Book 5

5. The Sidonian leader had seized the Etruscan hills with hidden soldiery, and through the deep silence of the night had settled in the windings of the woods with concealed arms. But on the left side a lake, overflowing in a vast pool, made wet the likeness of a sluggish sea and far and wide befouled the places nearby with much mud. These shallows, ruled of old by Faun-born Arnus, now, as the day rolls on, keep the name of Trasimene. A Lydian father, the glory of Tmolus, over the long sea had once brought the Maeonian youth to the Latin shores— Tyrrhenus—and had given names to the lands. He first revealed the unwonted murmurs of the trumpet to the nations and broke the idle silences with wars, nor, beyond measure in his vows, did he cherish his son for greater things. But, burning for the boy and stripped of chaste shame (for in beauty you could rival the gods, Trasimene), Agylle, seizing him on the shore, plunged him into her pools, a slippery nymph, that the youth, his mind caught by his first bloom, might warm to no slow arrow of Idalia. Comforting, the Naiads cherished deep within a green grotto the embraces, the youth trembling at the watery realm. Hence the lake holds the name of dowry, and, knowing of wanton marriage, far and wide Trasimene is named for the wave.

And now the dewy night was grazing with its course the black turning-post, nor had the Tithonian wife come forth from her bridal chamber, but stood gleaming on the very threshold, when the traveller would less deny that night had ceased than that day had begun: the consul was pressing on the difficult roads, going ahead of the very standards, and all rushed forward in a mingled mass—the cavalry, the light arms in no separate companies, and the foot-soldiers thrust into the throng, and the camp-followers' crowd, useless for war, filling everything with prophetic tumult, and seeking battle in the manner of those who flee. Then over the lake itself, breathing out a thick fog in blind gloom, far and wide had spoiled all the view for the wretched men, and in the cloak of black night the sky lay foul and pressed among the pitch-dark clouds. Nor did the wiles escape the Carthaginian: he sits, his sword laid by, hidden, and checks the hastening foe with no attacks. He is allowed to go on, and far the shore lies open as if in quiet peace, unguarded, soon to be a place from which there is no return. For under the narrow gorges, the path constricted, it led him into the trap, and twofold destruction pressed the men once received: here the crags, here the waters, hemmed the barrier. But a squadron kept watch from the shady summit of the mountain on the enemy's entrance, ready to have them under its blows as they fled back: just as a skilful fisherman by the glassy waters, weaving a light wicker basket with a wide mouth, ties the inner parts more carefully, and through the middle of the belly gradually narrowing weaves together the pressed tips, and by the trick of the narrowed opening keeps from returning the fish, easy of entrance, that he has drawn from the sea.

