Book 14

14. Turn now your songs, you powers of Helicon, to the sea of Ortygia and the cities of the Sicilian shore. Here is the labour of your gift: now to approach the Daunian realms of Aeneas' sons, now the Sicanian harbours, or to range over the homes of the Macedonians and the Achaean fields, or to dip wandering footsteps in the Sardinian wave, or the huts once ruled by the Tyrian people, or to visit the last day and the boundaries of the lands. So Mars demands, driven and scattered over the shores. Come then, let us follow where the trumpets, where the wars lead.

A great part of Ausonia, the land of Trinacria lies, since once, the South Wind storming and the waves laying waste, it received the straits driven on by the blue trident. For long ago, the sea hurled by the blind force of a whirlwind through the hidden depths, cleft apart the entrails of the torn land and, breaking through the fields with mid-ocean, carried over the cities along with their peoples, both wrenched away. From that time swift Nereus, keeping the divided channels, utterly forbids the sundered shores to be joined by his savage tide. But the space which severs the partnership of the land, the report goes (so close does the strait run between) lets the barking pass across, and the morning songs of birds. Much is the virtue of the soil: now to repay the ploughs their interest, now to shade the hills with olive, to give a name to Bacchus, to have bred the swift war-horse fit to bear the trumpets, and to add Cecropian honeycombs to the nectar of Hybla. Here too you will revere the Paeonian springs with their secret sulphur, here the mouths of prophets worthy of Phoebus and the Muses, the excellent ones, who make the sacred woods ring with song and sound their Helicon with the Syracusan Muse. A people quick of tongue, yet the same, when it stirred wars, wont to mark out its harbours with trophies of the sea.

After the dread sceptre of Antiphates and the Cyclopian realms, the Sicani first turned the new fields with the ploughshare — Pyrene sent the peoples, who imposed on the empty land a name borrowed from their fathers' river. Soon a band of Ligurians, with a Sicilian leader, renewed the changed names in realms won by war. Nor was the Cretan a dweller to be ashamed of: Minos had led men driven from a hundred walls to ill-fated battles, seeking to punish Daedalus. When by an unspeakable trick that judge had passed to the everlasting shades through the snares of the daughters of Cocalus, the Minoan throng, weary of the zeal for warring, settled on the Sicilian shores. Trojan Acestes and Trojan Helymus mingled the Phrygian stock, who, walls built and a people following them, gave from themselves names that should last to the long walls. Nor do the walls of Zancle bear an obscure renown, which the hand of Saturn's daughter granted, her weapon laid aside. But no glory is fairer on the Hennaean shores than she who founded her name from the Sisyphean Isthmus and shines far before others in her Ephyrean foster-children. Here Arethusa receives in her fish-filled fount her own Alpheus, who bears the tokens of the sacred crown.

But unfair Mulciber loves not the Trinacrian caverns. For Lipare, consumed beneath by vast furnaces, vomits sulphurous smoke from its eaten-out summit. But Aetna belches out the groans of fires shut within, its crags trembling, and, imitating the fury of the sea, thunders restless through blind crashings of its din by night and day alike. As from the dark fount of Phlegethon a torrent of flames overflows, and with a pitchy storm it rolls half-burnt rocks from its molten caverns. But although it boils within with a great whirl of flames and the fire, ever springing up beneath, flows on, on its highest ridge it holds — wondrous to tell — white ice neighbouring the flames, and with eternal frost the burning crags bristle: winter stands on the summit of the lofty hill, and black hot ash covers the snow.

Why should I tell of the lands ruled in Aeolus' name and the homes of the winds and the bars set upon the storms? Here, turned deep within to the Pelopean realms of Pachynus, the rocks, beaten, answer back to the Ionian deep. Here, set over against Libya and the raging North-Westers, noble Lilybaeum sees its sloping claws. But where the third brow of the land's opposite side slopes toward Italy with its ridge thrust out to the shores, lofty Pelorus raises itself with its sandy mass.

