over the whole mountain, there is a roar, the beasts have fled, the birds have fled, and far below in the valley the heifers tremble.

But Mago, when he sees that the squadrons have turned and that the first effort, which alone the nation has, has come to nothing, calls to battle the arms of his men and his nation's cavalry. From every side, bare, they leap to the fray, both bridled and unbridled troops. Now the Italians are borne back upon their rear with reins reversed, now again panic carries the Tyrian squadrons backward, or these bend their rightward circles in crescent curves, or those wind their leftward turns into a horn-shaped sweep. With alternating course they weave their wheeling coils and by the same art, retreating, undo them as they yield. With this same turn the sea, when discord stirs the winds, the North Wind drives and the East Wind drives back, and the mass of the deep they bear now this way, now that, with alternating gusts.

The Sidonian leader flies up, gleaming with gilded purple, and round him Dread and Terror and Fury. And when he raised the gleaming orb of his Callaecian shield and struck the fields with its great light, hope and valour fall, and from the trembling mind the shame of turning the back recedes, nor any care for an honourable death, but flight is fixed, and the gaping of the earth is longed for. So, when the tigress has come forth from her Caucasian caves, the fields are abandoned, and every flock, troubled with maddened look, seeks safe hiding-places: she ranges victorious over the deserted valleys, and now little by little she bares her jaws with drawn-back gape, as if already chewing the bodies before her, and with monstrous maw plots slaughter. Not Metabus, not the taller Ufens escaped her even so, though the one was borne on winged foot, the other by his horse's help at full rein. For the ash-spear, gleaming, sent Metabus down to the shades with its point; Ufens, collapsed with his hamstring cut, the sword cut off, and took with his blood the glory of his speed. And now he had given to death Sthenius and Laurus, and from cold Collinum Collinus, whom green Fucinus in his grotto had nursed and given to swim across his lake. Massicus too becomes his comrade in death, his hurled spear struck home, begotten on the sacred summit of the vine-bearing mountain and nursed by the waters of Liris, which with calm face hides its course and, changing for no rain, glides past its silent banks in a jewelled stream.

Before the front line three brothers were mingling fierce battles, whom in Sidon, blest in her womb amid wars, Barce had borne to Spartan Xanthippus. Greek affairs, their father the leader, the noble name of Amyclae, and the chains thrown on the neck of Regulus by the Spartans swelled their hearts with old renown. They burned to prove their race by war and their father a Laconian by their deeds, and then to visit the cold mountains, Taygetus, and at last, the wars subdued, to swim their fathers' Eurotas and see the rites of Lycurgus. But the god and the Ausonian brothers forbade them to reach Sparta—brothers equal in number, whom harsh Aricia had sent, born in the deep groves of Egeria, matched in age and mind; but no further would hard Clotho grant them to see the lake and altar of Diana. For when, driven against their foes in the whirlwind of battle, Eumachus and Critias and Xanthippus, glad in his father's name, joined their steps—(as lions wage furious wars among themselves and with panting roar fill the squalid fields and the long native huts: swiftly every Moor flees to the hidden rocks and trackless places, and the Libyan wife, checking her offspring's wailing, holds back her children from the breast; those rage grimly, and bones broken in their bloody mouths crunch, and limbs writhe beneath their savage teeth)— just so the youth of Egeria, on this side keen Virbius, on that side Capys, leap forward, and Albanus in equal arms. Sinking down a little, Critias hurls headlong Albanus to ruin, his belly pierced through: but to that one suddenly the entrails, sliding in pitiable fall, filled all his shield. Eumachus then took Capys—but he held with all his weight the covering as though fixed to his limbs; yet the wicked sword struck down the left hand fastened to his shield with a wound, and, not yielding his shield though it was pressed in his own effort, the luckless hand stuck fast among the slipping arms. The last palm remained, two now laid low, to Virbius. As he feigned to draw his steps in fear, Xanthippus falls by the sword, Eumachus by the stiff spear, and at last the fight is evened by a doubled death. Then the blade pierced the breasts of the men in turn, and in exchange, their lives torn away, they laid down the battle. Happy in their death, whom love of kin added to the shades! The coming ages will pray for such brothers, and their glory will be eternally celebrated by a mindful age, if only my songs have the power to carry the day and to see late descendants, and Apollo has not begrudged them fame.

