Book 12

12. Now harsh Winter was hiding her icy head, her temples teeming with rains, and her cloudy brow with its south-bearing crest, and gentle Spring with caressing Zephyrs soothed the healthful fields with mild, clear weather. The Punic bursts forth from Capua and shakes the neighbouring lands far and wide with terror sent ahead, as, hidden through the winter while the Riphaean blasts of the north wind freeze, a serpent at last uncoils its limbs from its secret den, and, the day promising warmth, flashes forth renewed and bears its glittering head and breathes out venom from its lifted jaws. But when the standards of the Libyan leader gleamed across the fields, all was deserted in fear, and, dread persuading, they shut themselves at once within their rampart, and, anxious for safety, trembling, awaited the foe at their very walls.

But that vigour was not now in him which, the Alps broken through, had borne arms in and opened roads, and, master of the Trebia, had defiled the Maeonian waves with Italian blood. Soaked with soft luxury and wine, his limbs flowed slack, torpid † by the allurements of sleep. He who was wont to drag out the icy nights, weighed down in his breastplate beneath an unfriendly sky, and often to scorn his tent when the winter clouds rushed down with hail, and not even by night were his shields or swords laid aside, nor his quivers or javelins, and his arms served him for limbs— now the helmet seemed a heavy burden, and the weights of the bucklers greater, and the spears poured down with no whirring.

Gentle Parthenope first felt him renewing the contests, not rich in resources, not despised for valour, but the harbours drew the leader, willing it, and the safe waters that the ship coming from Carthage might seek. One of the Sirens gave her own name (memorable thing) to the walls, Parthenope, daughter of Achelous, over whose sea the songs reigned long, when through the waves she sang a sweet destruction, no boon to the wretched sailors. Now there are gentle ways for the city, and leisure hospitable to the Muses, and an age exempt from heavier cares. Attacking these walls from behind (for the sea had closed the front), the Punic was not able to break through any roads with his whole force, and in vain, inglorious in his venture, he battered the blocked gates, shaking them with the ram. The victor stood before the Greek defences of Cumae in vain, and proved the counsels of his cautious mind by the event, who, after the watery realm of Daunus, through blood had abstained from going to the Tarpeian citadels. 'Behold, you who have boasted that we are slow and know not to add speed to our deeds, because of late it was not granted you to scale the walls of Rome from the battle-line itself— enter, and the feast promised on the Thunderer's seat render to these houses, which a Greek hand defends.' Such things he boasted, and, through shame of fame to come if, balked of his enterprise, he should retreat from the first city, he dared all and sharpened his swords with stratagems. But sudden flames flowed over the walls, and through all the rampart's winding the unforeseen weapons flew through the air. Just as, when the tawny bird of Jove has hidden its young on a rock's height, if with silent effort a serpent has climbed to the summit and frightens it, close, with its gaping mouth, she, assailing the foe with her beak and the claws accustomed to bear the thunderbolts, flies round the circuit of her nest.

At last, wearied, he turned to the neighbouring harbours of Cumae and set himself to provoke fortune with varied movement and to stand against his sinister fame by stirring trouble. But Gracchus, guardian of the city, a defence more sure than the very walls, kept him off and forbade him again to sit before the gates and again to hope for entrance. Helpless in spirit, he ranges and searches all about, borne on his winged horse, and again begins to drive his men with exhortations of glory: 'By the gods,' he says, 'what limit is there to standing before Greek cities, soldier forgetful of your own deeds? What measure will there be? Before the Alps stands, no doubt, a greater mass, and I bid you scale the heaven, battering its crags. Yet, were a second land like that one given, and other cliffs to rise suddenly beneath the stars, will you not go, and bear arms aloft with me leading? Does, alas, the gaping mound of Cumae and its wall still hold you, or Gracchus, who has not dared to be moved from his gates? In a small crisis I see . . . or shall the nations, whatever you have won by toil, think your deeds done by chance? By you, the Tyrrhene pools of the favouring gods, by the Trebia and the ashes of Saguntum I entreat, render yourselves now worthy of your own fame, which you trail, and call Cannae back into your hearts.'

So the leader strove to rouse the minds worn by luxury and frayed by prosperity, and to stay them with words. And here, surveying the approaches, he sees the gleaming temples of the citadel on the ridge, whose first beginnings Virrius then, the relentless leader of lofty Capua, unfolds. 'This which you look upon,' he says, 'is not of our age: greater hands made it. When (so the tale is) Daedalus feared to leave the lands and the realm of the Dictaean king, he found out a way to give no track to one following over the whole world, daring to raise himself into the airs of heaven on an alien wing and to show man flight. Here, balancing his hanging body in the midst of the clouds, he swam through them and, a new bird, frightened the gods above. He taught his son too, beneath the likeness of false plumage, to attempt the ways of birds, and, fallen with the oars of his pinions loosed and his unhappy wings, he saw him beating the troubled straits. And while he gives way to grief, his palms beaten suddenly against his breast, unwitting, alas, he guided his flight with that mourning movement. Here, grateful, in place of his cloud-wandering passage, he founded the holy temple of Phoebus and laid aside his daring wings.'