Over these lands, mild through a long age, Hieron had ruled as a gentle master, strong to handle the people with serene command and to harry no hearts with fear of their parents, and, not easy to violate the faith pledged at the altars, he had kept the bonds of alliance chaste with the Ausonians through many years. But when the fates released the man in his frail old age, the deadly sceptre passed to his young grandson, and the peaceful palace received unruly ways. For the king, not yet endowed with twice eight years, grew dizzy on the high throne and could not bear the weights of kingship nor too much trust in unstable affairs. And soon, in brief, with arms protecting his offences, no right was known and no wrong unknown. Cheapest to the king was the care for shame. To his headlong frenzy his mother's descent from Pyrrhus gave spurs, and the proud race of his ancestor, grandson of Aeacus, and Achilles eternal in song. Therefore a sudden ardour for favouring the Carthaginians' designs, and no delay for the crime: now he joins new treaties, the pact being that the Sidonian conqueror should yield the Sicilian shores. But the Penalties stood by, and the Fury denied a tomb, in the very land where he had lately pledged not to see his ally. For no longer easy to suffer his savage pride and the young man burning in bloody luxury and mingling foul things with dire — those whom anger and fear inflamed — sworn men, cut him down. Nor now was there measure to the swords: they add the slaughter of women, and lay low with the steel the seized bodies of innocent sisters. New liberty rages in arms and tosses off the yoke: part want the Punic camp, part the Italians and what is known, nor is the throng of the frenzied without those who would rather ally with neither pact.

With such an upheaval in Trinacria and the Sicanian affairs in turmoil at the king's destruction, lofty in honour (for the third purple had renewed his Latin fasces) Marcellus brought his fleet to the shores of Zancle. And when all was laid open to the man — the slaughter of the tyrant, the doubtful minds of men, what places and how great the arms of Carthage hold, what people remains friendly to the Trojan-born, what swellings of pride Arethusa conceives, and that she persists in not opening her gates — he leans on the war and swiftly, through the nearest parts, pours out with kindled breast the whole plague of arms. Not otherwise Boreas, when headlong from Rhodope's peak he has flung himself and with his tenth surge driven the sea onto the lands, follows with a roar the mass of the cast-out sea and rages with shrieking wings. The first battles laid waste the Leontine fields, the land once ruled by dread Laestrygon. The leader pressed on, to whom to conquer the Greek squadrons slowly was the same as to be conquered. He rushes over the whole field (you would think a womanish crowd ran together against men) and fattens with blood the fields pleasing to Ceres. They are strewn everywhere, and swift Mars snatched away the chance of escaping death on foot. For as flight promised each man safety, the leader, forestalling, seizes him with the sword. "Go, reap the unwarlike flock and cut them down with steel," he shouts, urging on the lingering bands with his shield-boss. "With sluggish zeal for wrestling, taught to suffer soft contest in the shade and rejoicing to gleam with oil, the cowardly youth stands by, a middling glory for the conquerors. This praise alone is granted: that you conquer with the enemy in sight." At the leader's word the whole army charges in, and they know with themselves only the contest that remains — who shall surpass with his right hand and excel in rich spoils.

Not more does the wave of the Euboean Euripus rage, dashed against the crags of Caphereus, nor does Propontis cast out the sounding sea more violently through its narrow mouth, nor does the strait that beats the Herculean columns at the sun's far edge seethe and rush with greater tumult. Yet a mild glory of the right hand shone forth amid such great battles by fame. A Tuscan soldier (Asilus was his name), once captured at the Trasimene streams, having tried the easy servitude and the gentle commands of his master Berya, had returned to his native shores by the goodwill of his favouring lord, and, taking up arms again, was then expiating his old misfortunes in the Sicilian war. And he, while he mingled in the savage battles in the midst, borne against Berya — to whom, sent to the royal pact by the peoples of the Carthaginians and waging the allied wars, a helmet of bronze guard had closed the face — attacks the young man with the steel, and as he bears in fear his unsteady steps backward, lays him low on the sand. But the wretch, hearing the victor's voice and his life trembling and lingering, as if leading it back from the Stygian abode, breaks the bonds of the helmet ill-trusted from the chin and was joining prayers and preparing to add words. But suddenly terrified at the sight and the known face, the Tuscan recalled his sword by hand, and of his own accord poured forth such words with a groan, tears welling up: "Do not, I beg, pray as a suppliant and in doubt for the light: it is right for me to spare an enemy. By far the best in soldiering is he for whom it is last and first to keep faith amid wars: you grant me first to escape death and save me, not yet saved by the enemy. I, who have seen grim things, would not call myself worthy to be turned again to worse things, if through the midst of fires and through the midst of swords my right hand should not give you a way." So he speaks, and of his own accord raises him up, and with the gift of life makes life equal.