Meanwhile, more swiftly the consul kept bidding the standards be driven on, shaken in mind by the whirlwind of the fates, until the horses of the sun, lifting from the sea their flame-bearing chariot, scattered the day. And now, the orb reborn, Titan had washed away the fogs, and slowly the gloom flowed away into the earth, dissolved in the bright clear sky. Then the bird—an ancient auspice, by the custom of the Latin peoples, when they prepare for war and explore the minds of the gods about the outcome—as if foreknowing of grief refused to feed and shunned its food with lamentation. Nor did the bull cease to bellow mournfully at the altars with hoarse sound, and bearing the axe pressed to its neck with wavering neck it left the altar. Even as they strive to wrench up the standards with great effort, foul gore, exulting, burst from the torn earth into the faces of those straining, and the black parent earth herself gave to the wretched men in her bloody lap the tokens of slaughter to come. And besides these, the father of the gods, shaking the lands and the sea with thunder, hurled the lightnings snatched from the forges of the Cyclopes into the Tyrrhenian waters of Trasimene, and, struck by the heavenly flame across the open pools, the lake smoked, and the fires burned amid the waves. Alas, vain the warnings, and vain the prodigies that delay the Fates! Alas, the gods lesser than to contend with the fates! And here a man, excellent of tongue and of proud name, Corvinus, on whose Phoebean helmet the tawny bird, displaying the emblem of his ancestor's battle, perches, himself full of the god, and as terror frightened his comrades, mingles warnings with prayers and begins with these words: "By the Trojan flames and the Tarpeian rocks, by the walls of our fathers, consul, and by the pledges of our children hanging on the outcome of our battle, we beg that you yield to the gods, and await the right time for battle. The same gods will give both fields and a day for fighting: only do not scorn to wait for the gods to favour. When the hour shines forth that shall bring bloody slaughter to Libya, then the standards will follow, wrenched up by no hand, and the bird, undaunted, will rejoice to feed, and the pious earth will spew no blood. Or does it escape you, excellent in war, how much wicked Fortune can do in this place? The foe sits opposite, facing us, but around the wooded ridges threaten ambush, nor on the left does escape lie open through the standing waters, and the gorges stand with a narrow track. If it is your heart's wish to contend with wiles and to draw out the war, meanwhile Servilius will be at hand with swift arms, whose command is equal and whose strength matches his legions. We must fight by cunning. Lighter is the leader's praise that lies in the sword-hand." Such things Corvinus, and the foremost men everywhere added the words of those who prayed, and each, divided in his fear, now beseeches the gods that they oppose not Flaminius, then again beseeches Flaminius not to persist in contending with the dwellers of heaven. The more keenly at this the leader's kindled anger had risen, and, raging at the news that allied forces would not be wanting: "Is it thus," he says, "that you watched me rushing into the wars of the Boii, when so great a plague and a dread mob were pressing on, and the Tarpeian rock again was afraid? What souls then with my right hand, what bodies did I lay low, sprung from the angered earth and scarcely yielding their lives to a single wound! Their huge limbs lay over the fields, and now they press the ploughlands with their great bones. Forsooth, let Servilius join his arms to this late glory, that I may not be able to conquer with the triumph divided, and, content with a share of the honour, fall idle? No doubt the gods warn us. Do not imagine the gods like to yourselves, who tremble at the war-trumpets. Great enough against the foe the augur sword is at hand, and a fair and soldier-worthy auspice it is that the right hand gives to Latium in arms. Or is it settled, Corvinus, that the consul keep himself shut within an idle rampart, while the Carthaginian now seizes the high walls of Arretium, now tears down the citadel of Corythus, hence makes for the Clusian fields, and at last to the walls of Rome unharmed presses his march? Shameful under arms is empty superstition: in the breast of the fighting man the goddess Virtue alone flourishes. By dark nights the columns of the shades stand round me, who roll in the flood of the Trebia and in the waters of Eridanus, an unburied youth."

No delay. Now in the midst of the assembly and beneath the very standards he was fitting on, inexorable to none, his final arms. With bronze and the tawny back of a sea-calf his helmet was guarded, on whose crest, rising up, a triple crest pours out its plumes with Suebian hair: Scylla above, whirling the weight of a broken oar, loomed and bared the savage gapings of her dogs, the noble spoil of Gargenus, which, proud at the slain king of the Boii, the victor had fitted, unmarred, to his head, and bore as a glory into all his battles. He puts on his breastplate: its twisted, woven hooks the scale roughens with raw iron and gold intermixed. Then he takes his shield, which once, splashed with slaughters, Celtic gore had adorned, and in a dripping cave a she-wolf, as though caressing her cub, fondling the boyish limbs, was nursing the mighty nursling of Assaracus toward heaven. Then he fits a sword to his side and a spear to his right hand. His steed stands and fierce frets at the wet bridle, draped with a Caucasian tiger, its body striped. Then, taken up by his horse, where the narrow paths allow, he goes now to these, now to those, and fills them with exhortations: "It is your task and your glory to bear the fixed-up face of the Carthaginian leader through the city, a sight for your parents. This one head, for all of them, will be enough. Let each man recall to himself harsh spurs: 'My brother, alas, my brother lies on the black banks of Ticinus,' 'But my son measures out the deep pools of Eridanus without a funeral.' These things let each say to himself; but he in whom is no fury of private grief, let him truly take up great causes from the common store, things to dig into the breast great wraths— the Alps broken through, and Saguntum that suffered unspeakable things, and those whom it is sin to overpass, the name of the forbidden Iberus, now touching the Tiber. For while the augur and the entrails sought by the fibres and the vain soothsayer delay us, this alone now remains—to plant our camp on the Tarpeian rock."