So Virrius: but the leader counted the idle days passed without war, and was ashamed to stand still. He groans at his reverses, and, looking back at the houses he could not take, makes ready to glut his grief on the city of Dicarchus. Here too now the sea, now the stony mass of the wall hinders his daring and the labours of the defenders. And while a slow toil holds his comrades, striving to break through the hard and barred ways, he himself surveys the wonders of the pools and of the land nearby together.

The chief men of Capua are present: he teaches them whence the warm Baiae take their name, and shows that the pools gave their own names to a companion of the Dulichian ship. But this man records that the names of Cocytus once remained at the Lucrine, and in the midst of the eddy of the sea commends the Herculean path, where the son of Amphitryon, victor over the Iberian herd, split the water. That man shows Avernus, once called Styx by the peoples, its name changed, now mild and famed among the pools: then, bristling with a grim grove and blackening shadows, and feared, it vomited a deadly venom into the sky, poured forth, lethal to birds, and, sacred through the cities by Stygian awe, kept its savage honour. A marsh near to it (the tale is that it opens a way to the waves of Acheron) loosens its dark jaws with a standing whirlpool and opens dreadful chasms of the earth, and at times troubles the shades with new light. But hard by, they tell, the Cimmerian homes lay, dim and through the long age pressed by infernal mists beneath a pallid shadow, and the deep night of the Tartarean city. Then they point out the fields ever panting with sulphur and fire and seething bitumen. The earth, the black vapour welling up, sighing and warmed long with its burnt marrow, boils and breathes Stygian blasts into the air; it labours and hisses fearfully from its trembling caverns, † and at times, struggling to break its hollow seats or to escape by the straits, with a menacing sound Mulciber bellows mournfully and gnaws the torn vitals of the earth and shakes the eaten-out mountains with his murmur. They tell that the Giants, laid low by Hercules' mass, shake the earth thrown upon them, and that with their panting breath the fields are scorched far and wide, and that, whenever they threaten to break the frame set upon them, the sky grows pale. Prochyta appears, allotted savage Mimas, Inarime appears far off, which with its black whirlwind presses smoking Iapetus, as he hurls flames from his rebel mouth and, if ever it be granted him to escape, wishes to renew his wars against Jove and the gods above. The ridges of Vesuvius are shown, and on the topmost peak the crags fed upon by flames, and the mountain laid low in ruin all around, and rocks contending with the fate of Etna. And too he sees Misenus, keeping the Idaean name in his tomb, and Herculean Bauli on the very shore: he marvels at the menaces of the sea and the labours of the land.

When these had been surveyed by the man, returning thence to the lofty walls of the son of Pheres, he lays waste the leafy summits of Gaurus, glad with the joyous vine. Hence he swiftly moves his columns to Chalcidian Nola. Nola sits on the plain, ringed about in a circle with frequent towers, and guards with its rampart the level easy to approach; but Marcellus brought help and aid—one who would give the arms to be defended not to the towers, but would of his own will protect the walls with his right hand. And he, when from afar he sees the Agenorean approach across the plain and a cloud borne toward the walls, cries: 'Arms, the bloody foe is here, take up your arms, men,' and he takes them up. The swift young men stand round and fit to his roaring helm the bloody crests in their custom. Then he resounds, disposing the columns at a quick step: 'You shall keep the threshold of the right gate, Nero; you, turn your cohorts to the left, Tullus, the bright glory of the Volsci, with the ancestral standards of Larinum. But when bidden, through the silence, with a sudden force burst the gates and pour a storm of weapons onto the plains. I myself will be borne, the gate torn open, into the midst, and draw the cavalry's combats.'