But, having now won the first contest begun on the Sicilian shore, Marcellus, advancing with a quiet column, turned his victorious standards to the Ephyrean walls. Thence he surrounded the Syracusan citadels with his camp. But his love of the sword grew faint. He longed by warning to calm the men's blind hearts and to root out their angers. Nor (should they perhaps refuse him, and should they believe his mildness to be fear) is the abandoned siege kept up with slack barriers: rather, on the contrary, more intent himself he watches with wary arms, fearless of face, and contrives unforeseen perils with secret care. Not otherwise on the pools of Eridanus or the bank of Cayster the white swan swims and gives its motionless body to the down-flowing river and rows the silent waters with its feet.

Meanwhile, while the wavering counsel of the besieged falters, peoples were summoned and cities bore their allied arms: Messana, leaning on the strait and least torn off, divided from Italy, and memorable for its Oscan birth; then Catane, too near to burning Typhoeus and once most renowned for having bred the pious brothers, and you, Camarina, whom the fates forbade to be moved; then she who calls Hymettus to contest with her nectared combs, bold Hybla, and Selinus famous for its orchards, and Mylae, once a just harbour, now with a bare shore, an unfaithful refuge for those fleeing the seas; and high Eryx too, and from its lofty summit Centuripae, and Entella green with abundant Lyaeus, Entella, a name dear to Hectorean Acestes. Not Thapsus, not Acrae on its icy mounds were lacking. The Agyrine band, and Tyndaris raising herself with her twin Laconians, flows in. High Acragas snatches up a squadron of a thousand horses and fires the air with neighings, rolling a dusty cloud into the void. Grosphus was the leader, whose chased shield bore a fierce bull, the memorial of an ancient punishment. That bull, when it scorched bodies set beneath in flames, changed groans into bellowings, and one might believe that real herds, driven from the stalls, poured out their cries, not unpunished indeed: for the inventor of the dire art himself, dying, bellowed mournfully in his own bull. Gela came, drawing its name from the river; Halaesa came, and those who tame the perjured hearts at the Palici with present punishment, and Trojan Acesta came, and Acis, who through the Aetnaean borders seeks the seas and bathes with sweet water the welcome Nereid. He once was a rival to your passion, Polyphemus, when, fleeing the rustic anger of your violent breast, he melted away into slender waters and escaped both the enemy and mingled with you, Galatea, his victorious wave. And those too who drink the sounding Hypsa and Alabis and the Achates, clear in its gleaming flood, who tend, wandering Chrysas, your fountains, and the Hipparis of a poor channel, and the Pantagias easy to be passed in its scant flood, and the yellow shallows of swift Symaethus. The shores of Thermae, endowed with ancient song, armed their men, where Himera plunges into the Aeolian sea. For it splits itself into divided shores, and seeks the west no less swiftly than it seeks the east. Nebrodes nourishes the partings of the twin fount, than which no mountain in Sicily rises richer in shade. Lofty Henna gave the sacred right hands of the gods to the groves. Here a cavern, loosening the vast gaping of the earth, opens a blind path to the spirits by a dark track, where the new Hymenaeus came to unknown shores, where once, goaded by this desire, the Stygian ruler dared to approach the day and, leaving sad Acheron, drove his chariot through the void into forbidden lands. Then, the Hennaean maiden snatched, headlong he turned his eyes, dazed at the sky and fearing the light, back to Styx, his horses, and hid his prey in the shadows. Petraea sought Roman leaders, Callipolis sought Roman treaties, and Engyon of the stony field, Hadranum and Ergetium together, and Melite proud in its weapons of wool, and Calacte, its shore rich in fish, and Cephaloedias, whose shore on the stormy deep bristles in its blue plains with feeding sea-monsters, and those who from the Tauromenian seat behold Charybdis swallowing down ships seized in the draught of its whirlpool and hurling them again from the bottom to the stars. This band cherished Latium and the Laurentine standards. The rest of the Sicanian people stood by Elissa's vows. Agathyrna gave a thousand, and Trogilus blown by the South Winds, a thousand the Phacelina seat of Thoantean Diana. Panhormos came, fruitful in threefold number, whether you hunt wild beasts in the woods or sweep the sea with nets or wish to draw down a bird from the sky. Not idle Herbesus, not Naulocha sluggish in peril sat still, not Morgentia in its leafy fields held back from faithless war. Amastra came accompanied by the men of Menae, and Tisse of small name, and Netum and Mutyce and the youth of flowing Achaetes. Drepane, and Helorus loud with its wave, and Triocala, soon laid waste by the servile war, aided the Sidonians; fierce Arbela and lofty Ietas and Tabas teachable in war, and little Cossyra and Megara, no greater, joined in concordant daring, and Gaulus, conspicuous on the level sea, when the halcyon sounds with its song and the unmoving wave bears the floating nests on the lulled billows. The renowned city of Syracuse itself had filled its broad walls with gathered soldiery and varied arms. The leaders, with vain-talking mouths, were further maddening the people, easily driven and glad of tumult: that their walls had never been entered by an enemy, and their four citadels, and how great a shadow over the trophies of Salamis and the East their city, impassable by its harbour's design, had cast, a thing seen by their forefathers: three hundred triremes before their eyes in one shipwreck, and Athens, propped on the quivered king, sunk with impunity in the deep by the disaster. The brothers born at Carthage inflamed the people, of a Punic mother, but whom, driven from the Syracusan city under accusation, their Sicilian father had led out to the Libyan shores, and from the twin stock of their parents they mingled Tyrian cunning with Sicanian fickleness.