But the consul, with his voice, holds the squadrons scattering over the whole plain, while his voice has strength: "Where do you bear back your standards? What panic, alas, has stolen you from your own selves? If the first bristling lot of the field seemed yours, and to provoke the battle's front, stand behind me, men, and, your terror driven off, only look on! These right hands that you flee were begotten by captive fathers. What hope for the conquered? Shall we make for the Alps? Believe that Rome herself, who bears her walls upon her tower-crowned head, now stretches out her suppliant palms to you. On every side I see the snatching away of children and the slaughter of parents, and the Vestal hearths quenched with blood. Ward off this horror!" After, amid such words, his throat was dulled by the frequent shouting and by the thick dust, with his left hand he seizes the reins, with his right his arms, and thrusts forward his broad breast, and threatens with drawn sword, now himself, now the trembling men, at close quarters, if they do not stand.

While the Father from high Olympus watches these lines, the dangers of the noble consul moved his mind. He calls Gradivus and thus speaks with a father's voice: "The toil of a great-hearted man, my son—who, unless you take up the war, will doubtless be his last—frightens me: snatch from the battle the burning man, and forgetful of himself in his lust for slaughter, halt the leader of Libya; for the wicked one seeks more in the death of one consul than in the whole rout of the falling. Besides, you see the boy who already entrusts the battle to his tender right hand and strives to surpass his years by his deeds and thinks it long to come to manhood through war: let him, you his leader, dare the firstfruits of battle, you his teacher, and let him win this first victory—to have saved his father." So the Sower of the world. But Mars summons his chariot to battle from the land of the Odrysians. Then he takes up his shield that scatters the flames of the black thunderbolt, and his helmet, easy for no god to bear, and his breastplate sweated over with much toil of the Cyclopes, and brandishes through the air his spear sated with blood in the war of the Titans, and fills the fields with his car. With him goes a host of Furies, and the Eumenides together, and the countless shapes of bloody death, and Bellona, busied with guiding the reins, goads the four-horse team with her black whip. A bristling storm is borne from the boundless sky, whirling black globes and turbid clouds, and enfolds the earth. The Saturnian seat is shaken, trembling at the god's coming, and the river leaves its banks when the chariot is heard, and flows back toward its source.

The Garamantian youth had ringed the Ausonian leader with weapons and were preparing fresh gifts for the Tyrian king, the spoils of his arms and the consul's dripping head. He stood resolved not to yield to Fortune, and with a fierce mass hurled back his spears, growing more savage with the slaughter, and now with his own, now with hostile gore, his limbs are wet and drip, his plume is fallen, and as the ring narrows round in its circle, the Garamantian presses with nearer javelins and balances the iron aimed with cruel point. Here the boy, when he saw the weapon fixed in his father's body, his cheeks grew wet, and a sudden pallor seized the trembling youth, and he broke out in a groan toward the stars. Twice he had tried to forestall his father's fate, his right hand turned against himself; twice Mars turned his wrath upon the Carthaginians. Through the weapons, through the foe the fearless boy is borne, and keeps pace with Gradivus' stride. At once the squadrons gave way, and suddenly a broad path appears across the field. Sheltered by the heavenly shield, he reaps the ranks, and lays low upon the arms of the fallen the bodies, and slays the author of the weapon, and many shades before his father's eyes, the longed-for offerings. Then, the spear quickly snatched from the hard bones, bearing his father leaning upon his neck and shoulder, he darts forth. The astonished squadrons, at so great a sight, hold their weapons, and the harsh Libyan yields his place, and all the Iberian yields far and wide, and that signal devotion and youth wrought a wondrous silence on the warring fields. Then from his high chariot Mars said: "You shall raze the towers of Carthage and shall force the Tyrians to terms. Yet in the long age no light so great shall dawn for you, dear boy. Blessing, O blessing on your sacred nature, true offspring of Jove. And still greater things remain, but no better can be given." Then Mars, the clouds and the air traversed, makes for the earth, the sun now spent, and the darkness shut up the weary lines within their camp.