And while Marcellus does this, already the Punic were trying to wrench off the bars and, scorning ladders, to break through the walls. Trumpets sounded everywhere, and the shout of men and the neighing, with the clarions and, in the hoarse tumult, the horns, and the arms shaken on their raging limbs. The bitter plague is borne, quickened, the gates flung apart, and the squadrons rush out, poured forth in an unforeseen flood, as a wicked river overflows, its dams broken, as the sea, driven by the north wind, is dashed against the rocks, as the winds, their prison broken, invade the lands. Nor at the sight of the torrent of arms and men can the Libyan stand, cast down from hope. The Dardan leader presses the astonished one, his horse going before, and, leaning his spear on the backs of those who rush, now wearies his comrades with his voice: 'Go on, come, bear forward your steps. The god is kind, the hour is ours. This is the way to the walls of Capua,' now again, turned against the foe: 'Stand. Where are you swept off? Not at the backs of your men, but at you, leader of Libya, do I cry: stand. The plain and arms and Mars are in our hands. I dismiss the cohorts from the slaughter: let us be seen alone. Marcellus, I demand battle.' So the Latin ruler, and the honour of attacking the Barcaean youth in fight, and the prize of the peril, urged him on.

But Juno did not behold these things with a calm breast, and turned him from his enterprise as he rushed to his final fate. He labours to stay the routed and recall them: 'Do we come out such as this from the bosom of Capua and her sinister houses? Stand, O wretches, to whom the highest glory is a disgrace. Nothing today, believe me, faithful awaits you turning your backs. You have deserved that all Ausonia rush upon you, and by savage war you have made it that no hope of peace or life should remain for the routed.' He overcame the trumpets with his clamour, and by the force of his voice, savage, penetrated the ears though they were stopped.

In the arms of Polydamas the young Pedianus waged war, fierce, and boasted of his Trojan seed and lineage and of himself from the Antenorid stock, of no lighter fame in his line, and his glory by sacred Timavus and a name beloved on the Euganean shores. To him father Eridanus and the Venetian peoples in order and the folk rejoicing in Aponus, whether he stirred wars or, peaceful, preferred the Muses and the silence of a learned life and to soothe his toils with the Aonian quill, called none his equal, nor was another youth more known to the war god, nor another more known to Phoebus. He, when, pressing the tracks of the Punic with loosened reins, near him recognized the helmet and the emblem, the spoil of slain Paulus (a boy bore those, glad in the leader's no small gift, Cinyps, Cinyps beloved by the Punic, than whose face none was more pleasing, and on no brow shone more of grace: such as the ivory that the air of Tibur feeds, flashing and ever new, or as the stone that with a wondrous honour of whiteness shines in the ear, brought from the Red waves)— when Pedianus saw him, notable for his crests and his known helmet, gleaming at the rear of the column, as if a sudden image of Paulus had risen before his eyes from the infernal seats and demanded back his lost arms, he attacks, gnashing: 'Will you, most cowardly, bear the coverings of a sacred head, which not without crime and the gods' envy your leader would wear? Behold Paulus.' Then he calls the man to the spectacle of the shades and drives a piercing weapon into the fleeing one's ribs. Then, sliding from his horse, with his right hand he tears off the helmet and the emblems of the great consul and despoils the gleaming youth. All his beauty is loosed by death, and through his snowy limbs goes the Stygian colour and ravages the honours of his form. His ambrosial locks fell, and his violated neck, the throat sinking, sank back upon his marble shoulder. Just as the Cytherean fire, returning over Ocean, when it boasts itself to Venus with its splendour restored, if a sudden cloud invades it, is dimmed and, waning in the black darkness, hides its languishing light. Pedianus himself too, the helmet snatched, astonished stands stunned at the bare face and checks his wrath. Then, bearing back the helmet with a great shout to his comrades, he shook his fierce horse, that bloodied with savage bite the foaming reins. To him Marcellus, turbulent in arms, bore his face to meet him in swift tumult, and recognizing the glory: 'Bravo, O of ancestral valour, bravo, son of Antenor! Now,' he said, 'let us seek the snatched coverings of the Libyan leader, what remains,' and, blazing, with dreadful whirrings he hurls the savage spear. Nor perhaps would he have been baulked of his vow, had not the opposing force of Gestar held the weapon with his interposed body. He, while he protects the leader with arms close by, the heavy spear, thirsting not for his blood, passed through him and, his death changed, fulfilled its mighty threats. The leader is carried off in haste from the crisis of death, troubled, and, raging, takes his course toward the camp.

And now the army of the Punic, immoderate in flight, stretches its headlong step in a contest, their arms turned about. The foe overtakes them with weapons, and one by one glut their long wraths from the disasters, and to the sky in rivalry display their swords bloody, and to the avenging gods. That day first taught what no one would dare believe of the gods, that the leader of Libya could be checked in the contest of war. They drag off chariots and men and the Massylian beast, and bear back coverings torn from the living warriors, and depart, content to have seen the leader's back beneath their spear. Then they match Marcellus in war's glory: he walks with triumph attending, greater than if as victor he bore the spoils to the Thunderer.