Seeing these things, the leader, after the sedition seemed past cure, and of its own accord the war was rising from the enemy, calling the gods of the Sicilians to witness, and the rivers and lakes and your fountains, Arethusa, that he was called to war unwilling (that the enemy was putting on arms which it had long not taken up of its own will), with a vast whirlwind of weapons he attacks the walls and thunders with arms upon the city. Equal anger snatches all alike, and they contend and rush. A tower rising to the stars with manifold storeys went up, which the Greek had made to grow to ten levels and had consumed many of the forests' shadows. From this they strove to roll down pine armed with fire and rocks and to pour out the plague of hot pitch. Cimber, hurling from afar a burning torch, casts it and fixes the deadly weapon in its side. Vulcan is fed, aided by the whirl of the wind, and dragging the swelling ruin through the tower's vitals and through the high mass and the floors so often renewed mounts exulting, and swiftly devours the timbers crackling in the flames, and, a vast vapour overflowing at once to the sky, the victor licks the nodding summit. They are filled with smoke and a fog of black gloom, nor is it granted to any to escape, as if seized by the swift stroke of a thunderbolt, the ruins fell away into ashes.

Equal fortune on the sea against the wretched keels. For when they bore themselves nearer to the buildings and the city, where the harbour brings its peaceful waters to the walls, an unforeseen plague terrified them with a new device. A beam, skilfully rounded and with its knots smoothed all about, like a ship's mast, bore, fixed in front, the weapons of a hooked hand: this, from the lofty rampart of the wall, seized the warriors up into the air with the claws of the curved iron, and, drawn back, carried them into the middle of the city. Nor that force men alone, but often the warlike beams snatched up a trireme, when from above they struck the steel driven down upon the stern and its tenacious bites. And these, as soon as, the iron fixed in the neighbouring timbers, they had lifted the ship on high — a pitiable sight — suddenly again, the chains skilfully loosened, gave it back headlong to the deep with such great mass that the waves swallowed the whole ship with its soldiers. Above these snares the wall, skilfully hollowed, gave narrow openings, through which it was safe to pour weapons in secret upon those who hurled, the rampart set against them. Nor was the labour without trickery, lest by the same narrow path the darts, hurled back again from the same enemy, should return. Greek cunning and craft more powerful than arms kept off Marcellus and such great threats by land and sea, and a vast war stood at the walls.