Cynthia was laying night to rest with her downward-sloping car, fanned by her brother's wheels, and from the Eastern sea the rosy flames were rising amid the blue. But the consul, sad, was making for the Trebia and the hills, fearing the plain favourable to the Carthaginians. And now the days were snatched away in marching and busy toil, and broken in mid-stream the bridge floated, its bonds undone, that had carried the Dardanian column across, when the Carthaginian came to the swift waves of Eridanus. And while he seeks the fords and gentle approaches by winding circuits through the byways, and looks for the languid shallows of the pool, sometimes, the alder snatched from the neighbouring woods, he covered the river with a fleet to carry his columns across: behold, the consul was at hand, and held at once the borders of the Trebia, summoned through the long blue sea past Sicilian Pelorus, the offspring of the Gracchi. A clan famous for a great and spirited man, and many an ancestor among the images shone forth with bright titles in war and at home. Nor were the Carthaginians wanting, their camp pitched across the river on the grass. For prosperity stirred their spirits, and their leader, taunting them besides: "What third consul now remains to the city? What other Sicania remains under arms? See, all the bands of the Latins and of the grandsons of Daunus have come together. Let them now strike treaties with me, the leaders of Italy, and demand back laws and pacts. But you, granted your weapons amid the light of war, unhappy in soul, so, so may you live, and to your son once more give this glory; nor in the close of your age be it granted to meet death in war, when the fates shall call. To have fallen fighting is my privilege." Thus he loudly proclaims, ablaze. Then with a light javelin, busy, with his Massylian squadrons he provokes them beneath the very camp and draws out the foe. Nor does the Latin soldier think it right to owe his safety to the rampart, or that the closed gates be battered by the spear. They burst out, and before all flies over the open mound a consul in no way unworthy of the Gracchi. The breeze shakes the waving crests of his Auruncan helmet, and from his shoulder gleams the ancestral glory of his blood-red cloak. With a great shout he calls his columns back, and where the crowd, meeting him, packs its dense ranks, breaking a path he is borne across the field, as a torrent, headlong from the top of lofty Pindus, rushes with a roar into the plains and with a great crash rolls a side torn from the mountain: everywhere, meeting it, the herds and the monstrous beasts and the woods are dragged along, and the foaming wave shouts in the rocky valleys.