Then raging, after he scarcely drove the foe from his rampart, the Agenorean leader: 'When have I washed this stain and with how much enemy blood? Has Ausonia chanced to see my back? Do you, highest of the gods,' he says, 'after the Trebia judge me worthy of so foul a death? And you, youth long unconquered, now, alas, without war, worn down by the goods of Capua—I myself, not degenerate of my deeds, have turned my victorious standards from the Ausonians: to you I gave my back. I saw, when I called you to the wars, you flee no otherwise than from an Italian leader, terrified. What is left to you of your old war-spirit, you who can give your backs while I call you back?' Such things the Punic poured forth. But the Latin squadrons, bearing their spoils, bore themselves toward the walls of Nola with notable clamour.

But Rome, grievously accustomed for long to hear of the fortunes of her own, and never restored by prosperity, when at last news of a favourable battle was brought, is lifted up and rises by this first gift of the gods. Before all, the youth, sluggish for war and fleeing toils, while the war thundered, and who stole themselves away, pay the penalty of their hiding. Then those who, by the sweetness of life, found out wiles and corrupted the treaties sworn to the Punic, they mark out and cleanse the race of its crime. The unhappy counsel of those who meant to leave their native land is punished, and the wicked guilt of Metellus. Such were the hearts of the men. But indeed not even the women cease to match the men in mind and demand a share of praise. Every matron, bearing before herself the ancient glory of her head and hands and the necklaces stripped from her neck, rushes in rivalry and they serve the war. They are not grieved that the men in such a time yielded them so great a lot of praise, and they rejoice to have given place to a deed that will go down through the ages. Then the lofty throng of the senate follows. Into the common store, with great rivalry, private wealth is heaped. To strip their households and to have set aside nothing in secret for the uses of a better life pleases them. The crowd too gathers, without a name. Thus using all her body and all her limbs, Rome, though bloodless, again raised her face to the heavens.

The men carrying responses from Parnassian Cirrha add a sweet hope to the wretched. For they brought glad word that they had heard in the sanctuaries, when the cavern thundered with a sacred voice, and the priestess, now entered by Phoebus, bellowed: 'Loose from your hearts, race of Venus, your heavier fears: adversity, and whatever of hardship remained beneath war, is drained for you. The lighter of your toils remain, and terror without ruin. Only bear to the gods your vows and prayers, and pour warm blood upon the altars, and do not give your backs to your woes. The war god will be present, and the Delian seer himself will turn aside the nearer perils, known ever to have lessened the Trojans' toils. But indeed, but indeed before all let a hundred altars smoke, festal, for Jove: let a hundred victims fall to the knives. He, violent, will drive the grim cloud of war and its savage storms into Libya: you yourselves will behold him shaking the aegis into the battles, the world thrown into tumult.' And after this, proclaimed in the caverns of Parnassus, was brought, and the god's word reached the ears of the crowd, in rivalry they climb to the Capitoline citadels, and prostrate themselves to Jove and honour his shrine with blood; then they sing the paean and pray for faithful responses.

Meanwhile the elder Torquatus, in his accustomed arms, was shaking the Sardinian lands with his country's soldiery. For Hampsagoras, boasting a name from Trojan origin, had called the Tyrians to renewed war. The man had a fair son, not worthy of such a parent, Hostus, on whose gleaming youth relying, he himself, harsh to peace, rekindled his green years, weak though they were, in zeal for the ways of barbarous war. And he, when he sees Torquatus bearing his standards in haste, hurried, and right hands eager for battle approaching, flies out by the deceit of a place he knew, through the hidden trackless glens, and, seizing the foreseen shortcuts of flight, is covered by the thicketed valley and the leafy shadows.

An island, walled round by the wave-sounding deep, is steepened by the waters and, pressed by the eddy, contains its huge lands under the likeness of a bare foot: hence it was first called Ichnusa by the Greek settlers. Soon Sardus of Libya, trusting in his noble blood from Hercules, changed the names of the land after himself. The Teucrians too flowed in and set their compelled seats there, scattered over the sea after Pergama was uprooted. Nor was it a small glory, Iolaus, that you gave to those lands, your column of Thespiads brought with your father's fleet. The tale is that, when Actaeon, his limbs mangled, paid a lamentable penalty for Diana seen in the spring, the parent, astonished at the strangeness of the woe, fled, Aristaeus, across the straits and went to the Sardinian retreats. They say his mother Cyrene showed him the new shores. The land is clean of serpents and widowed of poisons, but grim in its climate and tainted by much marsh. Where it sees Italy, parched on its rocky ridge, it troubles the straits with its crags far and wide, and within cooks the pallid fields too much, the south winds smoking under the Crab. The rest is nourished by the favour of bounteous Ceres.