There was a man, an immortal glory to the Isthmian colonists, in genius easily before all the foster-children of the earth, bare of wealth, but to whom heaven and the lands lay open. He had known how the new Titan at his rising should reveal rains, sad with darkened rays; whether the unstable earth clings fast or hangs poised; why by a fixed law Tethys, poured around, binds this globe with her waters; and at once the labours of sea and moon, and by what law father Ocean pours out his tides. That he had numbered the sands of the capacious world is no idle belief. They tell too that he drew ships and piled-up rocks against the steep with a feminine hand. While he wearies the Italian leader and the Trojans by craft, a Sidonian fleet swam up broadly with a hundred sails to the rescue and clove the blue with its beaks. The offspring of Arethusa rises to sudden hopes and, going forth from the harbour, joins its own keels. Nor on the other side does the Ausonian hesitate to fit his arms to the oars and swiftly furrows the seas with sunken oars. With strokes they twisted the strait: struck by the frequent beat of the brine, its surface whitens, and far over the seas the path foams, furrowed with a hoary flood. They leap upon the sea alike, and the Neptunian realms tremble at the new tempest. Then the sea resounds with voices, and the echo of the shout cries from the crags. And now the warrior, spread out on the empty water, had surrounded the broad billows with his horns for battle, enclosing the watery field with a naval net: and with a like fold curved, the opposing fleet rushed and narrowed the blue in a crescent ring. No delay: with the terrific shriekings of savage bronze, the song resounding far through the empty deep, the trumpets sounded, at which Triton, roused from the sea, trembled at the rival murmurs of his twisted conch. Scarce do they remember the sea: with such vast effort to battle they lean forward, and, their feet set on the edge of the stern's furthest part, swaying, they whirl their darts. The middle space of the sea is strewn with hurled weapons, and the lofty alder, rising with panting strokes, cleaves the blue foam with a darkening furrow. But other ships, by the stroke of dashed timber, sweep away the oars from the side, others, the beaks passed through the vitals of the pine, are held by the very wound where they hold. Loftier amid the midst went a stern terrible to behold, than which none through all the age went greater from the Libyan shipyards. But this beat the sea with four hundred numerous oarsmen at the oars, and, proud with its capacious sail, when it drank the swift Boreas and gathered all the blasts in its horns, drove itself with sluggish timber, as if it entered the waves driven by arms alone: the ships run forward with nimble lightness, and, with the Latin soldier, taught to heed the hand of the helmsman. When Himilco saw these coming across the leftward sea on their flank and the prow bidden to charge sidelong, quickly, the gods of the sea called to in his vows, in his wonted manner he fits the winged arrow to the taut string, and when he had balanced it on the enemy with his eyes and shown the path to the shaft, slackening his arms in opposite ways, he drew it down, his face following, through the air into a wound, and fixed to the quill the right hand of the helmsman sitting on the stern. Nor thereafter had the hand strength to guide the ship, dead upon the bending helm. And while the sailor runs to help, as if his ship were taken, behold, again, with like fate and bowstring, the arrow, gliding into the middle of the throng, transfixes with its stroke Taurus, who took up the duties, robbed of the helm.

A Cumaean ship breaks in, which the leader Corbulo and a chosen youth from the Stabian shore filled. The divinity of the lofty stern was neighbouring Dione. But, because, set lower, it was nearer to the weapons heaped upon it, as it took up the wars, it sank in the midst of the wave and divided the strait. Foaming Nereus fills the mouths of those crying out with his waters, and their palms, the deep dragging them, struggling in vain, stand out on the topmost billows. Here Corbulo, bold in anger, having crossed the blue with a great leap (for triremes, bound by an iron joint, had brought up a tower woven of oak), escapes upon the decks and from the high summit shakes the pine glowing and many-cloven with flame. Then, eager, the South Wind driving the thong, he hurls black firebrands fed with bitumen at the Carthaginians' stern-ornaments. The Vulcanian plague enters, spread everywhere, and fills the scattered gangways: there is panic, the rowing abandoned by those above, but indeed in such a strait of affairs the report of so great an evil had not yet reached those below. But the swift heat, gliding through the torches greasy with pitch, roars with victorious flames through the hull. Yet where the Dardan brand had not yet brought its force and the vapour spared, dire Himilco with a hail of stones kept it off and held back the fate of the ship. Here a wretch, while he fans the fire-bearing pine in the air, struck by a wall-stone over the timbers slippery with blood, Cydnus, rolls into the waves with the wound of Lycchaeus. The torch with its heavy stench fouled the air close by, hissing on the scorched sea. Then fierce Sabratha, having adored its stern, hurls a swift missile (Ammon was the native divinity of the Libyan keel, and, sitting, gazed upon the blue with horned brow): "Bring, father, bring to our afflicted cause," he cries, "Garamantian seer, your help, and grant us to pour sure weapons upon the Italians." Amid these words the cornel-spear came with quivering flight and transfixed the face of Neptune-worshipping Telon.