Not if the glory of the Maeonian tongue should return to me, and Father Phoebus should grant me to pour forth a hundred voices, could I tell over all the slaughters that the right hand of the great consul, or against him the frenzy of Tyrian wrath, brought forth. Murranus by the leader of Libya, and the leader of the Phalanti by the Ausonian—men skilled in war and old in toil— each laid low the other's, face to face. Murranus stormy Anxur had sent from its mountain, you, Phalantus, the rites sacred to Triton from the snow-white deep. As soon as the consul shone in his splendid raiment, though deprived of part of his sight, with one eye Cupencus, sufficing for the wars, fiercely brandishes his spear and fixes it quivering on the margin of the topmost shield. To him the consul (for anger boils him): "Lay down, wicked one, whatever remains in your fierce face and gleams on your maimed brow." So he says, hurling with a straight whirl the oaken shaft, and sends the grim light through with his whole point. Nor more lightly does the son of Hamilcar rage on his right. To him falls luckless Varenus in his snow-white armour, Varenus of Mevania, for whom the rich teat of the field Fulginia ploughs, and Clitumnus in the broad meadows washes his white bulls in his cold stream. But the gods are grim, and that greatest care, a victim thankless, was reared in vain for the Tarpeian Thunderer. The light Iberian presses on, and lighter the Moor to range about. On this side javelins, on that the Libyan cornel-spears strive to weave the sky with a dense cloud, and as much of the level field as lies between to the banks, so much do the quivering weapons bury, and there is no room in death for the crowded to fall. Allius, set out from Argyripa and the fields of Daunus, a hunter, was ranging over the plain with rough javelins and his Iapygian horse, and borne into the midst of the foe, hurled his Apulian darts with no idle right hand. For him a breastplate bristles with the hide of a Samnite she-bear, and his helmet is fenced with the tusks of an aged boar. But when, as he wrought havoc, as though over the open he ranged the lairs in a wood, or stirred up the backs of beasts on Garganus, on this side Mago, on that as savage saw him likewise Maharbal, as when, with hunger driving them, two bears from opposite crags attack a frightened bull between their twin onslaughts, and rage suffers no sharing of the prey, just so the keen Allius is brought down, his javelin hurled from this side and that: the Moorish yew goes whistling through both flanks. Then the meeting points sounded in the midst of his heart, and it was uncertain to which spear his death should yield. And now, the standards scattered, through the Roman ranks the Carthaginian drives the stragglers to the banks—a pitiable thing— pressing the panicked men and striving to plunge them in the river. Then the Trebia begins new battles in its ill-omened flood for the weary, and rouses its waves by the prayers of Juno. The sinking earth swallows the bodies of the fleeing and, treacherous in its soil, sucks them down in its baffling gulf. Nor is it given to strive and to wrench from the sticky mud the steps sunk deep within: by the tenacious slime the bound footsteps cling fast, and the loosened bank entangles, or with the blind treachery of the marsh strikes them down. And now one over another, rising up through the slippery places, while each man snatches a way for himself over the inextricable shore, and struggles with the rotten turf, slipping they fall and crush themselves with their own ruin. That swift swimmer, now just about to grasp safety, while he makes ready and, straining with lifted body, grasps the topmost grass with his hand and emerges from the liquid waves, hangs pinned by a spear hurled into the bank. Here one, robbed of his weapon, clasps the foe with his arms and, mingling death, holds him fast struggling in the shallows. A thousand shapes of death at once. The Ligurian falls in the fields, but the man's face, cast into the river waters, drank in long gasps the bloody stream. At last fair Irpinus was barely swimming out from the mid-flood and calling his comrades' hands with a shout, when a fierce horse, carried by the swift waters and with many a wound, struck him and sank the weary man beneath the surface. Disaster is heaped up by a force of elephants, suddenly seen across the waters, urged on with their turreted backs. For it is swept headlong through the shallows, like a crag torn down from a rent mountain, and drives before its breast the Trebia, which fears the strange thing, and lies upon the foaming channel. Adversity tests men, and through hardship up the steep cliff fearless valour strives toward glory. For Fibrenus, unable to bear losing his death unhonoured and bare of fame, "We shall be marked," he said, "nor, Fortune, will you hide my death beneath the flood. I will try whether there is on earth what the Ausonian sword cannot tame, or the Tyrrhenian spear cannot pierce through." Then rising he casts, and plants in the right eye of the beast his cruel javelins, and leaves the weapon in the wound. With a horror-sounding shriek the monster follows the penetrating thrust of the point, and, mangled, with gore poured forth, lifts its brow and, its driver fallen, turns its back. Then in truth they attack with javelins and frequent arrow, daring now to hope for its death, and through the huge shoulders and the stretched-out flanks the wound comes with its black point. Many a lance stands in its back and on its dark spine, and it brandishes a vast forest with its shaken body, until, the weapons spent in the long contest, it falls and closes the shallows it presses with its great ruin.

Behold, against the stream, though his slowed limbs are held back by a man's wound, the implacable Scipio goes up the river and harasses the foe with countless slaughters. With the bodies and shields and helmets at once of the fallen the Trebia is covered, and one is scarcely left to see the waves. Mazaeus by javelin, Gestar is laid low by sword, then Thelgon, dweller of Cyrene, with a Pelopid ancestor. At him he hurls a pike caught up from the swift flood, and as far as the point, drawn thin by its long stiff iron, projects, he drives it through the gaping mouth. Struck by the wood, the teeth sounded in the wound. Nor was rest sought in death: his swelling limbs the Trebia gave to Eridanus, Eridanus to the waters of the sea. You too, Thapsus, fall, a tomb denied you after death. What did the house of the Hesperides or the groves of the goddesses avail, guarding the tawny boughs on the gold-bearing tree?

The Trebia swelled and raised itself from its deepest pools, and now, fierce, drives forth its whole spring in a flood and hurls all its force. The wave rages with sounding eddies, and a new torrent follows with a roar. The leader felt it, and with kindled anger more violently: "Great penalties, O Trebia, and deserved, will you pay to me, treacherous one," he said: "torn through the Gallic streams I will scatter you over the fields, and take from you the name of river, and stop up the very spring from which you open, nor shall it be granted you to touch your banks and glide into the Po. What sudden madness has made you, unhappy, a Sidonian river?" As he hurls such words, a rising mound of waters struck him and pressed his shoulders with its curved flood. Steep against the opposing mass of the rushing waves the leader stands, and lifted on his shield the rushing river. Moreover, from behind, the foaming wave with a whistling storm sprinkles his topmost crest with spray. To go through the shallows and to set a firm step the god forbids, the earth withdrawn beneath him, and far off the struck rocks sound hoarsely, and the waves, roused to the wars of their parent, do battle, and the river has lost its banks. Then, his hair wet and bound with sea-green leaves, he lifts up his head with a voice: "Do you threaten besides to wipe out my proud penalties and the name of Trebia, O foe to my realms? How many bodies I carry, laid low by your right hand! By the shields and helmets of the men you slay, my course and channel are narrowed and choked. With slaughter, you see, my deep pools redden and are borne backward. Set a limit to your right hand, or fall upon the neighbouring fields."