The land being of this nature, Hostus, eluding Torquatus often through the wooded pathless wastes, awaited the Sidonian weapons of war and his Iberian comrades of the toil. And they, when by the ships' arrival they swelled their courage, no delay: he bursts from his hiding-places, and far and wide the opposing columns bristle, and they seem at length to come together and join step. They seize the open intervals of the spreading plain with their hurled spears from afar, until they reach the tried swords, the most faithful weapons. Then a dire plague: they cut down and fall, and by turns leave their souls on the savage blade.

I could not indeed hope to unfold worthily the countless slaughters and so many grim deeds, in proportion to so great a name of the matter, nor match in words the heat of the warriors. But you, Calliope, grant to my labour that the too little-known deeds of a great man be handed on to long ages, and let us consecrate the honour due to the bard.

Ennius, of the ancient line of King Messapus, was mingling in the foremost ranks, and adorned with the proud glory of the Latin vine-staff his right hand. The rugged land of the Calabrians sent him: ancient Rudiae bore him, Rudiae now a name memorable only for its nursling. He in the first fight (as the Thracian bard once, when Cyzicus shook the Argo, hostile to war, hurled Rhodopean darts, his quill laid by) had made himself worthy of beholding by no small slaughter of men, and the ardour of his hand swelled with killings. Hostus flies up, hoping it would be eternal glory if he should beat down so great a stain, and balances his spear with all his strength. Apollo, sitting in a cloud, laughed at the attempts of his vain enterprise and sent the weapon off afar into the winds, and over this: 'Too much, youth, and of too proud a hope have you drunk. This man is sacred, and a great care of the Aonian sisters, and a bard worthy of Apollo. He first shall sing the Italian wars in illustrious verse and shall raise the leaders to heaven; he shall teach Helicon to resound in Latin measures, nor shall he yield in honour or fame to the Ascraean elder.' So Phoebus, and through Hostus's two temples the avenging arrow runs. By the youth's fall the stricken columns are turned across the fields, and the scattered bands alike give their backs. Then the father, turbid with wrath at hearing of his son's death, groaning a barbarous and monstrous groan, pierces his panting breast and urges his steps to his son's shades.

But the leader of Libya, broken by Marcellus and bruised by the keen fight, had condemned the plains and arms: he had turned to the wretched Acerrae of unequal war. Thence, when he had given over the city to flames and swords, with wrath no lighter nor more sparing he flung himself upon Nuceria and levelled its walls with the ground. Afterward Casilinum, having struggled much against him with the unfair arms of its defenders, with difficulty by craft he unbarred its thresholds and weighed the besieged ones' lives with gold. And now, pouring his columns into the Daunian fields, he bent his fury wherever plunder or wrath had called. Petelia smoked, burned, its roofs overthrown, unhappy for its faith and second to wretched Saguntum, yet once proud to have guarded the Herculean quiver.

Tarentum too had turned its mind to Tyrian undertakings, and the Punic had entered the gates. But indeed in the gleaming citadel, trusting the place, an Ausonian band sat thronged. Here, doing wondrous things, the fleet that lay hidden in the harbour stood (for from the narrow jaws the sea bursts out among the rocks and into a broad recess pours the deep, sundered from the main)— the ships, then, shut in, which had no way to swim out with the citadel set above, by craft he carried beyond the barriers of the sea and bore the keels, transported, through the lands behind. Slippery runners were set beneath on oaken wagons, and the wheel, gliding on the hide of a newly slain bullock, drew the sea-going ship through the grass. And now, driven over the hills and thickets to the shore, the fleet swam upon the deep, coming without a rower.

Meanwhile a messenger fills him, terrifying the straits with the heat of his cares, the keels borne in no usual way, while far off he longs to storm the Oebalian grandsons and first to furrow the lands with naval beaks, telling him the walls of Capua are besieged: the very bars of the gates wrenched off, and all the war rushing on the wretched. Fierce, he leaves his undertakings, and, shame adding wings and wrath alike, with monstrous speed through the nearest lands he flies off and, threatening, is borne to the eager combats. Just as if a tigress, roused by the loss of her cub, darts forth, the Caucasus, astonished, is ranged over in a few hours and the Ganges crossed at a winged bound, until with her lightning course she gathers the tracks of her young and spends her rage on the foe she has seized.

To meet him Centenius, his column scattered, in haste is poured out, ill in daring and ready for perils, but a small glory for Hannibal. For, having discharged the honour of the vine-staff, he had suddenly roused the Latin peasants and thrown the half-armed band to be laid low by the foe. Twice seven thousand sent to death (nor did the column halt), twice seven, which Fulvius, not more skilful with the sword but notable for his birth, led in lawful arms: but equally over the bodies of the fallen, poured down, the way was seized, and the victor, suffering no delay, went on. A funeral alone held back the fame and the name of that man, willing as he was to a merciful mind, with a glad burial. For by treachery, unspeakable, and slain by his host, while he sought a parley and the perfidious promises of the Lucanian race, Gracchus, surrounded by blind craft, had fallen, and the Libyan snatched the praise of burying him.