Turbid, he says these things, and seeing among the close thousands a warrior fitting on his black plumes: "Yours, Orfitus, is the task, yours," he says, "this contest is—who shall bear the spoils of honour, to willing Jove the offering hung from a bloody bier. For why should this glory be brought forth by another hand?" Then, riding past on his horse, when amid the battles a known voice reached him: "Far from here the warlike shout shows you to me, Murranus," he says, "and I see you raging already with Tyrian slaughter. How great a praise comes! But, I beg, these narrow places of the ground, opened by the sword, set free." Then, knowing Aequanus, son of Soracte, outstanding in body and arms, to whom in his father's land is a custom, when the pious Archer rejoices at the kindled heaps, joyfully to carry the entrails three times through the harmless fires: "So may you always tread the Apollonian coals unharmed, and, victor of the heat, bring back to the altars your solemn gifts to serene Phoebus: conceive," he says, "a frenzy worthy of your deeds, Aequanus, and of your wounds. With you as comrade of slaughter and wrath I would not doubt to penetrate the midst of the Marmaridae's phalanx and to burst into the squadrons of the Cinyphian band."

Nor now any longer can he bear warnings and words that delay Mars: that which the sons of Aeneas shall weep for in a long age, together the deadly war-trumpets sounded the signal, and the trumpet broke the air with its terrifying shrieks. Alas the grief, alas the tears, not late even after so many ages! I shudder as at a hanging evil, as if the Tyrian leader were calling to arms. From the lurking hills the Asturian and the Libyan and the Balearian, savage with his twisted sling, burst forth, and many a Mace and Garamantian and Numidian, then—than whom no other swifter brought a venal right hand to battle or approved of hired wars— the Cantabrian and the Vascon with the covering of his helmet scorned. On this side the crags alike, on that the lake, on that arms, and at once a consonant voice presses on, while in turn the shout for the signal spreads round through the hills, the Tyrian ring encircling.

The gods turned away their faces and gave place, not willingly, to a greater fate; Mars himself is stunned at the fortune of the Libyan tyrant, and Venus, her hair disordered, weeps over it, and Apollo, carried to Delos, soothes with his mournful quill the sad grief. Juno alone, sitting on the summit of Apennine, awaits the dread slaughter with pitiless heart.

The first cohorts of the Picentes, when, as if scattered by a burst whirlwind, they saw the columns and Hannibal rush on, attack of their own accord, and seek penalties for the death to come, the victor thrown into confusion—the youth kindled, and as though, the dreaded heaven snatched away, free, sends with their own hands the forestalled offerings. A cloud of javelins is poured with single effort and harmonious daring upon the Carthaginians, and, repulsed, they lower their pierced shields under the curved weight of the weapon. The more keenly at this in turn the Libyan (and the presence of the savage leader spurs him on), each urging the other in his turn, they press on, and with pressed breast drive breast against breast. Bellona herself, shaking her torch and her yellow hair sprinkled with much blood, ranges through the midst of the lines. There hisses beneath the black breast of the Tartarean goddess a deadly murmur, and bristling with deadly song the trumpet drives the frenzied minds into the contests. For these, adversity nurses their wraths, and the raw goad of fortune as it rushes on bids them cast away the hope of safety: those a favouring god and Victory, smiling with glad face, sharpen, and they enjoy the favour of Mars. Lateranus, carried away by a fair love of slaughter, while he follows his right hand, had penetrated into the midst of the foe. When Lentulus, flourishing in equal age, saw him provoking the fates too much in battle and amid too much blood among the hostile bands in unequal warfare, he rouses himself with keen effort and forestalls cruel Bagas, who was already bringing wounds near to the back of the fighting man—swifter than the spear, and joins himself as a comrade to the hard chances. Then eager they gather their arms together, and gleaming from twin brows they flash: their lofty heads shine with matching crests. Driven against them by chance (for who would dare to bear opposing arms, unless one whom the god had condemned to the depths of the Stygian night?), Syrticus, running down from the high mountain, bore broken-off oak-clubs and, fiercely shaking the weight of a knotted branch, burned in vain with a love of double slaughter: "Not here will the Aegates and the shores treacherous to sailors, O youths, and the fortune stirred by new storms without Mars, the sea give you in war. Once victors of the deep, learn what kind of warrior the Libyan is in the midst of the land, and yield your realms to the better man." And at once with the hostile weight of the lopped tree he pressed Lateranus, joining taunts to the fight. Lentulus, gnashing at him in anger: "Trasimene will climb into the high hills sooner than that branch drip with pious blood," and, sinking down with effort, he pierced the flank of the man as he strained, raised on tiptoe. Then hot blood overflows from the black lung through the gaping entrails.