No lighter did they press, now on the threshold of death, those whom flight of the headlong ship had gathered into one part, still free of the brand. But the inevitable blaze, having ravaged the nearest in its lightning course, seized the alder and wrapped it in exulting flames. First, slipping into the waves by the help of a sea-rope, where Mulciber did not yet gather his Stygian heats, the scorched Himilco is borne off by his comrades' oars. The nearest fates laid bare the ship of pitiable Bato, deserted by its leader. He was good by skill to wrestle with the raw sea and to ride out the storms. He too foreknew what Boreas, what tomorrow's South Wind would want, nor could you, Cynosura, deceive his ever-watchful gaze, though by however dark a course. He, after there was no measure to his adversities, "Receive our blood, Ammon," he said, the witness of an unjust disaster. And, the sword driven into his breast, then with his right hand he catches the gore and lavishly pours it between the sacred horns.

Among these was Daphnis, his name drawn from an ancient origin, the unlucky one, to whom it seemed good to leave the glades and to change his huts for the faithless marble of the sea. But the first of his race, how much greater names did he prepare for himself within the bounds of a shepherd! The Sicilian Muses loved Daphnis, propitious Phoebus gifted him with the Castalian reed-pipe and bade that, cast down on the grass, if ever he sang, the glad flocks should hasten to Daphnis through the meadows, through the fields, and the streams be silent. He, when, having tuned his song on the sevenfold reed, he soothed the woods, never at the same time did the Siren pour her wonted songs upon the sea, the dogs of Scylla were silent, black Charybdis stood still, and the Cyclops gladly heard the jubilation on the crags. The flames consumed both his offspring and his lovely name. Behold, over the smoking benches floats fierce Ornytus, and makes for himself a long death on the sea, as the son of Oileus, when Minerva hurled the thunderbolt, mastered the rising waves with burning arms. Marmaridian Sciron is run through the middle by the strong point of an alder, as he raises himself. Part of his limbs swims beneath the wave, part stands out from the waters, and over the whole sea he is borne, dead — pitiable — on the rigid beak. The ships hasten on both sides, and bloody dews of the oars' spray strike the faces of those who rush on. The Rhoetean leader himself went amid the foremost by his strokes and overcame the winds with a strong oarsman. While Lilaeus tries to rein in the ship with swift hands, his limbs are lopped off by the savage axe, and the swift ship bears his palms clinging to the timbers. The Sicanian benches bore Podaetus, son of Aeolus. He, though he had not yet passed in age the ephebes, whether the spiteful gods drew him, or his fervid heart and his desire for praise and war, not ripe enough, had fitted painted arms to his snowy arms, a boy, and rejoiced to trouble the straits in the lofty Chimaera. And now over the Rutulian, over the Garamantian pine too he went exulting, better at the oar and better at the arrow, and now had sunk towered Nessus in the sea. Alas, that new glory of battle ill-counsels the raw boy! While he prays to the gods for the crest of a fierce helmet and the spoils of the leader Marcellus, rashly, a swiftly loosed spear caught him with a deadly wound, ah what a one! Whether by his effort he should drive the gleaming discus beneath the stars, or with the javelin rise above the clouds, or bear his winged feet over dust scarce touched, or, swift, cross with a leap the measured-out spaces of the wide field, his labours became him. Enough surely, enough there was of glory in safe contest, enough of praise. Why, boy, did you seek greater deeds? Him, when the weapons drove him gliding beneath the waves, his shipwrecked bones cheated of a Syracusan tomb, the straits wept, the Cyclopian rocks wept, and Cyane and Anapus and Ortygian Arethusa.

In another part Perseus (Tiberinus drove this ship) and Io, on which Sidonian Crantor was borne, clash together. Bonds of iron, thrown on, bind them here and there, and the ships stood, joined, for battle. Nor do they contend with javelin or with reed shot from afar: hand to hand and with the sword they mingle land-battles. The Italians break through, where the first slaughter opened and showed the way; but with vast effort he urges his comrades to break the chains and the bonds of iron, and prepares, the hostile ship released, to carry off the captives and to draw them apart on the sea from their equal arms — Polyphemus had been reared in the Aetnaean cave and from that loved the name of ancient savagery. A she-wolf had given him her udders as a babe; a terrible mass of lofty body, a harsh mind, a face ever in anger, and Cyclopian lust in his heart for slaughter. And he, the bonds loosened from the weight of his limbs, had driven on the ship and was sinking the oars in the flood and would have led the ship away, had not Laronius swiftly fixed him with his pressed spear to the hard cross-bench as he strove to rise. Scarce does he, his death begun, release it: for while his languid hand keeps its wonted motions, he drew the idle oar slack over the surface of the sea.