But now, when the Punic was known to be hastening to the walls, no affair stood in its place: now both consuls were present, headlong, all the force from Nola, and from Arpi Fabius, fresher in years, was bearing his swift arms. Hence Nero, and hence flying Silanus night and day drove on, urging the cohorts to the hastened wars. From every side they gather, and it pleases the leaders alike to set all of them against the one youth. He himself, lofty, sits on Tifata, where a hill stands nearer the walls and from its mounds looks down on the city below. But when he sees, with so many arms surrounding him, the allied gates walled up, and that he is denied both to enter and to burst out of Capua, anxious at the outcome, now he meditates to break by iron the throng of those who block him, now he takes pathless counsels for his enterprise and seeks by craft to draw so many thousands from the narrowed gates and to unbind the ringed walls. So therefore with himself, and thus in his heart he wearies his cares: 'Where, sick mind, do you call me? Shall I again take up perils, unfavoured by the lie of the place, and, with Capua watching, give my back? Or, sitting on the summit of the neighbouring mountain, shall I suffer the allied houses to be cut down before my eyes? Not so did Fabius and the master of the Fabii find me confounded, when I escaped, victor, the hills shut up with Hesperian soldiery, and goaded the bullocks scattered through the fields to toss the fires on their kindled horns. Not all my wiles have yet departed. If it is snatched from us to defend Capua, it shall be granted to surround Rome.'

After these things pleased him, and the resolve held his mind, without waiting until Titan should bring forth his breathing horses with the light from the deep, he drives his men into the column with voice and hand and unfolds his monstrous undertakings: 'Go on, come, conquer every toil, soldier, by your valour, and as far as human strides can stretch themselves, hasten, lofty. You seek Rome. The Alps paved this road, Cannae paved it for you. Come, strike against the walls of Troy your shield-boss, and repay the ruins of Capua: how worth it will have been to fall, that you may see the Palatine and the Thunderer departing from his Tarpeian seat.' Spurred on, they mass their steps. Rome clings to their ears, Rome to their eyes, and they believe, by the leader's skilful acts, this undertaking fitter than if he had led them from the very plain fatal to the Aeneadae. They cross the Volturnus's swift fords in their boat and the last leave behind, to delay the Italians, the keels they have spoiled with fire. Then with nimble maniples they gather the Sidicine fields and Thracian Cales, your homes, Orithyia, named from your son. Hence the Allifan land, not unloved by Bacchus, and the country dwelt in by the Casinian nymphs, is laid waste. Soon too the neighbouring Aquinas and Fregellae, which covered the smoking Giant, are seized by the flying column. Then, roused, he bears his step over the lofty ridges, where warlike Frusino clings to hard crags, and grain-bearing Anagnia of Ceres rises, hung upon its swelling ridge with fruitful clods. And now indeed he has entered the plains and the fields of Labici, leaving behind the walls of Telegonus, battered by the ram, a delay unworthy amid such great things. Nor does pleasant Algidum hold him back, nor near it the temple of Gabine Juno. Headlong he is borne to the banks with a monstrous whirlwind, where, cold, Anio creeps gently with its sulphurous waves, gliding without a murmur to its father Thybris.