Nor less, with right hands kindled to mutual deaths, in another part of the field the frenzy rages. Tall Iertes beheads Nerius. By Rullus, richest of land, you fall, noble Volunx, nor did the weights shut up in your secret treasuries, nor your palace once gleaming with ancestral ivory, nor the native huts you possessed profit you. What avail things snatched, what to the nations the thirst for gold, never quenched? One whom but now Fortune by her cherishing stuffed full with heaped-up wealth and rich gifts, the boatman will carry naked in his Tartarean skiff. Nearby, the warrior Appius with youthful daring was opening up the field with slaughter, and where valour was greatest and vigour aspiring to none, there he sought his glory. Meeting him Atlans—Atlans from the Iberian shore, in vain the far-off tiller of the farthest sand— strikes his face with a spear, and lightly from the surface of the body the point at its edge tastes the noble blood. The threats thundered, and his violent eyes blazed with new flames. He rages and lightnings through all the throng of those in his way; but the wound shut beneath his helmet commends his warlike limbs with the trickling blood. Then indeed you might see the youth, trembling and striving to hide himself among his comrades, as when before the tigress the doe of Hyrcania, hard pressed, trembles, or, terrified, the dove, seeing the hawk in the cloud, gathers in her wings, or the hare goes beneath the brambles, if in the white air it has felt the eagle balancing its swoop. He strikes the face with his quick sword, then mows off the man's neck and his flashing right hand, and, fiercer with success, changes his foe.

There stood, bearing into the wars a gleaming axe, a Cinyphian, and the wretched son-in-law of Mago, longing to enter the battle before his eyes in hope of praise, Isalcas, swollen at his Sidonian bride and proud of the vain pact of the marriage-torch promised after the Dardan battles. At him fierce Appius hurls his violent wraths, and as he tries to balance the heavy axe at his brow, rising higher he drives the blow above the helmet. But the frail sword is loosed by the strong effort on the Cinyphian bronze, and Isalcas, of no different lot, brushed the boss aside, his useless blow uncertain. Then a stone that he could never have wrenched from the ground, had not grim anger given him strength, Appius hurls, panting, and as the man falls backward in his slip onto his back, he presses him with the mass of the rock and crushes his broken bones. His son-in-law saw him, mingling battles on the joined field, falling, and tears were poured beneath his helmet with a groan, and swift he rushed: the pacts lately given kindle his spirit, and the hoped-for grandchildren. And now he was at hand, and was surveying with his gaze the man's shield and huge limbs, and the nearer light of the gleaming helmet at the front had a little slowed his savage wrath. Not otherwise, hurled headlong down from a shady lookout, the lion, sinking on the plain, draws together his crouched limbs, when he has seen the horns of a fierce bull nearby, though long hunger goad him: now, savage, he marvels at the muscles on the high-rising neck, now at the grim eyes beneath the shaggy brow, and watches him already moving his standards and, the sand scattered, plotting the fight. Here first, hurling his weapon, thus Appius begins: "If you have any piety, do not abandon the pact you struck, and as father-in-law accompany your son-in-law." Swift through the coverings and the delays of bronze the spear stood in his left arm. But against him the Libyan, no words, but burning he balances his spear, the memorable gift of his great brother, which the victor, beneath the walls of Saguntum, having slain Durius, had taken from him, and given to his brother to carry into the battles, a pledge of the renowned fight. The huge weapon, through the man's arms and through his face, aided by the effort of his grief, drove home its deadly blow, and the bloodless hands of the man, as he tried to wrench out the iron, fell upon the wound. On the plain lies a name famous to Maeonia, and a great part of the Italian ruin, Appius. The lakes trembled, and the body shrank away as Trasimene drew in its waters: gasping out his life with bloody mouth he presses the weapon and murmurs against the bitten spear.