These things, Venus joined to her, from a high mound was watching Mulciber, hidden in the gloom of a dark cloud, and Scipio, his palms lifted, presses heavy toward heaven: "Gods of my fathers, by whose auspices Dardan Rome stands, did you save me of late from such a death amid so great a battle? Was it thought unworthy that this life be cut off by a brave right hand? Give me back, O son, to dangers, give me back to the foe! Let it be allowed me, in battle, to summon a death that I may approve to my country and my brother." Then, stirred by his words, Venus groaned and turned upon the river the swift might of her unconquered husband. The scattered fire drives flames on every side along the banks, and burning lays waste the shades nursed for many years by the river. The whole grove burns, and Vulcan, poured into the high woods in victory, crackles with loosened reins. And now the fir is scorched in its foliage, now the pine and the alders, now the poplar, standing on its bare trunk alone, has let fall on high the birds wont to dwell among its branches. The greedy flame drinks up the waters drawn from the deepest flood, and, the savage heat pressing on, the dry gore parches on the banks. Far and wide the bristling earth is split into cracks and gapes, broken open with a chasm, and on the pools the deep ashes have settled.

Father Eridanus marvels that his eternal courses suddenly cease, and the mourning choir of the Nymphs filled their innermost caves with stunned wailing. Three times, as he tried to lift his scorched head, Vulcan plunged it back beneath the smoking waves with hurled torch, three times the seized reed bared the god's hair. Then at last his voice was admitted and the vows of one who prayed, and to him praying it was granted to keep his former banks, and at last from the Trebia Scipio called back his weary cohorts to a fortified hill, with Gracchus attending. But the Carthaginian, having venerated the river with much honour, set up grassy altars by its allied waters, not knowing, alas, what greater things the gods were stirring, and what grief, Trasimene, you were preparing for Ausonia.

The peoples of the Boii had Flaminius lately disturbed with arms, and to that man the glory of war was then easy, to crush a nation light in heart and poor in cunning. But it was no equal task to have contended with the Tyrian tyrant. This man, born for the city's fatal harm by left-hand omens, the Saturnian prepares for the weary empire as a leader, and a man worthy of the coming ruin. Then, when the first day of his office and the helm of the country to be guided he seized, and the camp was under his command, as one untaught of the sea and ignorant to handle the deep by art, if he has taken charge of a wretched ship, holds himself the place of the winds, and to every storm gives the vessel to be tossed: the ship is borne wandering on the flood onto the rocks, his own right hand, the helmsman's, driving it— so the army is driven headlong, its arms snatched up, against the peoples of the Lydians and the seat consecrated of old from the origin of ancient Corythus, and the Maeonian colonists joined by the blood of their ancestors to the Italians, their stock intermingled.

Nor does the warning god delay the king of the Africans from his task, worth such great praise. Sleep had hidden all things and was giving forgetfulness to their anxious cares, when Juno, changed into the deity of the neighbouring pool and her wet brow girt with poplar leaves, stirs his heart with sudden cares and breaks the leader's rest with a voice not to be scorned: "O Hannibal, happy in fame and a name to be wept by Latium, if Fortune had created you for Ausonia, destined for the great gods—why do we hold back the fates? Drive off delay. Brief is the Fortune of great favour. As much as you vowed, when you swore the Dardan wars to your father, so much blood from an Ausonian body shall flow for you, and you shall sate your father's shades with slaughter. To us you shall pay your due honours, free of care. For I am that one whom, ringed with lofty mountains, the band sent from Tmolus surrounds—Trasimene of the shady pools." By these warnings he is moved, and the youth, glad in the deity, he straightway carries headlong over the ridge of the airy mountain. Apennine bristled with ice among the slippery rocks, mingling its pine-bearing head with the highest sky. The deep snow had hidden the timber, and on the lofty peak the hoary crest rose to the stars with crusted frost. He bids them go. Sooner does his glory seem to be quenched and to fall, if a stand be made at any mountains after the Alps. They climb the cloudy summits of the sheer crag. Nor does the conquering of the ridge end or soothe their toil: the flats swim, and with rotten ice in the melting waters the trackless fields stand flooded in a miry swamp. And now the leader's bare crown, amid such inhospitable places, is shaken by the cruelty of the sky, while down his face and his cheeks the eye runs. Easy is it to scorn the healers: he believes the longed-for time for war well bought at whatever peril. He spares not the honour of his face, provided he lose not his march, nor does he hesitate to give his other limbs as the price of war, if victory demand it, and he thinks it light enough to see the Capitol as victor, where to make for it and where to strike the Italian foe at close quarters. Having endured such things, at last among the savagery of the place they came to the longed-for lakes, where then in arms he would take ample atonement for his lost sight.