Here, when the fierce one had set his standards and his measured camp and his cavalry made the banks tremble, terrified Ilia first hid herself, the fords stirred, in the sacred cave of her husband, and all the nymphs fled the eddy. But the Latin mothers, as if no walls remained, astonished, wander everywhere with frenzied steps. Before their eyes stand the mangled shades of the trembling dead, those who at the grievous Trebia and those who at the Ticinus's streams met their deaths: Paulus and Gracchus, bloody, and Flaminius together, wander before the faces of the wretched. The crowd blocked the ways. Lofty and harsh with wrath the senate stands and with grim face tames the vast fear. At times, however, beneath the helmet there burst forth silent tears poured out: what does Fortune threaten, or what do the gods prepare? The youth, dispersed through the high towers, stands, and turns over this in their hearts: that it has come to this, that Rome now thinks it enough to defend her walls. When the Punic had scarcely indulged his men, driven the whole night in marching, in sleep, himself wakeful and easy to no rest, and believing that the time which sleep takes away is withdrawn from life, he clothes himself in gleaming arms and bids the squadrons of the Numidians burst forth. Then, light on his reins, he is borne with hoof-beating sound around the walls of stricken Rome as they tremble. Now he surveys the approaches, now with his spear, hostile, he strikes the closed gates and enjoys the dread of the fearful. Now, lingering, standing on the lofty hills, he enters the city with his eyes and learns the places and the causes of the places. And he would have gathered all with his sight and penetrated into every part by gazing, had not Fulvius been at hand with great force, the siege of Capua not wholly left behind. Then at last the leader bent his exulting squadrons toward the camp, sated in his breast with Rome beheld. And when night was driven from the sky and Neptune reddens with his first lamp, and Dawn recalls men to their labours, he pours out his columns, leaping over the broken rampart, and, as loud as he can cry: 'By your many glories, O comrades, and your right hands sacred in blood, go equal to yourselves and dare as much under arms as Rome fears. Cut down this remaining mass: nothing will be left in all the world for you to conquer. Nor let the origin of a war-born people slow you: you will take a city entered by thousands of the Senones and used to being taken. Perhaps on their lofty curule chairs even now, by the example of their forefathers, the old men await a noble death in their custom and make themselves ready for death.' With such words the Punic here; but on the other side the Oenotrian youth need no voices of their leader or precepts. Their mothers stir them enough, and their children, and the dear faces of their parents, weeping, stretching out their upturned palms. They show their little ones and with wailing strike the moved hearts of the men, and fix kisses on their armed right hands. They wish to go and to set their breasts, packed close, before the walls, and they look back at their own and swallow back their tears. But when, the hinge struck, the gates were opened and at once the army burst out with its arms set in motion, a clangour is poured, mingled with groaning and prayers, over the high walls to the sky, and the matrons, scattered, with loosened hair shriek aloud and bare their breasts. Fulvius, flying before the column: 'Who would not know,' he said, 'that the Punic came not of his own will to our homes? He flees from the gates of Capua.' As he tried to add more, a grim crash with a vast murmur of the sky troubled him, and storms from a sudden cloud. Jupiter, returning from the land of the Ethiopians, when he saw the threatening Punic approach the Romulean rampart, had quickly roused the gods and bidden them defend the Dardan houses and run apart to the seven citadels. He himself, sublime on the Tarpeian summit, stirs up all things, both the winds and the clouds and the wraths of the hail and the thunderbolts and the thunder and the black storms. The shaken poles trembled, and the sky is closed with darkness, and night buries the lands in a blind cloak. The tempest presses on their eyes, and from the near foe Rome lies hidden. The flames hurled into the squadrons through the clouds keep their hissing, and the fire whistles among their limbs. Here the south wind, here the north, here the African with dusky wings move wars, with all the force by which the spirits and breasts of angry Jove can sate themselves. A column of waters flows, confused with a pitch-black whirlwind and a blackening storm, and wraps all the plains around with foaming waves. Lofty from the topmost peak of the mountain the ruler of the gods balanced the thunderbolts raised in his right hand and, resolved not to yield to the leader's shield, struck it. The point at the spear's top melted, and flowed like a sword caught in the furnace. But indeed the Sidonian leader, his arms scorched, stayed his comrades and taught that the blind fire from the clouds and the murmurs were mixed in vain by the winds. At last, after the disasters of his comrades and the ruin of the sky, no foe seen in the storm-clouds, no sword, he bids the standards be carried back to the camp and rekindles his mournful wraths: 'To the winds, no doubt, and the storms of winter, Rome, you will owe one day. But the coming light shall never snatch you from us, though Jupiter himself come down to the lands.' As, gnashing, he says such things, behold, a bright radiance flashes from the cleared sky, and the purged air shines, the clouds dispersed. The Aeneadae felt the god, and, their weapons laid by, stretch their submissive right hands to the high Capitol and ring the mountain's sanctuary with festal laurel. Then their faces, but now dripping with no small sweat, they turn now glad to Jove: 'Grant, highest of the gods, grant, father, that the Libyan fall by a sacred weapon amid the battles. By no other hand can he be brought down.' So indeed praying they kept silence, after Hesperus had taken away the lands with blackening shadows. When Titan, raising his ruddy lamp, overwhelmed him and the use of life returned to mortals, the Punic is present, nor does the Oenotrian youth keep itself in camp. Not yet were the swords drawn, and only so much ground lay between for the war as hurled spears might suffice to cross, when the brightness of the sky began suddenly to dim, and thick darkness to come on, and the day to flee, and Jupiter to arm again for battle. The winds bear down, and a dense ball of clouds seethes with the whirling south wind. He himself thunders, so that even Rhodope and Taurus and Pindus and Atlas tremble. The lakes of Erebus heard, and Typhoeus, sunk in the deep darkness, knew the heavenly wars. The south wind rushes in and, whirling a pitch-black cloud with much hail, wheels the leader about as he hesitates and threatens in vain, and forces him to retire to camp. But when, his weapons laid aside, he had fenced himself with a rampart, the glad face of cleared Olympus is opened, and you would believe the Thunderer had thunderbolts so gentle none at all, nor thunder stirred in the calm sky. He persists and, affirming, promises that no further upon them the day shall come, if only his country's valour return to their hands, and the Punic believe it no sin to destroy Rome. For where then at last had the thunderbolts of unwilling Jove lain hidden, when the sword laid low the Aetolian plains? Where, when the Tyrrhene pools swam with the blood of men? 'If the ruler of the gods fights for the walls,' he says, 'with so many bolts hurled by the lightning, amid so many movements why does it grieve him to have struck me bearing arms against him? To the winds and the winter we, fugitive, give our backs. Let that mind and vigour return, I beg, by which it pleased you, when the fathers' pacts, when the treaties were at hand, to renew your lines.' So he inflames their breasts, until Titan loosens the foaming reins of his horse. Nor did night compose his cares, nor did sleep dare to approach the raging man, and his frenzies return with the light. Again he calls the trembling to arms, and on his shield, dreadful, he beats, and with his arms mimics the murmurs of the sky.