Nor of better fate, Mamercus paid the penalty with his whole body, wounded by no foe. For through the opposing ranks, where the Lusitanian dire band roused the battles, the standard snatched with the blood of the slain standard-bearer, he was bearing with great effort, and unhappy was calling back the wavering standards of his men. But the maddened cohort, kindled with proud daring, whatever each carried in his own hand as a missile, whatever the earth offered, scarce passable with scattered weapons, cast at once alike, and many spears found in his body no empty place, his bones pierced through.

Meanwhile the leader of Libya flies up, troubled by anger at his brother's wound, and seeing the gore, whether the point was in his side, whether with its whole weight the weapon had settled, frantic he kept asking his brother and his comrades. And when he learned that the fear of death was far off and the things lighter than his alarm, sheltered by his own shield, headlong from the line he snatches him, and in a camp safe from the whirlwind of battle set him down. Hence more swiftly the healing arts and the help of aged Synhalus he calls. To anoint a wound with the juices of herbs, and to draw out the iron from the body by a charm, and to send sleep to a touched water-snake, this man surpassed all, and his name was thence renowned through the cities and along the shores of the Paraetonian Syrtis. He himself once, Garamantian Hammon the father, of old first had given to Synhalus to know how to soothe by healing the bites of beasts and the heavy blows of weapons. And he then, dying, showed the heavenly gifts to his son, and the son passed on to the honour of his heir his father's arts. Following him then, of no lighter fame, Synhalus, skilled in the Garamantian things shown to him, increased them by his zeal, and with many an image numbered his ancient ancestor, the companion of Hammon. Then bearing his ancestral medicines with a gentle right hand, more swiftly, girt in the custom of twisted cloaks, he soothed with water the wound cleansed of its blood. But Mago, turning over in his mind the spoils and the slaying of the slain foe, drove from his breast his brother's cares with words, and eased the chance with praise: "Spare your fear, my brother. No medicines greater than my own misfortunes will you bring: Appius lies, driven by my spear to the shades. If life should leave me, enough has been done for us: gladly will I follow the foe to the shades."

While these things turn the leaders from the open field and hold them in the rampart, the consul, watching from a high mound the Carthaginian withdrawing from the column, and the dark cloud of war hide itself in the camp, turbid at once attacks the wedges of the trembling men, mournful in soldiery, and with sudden panic loosens the lines already thinning out. Then with fierce voice he demands his horse and rushes into the contests of the central valley. So when Jupiter dashes against the earth a downpour crashing with rattling hail, having heaped up the high Alps now with lightning, now the Ceraunian heights mingled with heaven, together earth and sea and air trembled, and Tartarus itself is shaken, the world stirred, not otherwise upon the astounded Carthaginians fell, in unforeseen whirlwind, an unexpected plague, and a cold horror at the sight of the consul spread beneath the bones of the wretched men. He goes in the midst, and rushing with the sword opens a broad path through the thickest. The shout, with the varied division of voices, bears the frenzy of war to the gods above and beats upon the stars, as when Father Ocean with savage Tethys strikes Herculean Calpe, and into the gnawed entrails of the mountain hurls the whirling sea with barking waves: the crags give a groan, and Tartessus, divided by broad lands, hears the waves broken upon the rocks, Lixus hears it, parted by no small flood.

Before all, by a javelin deceiving silently through the air, Bogus falls, who first at the ill-omened river Ticinus had hurled his swift spear against the Rutulians. He had believed for himself long life and a crowd of grandchildren, deceived by vain signs in the bird. But to break the boundaries of the Fates by augury is granted to no one: he falls amid the weapons, looking up with bloody eyes at the sky, and demands again of the gods the time of his promised old age, now in the midst of death. Nor was it granted Bagasus to exult, or left unpunished that before the consul's eyes he had robbed Libo of life. That glory of laurel-bearing ancestors and his vigorous youth flourished, but the Massylian sword had cut down his head as the down softened his cheek, and with swift death the barbarian warrior had blotted out his green years. Yet to have implored Flaminius, now in his last death, was not in vain. For straightway from the foe was torn away his neck along with his face: it helped to punish the victor by a fierce example and to give back the death he had dealt.