But behold, the senators were at hand, sent from Carthage. No small cause for the journey, nor glad were the tidings they brought. It was the custom among the peoples whom the stranger Dido founded, to seek the gods' favour with slaughter, and upon the blazing altars (unspeakable to tell) to place little children. The yearly urn brought back the pitiable lots, its rites imitating the sacred ways of Thoantean Diana. For him the discordant Hanno, of old hostile, by the custom of the gods sought out, by lot and fate, the offspring of Hannibal. But a nearer fear was from the wrath of the armed leader, and great before their eyes stood the image of his return. This Imilce makes harsher, her cheeks befouled and her hair torn, and fills the city with the clamour of her grief, as an Edonian woman on Pangaeus, stirred by the triennial rite, goes over the ridges and sighs within her breast for the enclosed Bacchus. So among the Tyrian mothers, as if set beneath the torches, she cries: "Ah, husband, in whatever quarter of the world you wage your wars, hither bear your standards. More violent is the foe here, here nearer. You now perhaps beneath the very walls of the Dardan city receive the quivering weapons upon your shield, unafraid, and brandishing the savage torch, carry fires to the Tarpeian roofs. Meanwhile your first home and only offspring, alas, in the bosom of his fatherland, is dragged to the Stygian altars. Go now, lay waste with the sword the Ausonian household gods and toil at forbidden roads. Go, unseal the pacts sworn by all the gods. So Carthage repays your rewards and even now pays you such honours. And further, what piety is this, to sprinkle the shrines with gore? Alas, the first causes of crime to wretched mortals, not to know the nature of the gods! Go, pray for what is just with pious incense, and turn away the cruel rites of slaughter. Gentle and akin to man is god. Thus far, I pray, let it be enough to have seen bullocks slain before the altars. Or if the gods wish the unspeakable, and it is fixed and settled, me, me, who bore him, consume with your vows. Why does it please to despoil the Libyan lands of this offspring? Or were the Aegates more to be wept, and the Punic realms sunk in the deep, if once, by bloody lot, so great a valour of my husband had been snatched away beforehand?" These words, in their wavering fear of gods and man alike, drew the senators to caution, and left it to him whether to refuse the lot or obey the gods' honour. Then indeed Imilce trembled with fear, scarce mistress of herself, dreading the harsh heart of her great-souled husband. Hearing this eagerly, the leader thus then speaks: "What, equalled to the gods, can Hannibal pay you not unequal to so great a gift? What rewards worthy of you shall I find, mother Carthage? Night and day I will bear arms, and from here I will make many a noble victim come from Ausonian Quirinus to your temples. But the boy, the heir of arms and war, shall be saved. Hope, O son, of mine and sole salvation of Tyrian affairs, while Hesperia threatens, remember to contend with the sons of Aeneas by land and sea, while life shall stand. Go on (the Alps lie open) and press on at my toil. You also, gods of my fathers, whose shrines are appeased with slaughter and who delight to be worshipped by the dread of mothers, turn hither your glad faces and your whole minds. For I prepare rites and toil at greater altars. You, Mago, take your stand on the top of the mountain opposite; you, Choaspes, draw nearer to the leftward hills; let Sychaeus lead through the dark places to the barriers and the gorge. But I, Trasimene, with my roving soldiery, headlong will range you over, and seek from the gods the offerings of war. For the god promises in no small things by open pledges which, once seen, men, you may carry back to your native city."