But when he learned that the Ausonian fathers trusted so much in the gods, and that aid had been sent up to the shores from the Baetis, and that a column had advanced from the walls by night, that thus, roaring, the besieged plied their leisure, and that now Rome was untroubled by Hannibal—more violent, he presses on. And now he was nearing the wall, when Jupiter addresses Juno, sick with cares, and soothes her by counsel: 'Will you, wife and sister dear to me, add no curbs ever, without end, to the fierce youth of Sidon? Granted that he razed Saguntum, levelled the Alps, laid chains on the sacred Eridanus, defiled the lakes: will he even make ready to break into our houses, into our citadels? Stay the man. For, as you see, he now demands fires and prepares to mimic thunderbolts with kindled flames.' At these words she gives thanks and, troubled, through the air flies down, and the daughter of Saturn, having seized the youth's hand: 'Where do you rush, O madman, and take up greater wars than it is given to a mortal to bear?' Juno says (and she parted the black cloud and appeared in her true face) 'You have no dealing with a Phrygian or a Laurentine settler: behold, come (for, the cloud removed for a little from your eyes, I will grant you to see all things), where the lofty peak of the mountain rises to the airs, look, called the Palatine for the Parrhasian king, Apollo holds it, full and resounding with his quiver, and bends his bow and meditates battles. But where, from the neighbouring hills, the Aventine raises itself of a lofty mass, do you see how the Latonian maiden shakes the torches kindled in the eddy of Phlegethon, her arms bared, thrust out, eager for the fight? In another part, behold how Gradivus in savage arms has filled the field named from his own name. Hence Janus moves his arms with his hand, thence Quirinus moves his, each god from his own hill. But indeed see, how mighty Jupiter shakes the aegis, vomiting clouds and flames, and with what great fires, fierce, he feeds his wraths. Turn your face here and dare to behold the Thunderer: what storms, how great a thunder beneath his nod do you see, his head shaken! what fire flashes from his eyes! Yield to the gods at last and cease the Titanic wars.' So having addressed the man untaught of peace and measure, she draws him off as he marvels at the faces of the gods and their flaming limbs, and restores peace to the lands and the sky.

Looking back, the leader departs and bids the standards be wrenched from the camp and set in motion, and threatens to return. At once a brighter lamp is given back to the air, and the trembling blue shines again, Phoebus poured upon it. But the Aeneadae, when from afar from the walls they saw the standards wrenched up and the leader turned about, in turn show their silent faces and teach by a nod what they dare not believe in their great lingering fear, nor think him willing to depart, but think it fraud and ambush and Punic hearts, and the silent mothers fix kisses on their children: until the column, advancing, took itself from their eyes and, terror removed, dissolved their suspected snares. Then indeed everywhere they go to the sacred Capitol and, embracing one another in turn, with mingled voice they cry the triumph of Tarpeian Jove and crown his shrines. And now they open all the gates: from every side rushes the glad crowd, seeking the joys long unhoped for itself. These gaze at the spot where the leader's tent had stood, these where, lofty, from his seat he had addressed the summoned squadrons, where the warlike Asturian and where the fierce Garamantian and savage Hammon had pitched their camps. Now they sprinkle living bodies with the water of the eddy, now they set up altars to the nymphs that dwell in the Anio. Then, the walls purified, they return to the festal city.