What god, O Muses, in matching words could unfold so many deaths, and to such great shades who could bring laments worthy in song? The young men in the first bloom of life, contending in the glory of falling, and on the very threshold of death the raw deeds of men, and the frenzy beneath the breast pierced by weapons? Foe and foe are laid low in turn by vast onsets, nor is there leisure to despoil and to turn the mind to plunder. The love of slaughter urges, while his brother's wound holds the foe shut up in the camp, and now with javelins, now with the sword he pours forth and rushes—the consul, now seen on horseback amid the thousands of fighters, now on foot in fierce battle before the eagles and the standards. The impious valley flows with streams of blood, and the mounds and the hollow rocks imitate the clash of arms and the breathing of horses.

Mingling the field, bearing into the battles the strength of limbs loftier than human, and at the sight of his fearsome giant body the trembling wings he turned, Othrys the Marmarian: above both columns his huge shoulders lifted his head, and the shaggy hair of his grim brow and his beard, rivalling his locks, shadowed his gaping mouth; on this side his breast, bristling with dread squalor and shaggy with wild bristles, stood up rough. To draw near the man and to bring closer combat no one dared. Like a beast in an open field he was assailed with safe weapons from the column. At last, as he bore his mad face against the backs of the scattered men with a roar, a Gortynian reed, through the silent clouds on its quiet wing, entered his grim eye and turned the man away. At the columns of the fleeing man the consul hurls a javelin from behind, which broke into his bare ribs through the covering, and from his shaggy breast first showed its point. Swiftly he tries to wrench out where he sees the iron rising with its gleaming tip, until, the blood poured out abundantly far and wide, he sank down dying and pressed the weapon into the wound. His overflowing breath blew across the neighbouring field, the dust stirred, and scattered the cloud into the air.

Nor less meanwhile on the mounds and in the woods raged Mars in different places, and over the heights with varied battle the rocks and brambles gleamed, dripping with slaughter. The destruction of the trembling, and the cause of death and bitter carnage, was Sychaeus. He had struck Murranus from afar with a spear, than whom no other, when the wars were silent, more sweetly struck the Oeagrian strings with the quill. He fell in the great wood, and beneath the very death sought his father's mountains and the Aequana fields, happy in Bacchus, and Surrentum, soft with the healthful Zephyr. Sychaeus had added a comrade to the wretched man, and the victor rejoiced in the grim novelty of the fierce battle. For while he follows the scattered men, he had penetrated into a deep wood, and leaning against the blows of an ancient elm guarded his back with the trunk, and in vain Tauranus with his last voice was calling the comrades he had left. The Sidonian point pierced the youth through, and, his limbs pierced through, stuck fast in the wood set against it.

What was it for you, what wrath of the gods, or what dread, sitting in your sinister mind, men? You who, Mars abandoned, sought the help of branches. Not an even counsellor in hard straits, surely, is fear. The harsh outcome convicts by the event the counsels of crooked dread. An aged ilex stretched its lofty branches into the air, inserting above the great shadowy woods its high head among the lofty clouds, the likeness (if it stood in the open field) of a grove, and far and wide held the earth with the black shadow of its leafy oak. An equal oak nearby, having striven through a long age to lift its top beneath the stars with hoary crown, loosened its spreading leaves on its wide-spread trunk and shadowed with its foliage the heights of the topmost mountain. Hither the Hennaean cohort, which Arethusa, your king had sent from the Sicilian shores, not knowing to defend against death its disgrace, and changed in mind by excessive dread, betook itself in rivalry, and climbing in turn pressed the nodding branches with uncertain weight. Soon one above another, while they strive to stand in safety, part of them shaken off (for the rotten fragment of the branches and its age had deceived them, the tree little to be trusted), part hang in dread amid the weapons on the lofty top. Hastening to consume them all, troubled, with one plague, Sychaeus seizes his bronze-bound axe, long since meant for war, his shield laid down, his weapons changed. His comrades' right hands fall to, and with a great crash the tree, struck, groans, sinking beneath the frequent blows. The unhappy throng sways on the shaken trunk, as, when the Zephyr shakes the ancient groves with its blast, the bird, scarce clinging to the whole leaf of the trembling top, is tossed, its nest swaying with it. At last, overcome by many an axe-stroke, it fell, the unhappy oak, a refuge to the wretched and inhospitable, and crushed the men's spread-out limbs in its spacious ruin.

Then other shapes of disaster. Bordering the pine-torches the ilex gleams and is wrapped in swift fire. And now, swelling among the leaves in the dry wood, Vulcan with savage whirlwinds twists the panting globes of flames with their heat and scorches the tops. Nor meanwhile do the weapons cease. The half-burnt bodies of the groaning men fall, embracing the burning branches.

Amid these pitiable contests of men, behold, the consul was at hand, rolling wrath and destruction against Sychaeus. But the youth, in the doubtful crisis of so great a battle, forestalls the outcome, to test it first with his weapon. On the middle of the shield its point stood lightly on the surface of the bronze, and was forbidden to pass through the opposing wickerwork. But the consul does not prepare to trust the fortune of the longed-for slaughter to a hurled weapon, but with the sword he drains his side: nor did the coverings of the raw shield slow him. The unhappy man slips and seeks with bloody mouth the earth, gasping out his life. Then, the cold of Styx diffusing itself through his limbs, the death flowing into his vitals he receives, and composes his eyes in a long sleep.

And while Mars, mingled with various chances, alternates these sad things, now, the camp abandoned, Mago, now the leader of Libya, were hurrying their hastening standards at a swift run, and were eager to make up for the lost time with the slaughter of men and to pay it back with much gore. A mass goes whirling a cloud of dust in a black whirlwind, and the field rises with the sands lifted up, and wherever the leader, bearing his step, turns his tracks, round about a storm driven by a billowing squall rolls and covers the high mountains with gloom. Fontanus fell, pierced through the thigh, Buta through his tuneful throat, and from the pressed-in wound the point looked forth at his back. Him sad Fregellae mourned, manifold in ancestors, him his mother Anagnia wept. Not unlike was your fortune, Laevinus, but your daring not the same. For you do not attempt to clash with the Tyrian king, but a chosen man, Ithemon, a match for the contest, was the leader of the Autololians; whom, his hamstring cut, while you despoil him, with a pitiless whirlwind into your ribs the heavy ash-spear burst, and your limbs, collapsed beneath the blow, fell in sudden ruin upon the foe poured out beneath you. . . . Whom, after the leader of Libya sees exulting in fierce valour (for to him, headlong from the wound, Arauricus, distrusting his light arms, was giving his back), the more keenly at this, kindled to wrath by the fair Mars, and thinking himself worthy to go into the contests hand to hand with the savage man, at him as he draws the weapon from the body he flies, and piercing his breast: "Praiseworthy in toils, whoever you are, by no other right hand was it fitting you should fall. Carry to the shades the glory of your death. Were not your race of Italian origin, you would go off granted your life." Then he makes for Fadus and old Labicus, skilled in war, to whom Hamilcar, having once clashed in the Sicilian lands, had given a famous name in a renowned contest. Forgetful of his years and unmindful of his age, into arms that one indeed went with a raw spirit and most green in his wrath, but vain blows betrayed his old age, cold in war: the idle fire crackled on the empty stubble and gave a hollow flame without strength. Whom, after the leader received him, his ancestral squire pointing him out as proud, the Carthaginian: "The contests of your first battle pay for now here," he said: "Hamilcar, well known, drags you to the shades by this right hand." Then he balances from his ear, hurling the javelin, and pierces him through as he turns himself into the wound. The blood, the point drawn out, befouled his white hair, and ended his long toils with death. Nor less does he behead Herminius in his first arms, accustomed, Trasimene, to drain your lakes with plundering hooks and to draw the nourishment of his father's old age through the lying pools on the hanging line.

Meanwhile, the lifeless Sychaeus upon his arms the mourning Carthaginians were carrying, and bearing his body to the camp. When the leader saw them rushing on with a sad cry, struck in his breast with prophetic grief: "What grief, O comrades," he says, "or what wrath of the gods has snatched him from us? Has the black day, Sychaeus, with hastened funeral, plucked you, burning with love of praise and excessive love of the first battle?" And as, the groan given, the tears of the bearers assented, and the author of the slaughter was named alike to the mourners, "I see," he says, "the fair wound beneath your facing breast of the Trojan point. Worthy of Carthage, worthy of Hasdrubal, you will go to the shades, nor will your best mother mourn you unlike your ancestors, nor, seeing you beneath the Stygian shade degenerate, will our Hamilcar shun you. But let Flaminius, the cause of so sad a grief, lessen my mourning by his own death. This pomp shall follow your obsequies, and impious Rome, too late, will wish it had bought at any price not to have profaned the body of my Sychaeus with the sword."

So saying, he twists the smoking vapour from his mouth, and his wrath drives out the panted murmur from his breast, as when the enclosed liquid overflows with much heat in the kindled waves, and rages when the cauldron is burnt dry. Then headlong he rushes into the midst and wearies Flaminius alone, assailing him. Nor more slowly than the word did that one take up the wars, and nearer Mars had begun to rise, and now each stood joined upon the field, when a sudden crash through the rocks, and stirred all at once— a fearful thing—the hills and the topmost peaks trembled over all their ridges. The woods nod on the pine-bearing summit, and the broken crags fall down upon the columns. Deep within, its caverns wrenched apart, the splitting earth bellows from its depths, and breaks open no small chasm, and far and wide the immense gulf shows the Stygian shades with its wide-gaping jaws, and the shades of the deep dreaded the ancient day. The black lake, lifted into the high mountains and shaken from its ancestral seat, washed the Tyrrhenian woods with unknown spray. And now the same storm and dire plague both laid low and carried off the peoples and the towns of great kings. And besides these, the rivers, flowing backward, fought against the mountains, and the sea turned its waves backward. The mountain abandoned, the Apennine-dwelling Fauns fled to the shores. Yet the soldier kept fighting (alas, the madness of war!), tossed about on the staggering ground, and his trembling weapons, falling as the earth gave way beneath him, he hurled at the foe, until, driven, he turned his wandering course to the shores, his mind bereft, and the Daunian youth was carried into the pools. The consul rebuked their flight (for, snatched away by the whirlwind of the stirred earth, he had fallen): "What then, what, I beg, remains, alas, for the fugitives? See, you lead Hannibal to the walls of Rome, you give to the Tarpeian roofs of the Thunderer torches and the sword. Stand, soldier, and learn keen battles from me, or, if to fight is denied you, learn to die. Flaminius will give to those to come no worthless example. Let not the Libyan, let not the Cantabrian ever see the back of a consul. Alone, if so great a longing and madness for flight is in you, all the weapons alone I consume with my breast, and dying, with this soul fleeing through the air, I will call your right hands back to the battles."

And while he recalls these things and goes to meet the dense foe, fierce in face and mind Ducarius flies up. The man had a clan-name keen, and once, when the bands of the Boii were scattered by his fathers, he bore the ancient wounds of a barbarian mind, and recognizing the proud victor's face: "Are you," he says, "that greatest terror of the Boii? It pleases me to learn this with my weapon, whether blood remains from the wound of so great a body. Nor let it repent you, countrymen, to sacrifice this head to the brave shades: he it was who, standing on his chariot, drove our conquered fathers to the high Capitol. The avenging hour calls." Then at once, with weapons poured from every side, he is overwhelmed, and, covered by the cloud rushing through the air, he left to no right hand to boast that Flaminius had fallen by its own. Nor, the leader slain, was the battle prolonged further. For in a dense column the foremost of the youth, because of the sinister crises of war hostile to the gods and to their own right hands, and reckoning to see the Carthaginian victorious worse than death, more swiftly all upon the limbs of the leader and his prostrate body in a great struggle cast weapons and bodies and, in unhappy war, bloody hands. So, dense with the heap of slaughter, they covered the man as with a tomb. Then, the carnage scattered through the waves, through the woods, and through the valley deep with blood, borne into the midst of the bands, his brother accompanying him, the Carthaginian, among the slain youths: "What wounds you behold, what deaths!" he says, "every right hand grips the iron, and the soldier lies armed, keeping up the contests. These, see, these deaths look upon, our cohorts! On their brows the threats endure, and the wraths stand in their faces. And I fear lest the land which, fertile, breeds great-souled men of such noble nature, has been destined by the fates for it to hold empire, and by these very disasters conquer the world."

So saying, he yielded to the night; and an end to the slaughter the darkness gave, poured in as the sun withdrew.