The Carthaginians, struck by the wedge, are crowded into one side, which is free of the enemy, when, conquered by the sudden weight, the sea leaping in, the hull is submerged beneath the waves. The shields of the men and the crests and the darts with idle steel and the guardian gods float. Here, the timber broken, one fights bereft of steel and arms himself again for battle with the wreck; that one, ill-fervid, with oars hastens to despoil the ship, with no distinction sometimes whirling the wrenched-up benches of the sailors. No quill of a ship, no prow to be broken for wounds is spared, and the floating weapons are sought again from the sea. With gaping wounds the sea enters. Soon, his life sobbing into the deep, he is given back, driven by his own wave. Nor are there lacking those who, seizing men in close embraces, plunge them in the sea and, the javelins ceasing, destroy the enemy by their own death. The minds of those returning through the flood grow savage, and in place of steel they resolve to use the waves. The bloody whirlpool swallows the twisted corpses. Here a shout, there groans and deaths and flights and the crash of oars and beaks sounding with collision. The sea, drenched in war, seethes. Weary, with bitter loss, Himilco turned his back to the Libyan shores in swift flight, stealing himself away in a slender keel.

At last both Greek and Libyan yielded the sea, and now the captive ships are led to the shore in bonds in a long line. Others stand in the deep with their brands blazing. Mulciber shines on the gleaming deep, and the sea is set quivering with a trembling image. Cyane, known to the straits, burns, and the winged Siren, Europe too burns, borne by Jove in the form of a snowy bull and crossing the seas, her horn grasped, and she who, her hair flowing, over the curving blue a Nereid guides the dewy fish with a wet rein. The sea-roaming Python is burned, and horned Ammon, and she who bore the Sidonian face of Elissa, ranging through the waves in twice three banks of oars. But Anapus is dragged in bonds to his kindred shores, and Pegasus, bearing the Gorgonian wings to the stars. The ship marked with the shape of Libya is led, and captive Triton and Aetna steep with its crags, the pyre of breathing Enceladus, and Cadmean Sidon.

Then there would have been, with this disaster, no delay to break into the trembling walls and bear the gods' standards to the temples now at any moment, had not suddenly an unseasonable sickness and a hostile plague, prepared by the envy of the gods and the toil of the sea, snatched away the wretched men's joys with a polluted sky. The hairy Titan with summer fervours filled the air and the broad Cyane, stagnant far and wide with its marshy waters, with the Stygian smell of Cocytus, and fouled the season of autumn flowering with glad gifts and kindled it with the swift fire of a thunderbolt. The thick air smoked with the mists of gloom, the burning earth lay foul with its tainted surface and gave neither sustenance nor any shade to the languishing, and a black vapour breathed out into the pitchy air. The dogs first felt the force. Soon, beneath the black clouds, the bird, failing, fell with sinking wing. Then the beasts were laid low in the woods. Then the Tartarean blight crept on and ravaged the camp, its companies drained. The tongue grew dry, and a cold sweat through the vitals flowed from the trembling body. The dry throats refused to let down the sustenance of food commanded. A harsh cough shakes the lung, and through the panting mouths of the thirsty a fiery breath is exhaled. The eyes, scarce able to bear the heavy light, lie under a hooked nostril, and gore mixed with blood is spat out, and the skin covers the bones on the consumed limbs. Alas the grief! The warrior, marked in famous arms, is snatched away by an inglorious death. Into the fire are thrown the proud gifts of the men, won by much war. Medicine yielded to the evils. They are heaped in a pile of the falling, and the ashes rise in a great mound. Everywhere too lie bodies deserted and unburied far and wide, those who fear to have touched the plague-bearing limbs. The Acherusian plague creeps on, growing by feeding, nor with lighter grief does it shake the Trinacrian walls and bears an equal labour, black, to the Carthaginian camp. The destruction is made equal, and everywhere common is the anger of the gods, and the same image of death is turned about.

Yet no harsh force of the evils broke the Latin men, their leader unharmed, and one head, safe amid the slaughter, made amends for the disaster. So when grievous Sirius first checked its death-bringing heats, and the plagues lessened the contagions of greedy death, as, when the South Wind sinking, the deep seas settle again, the fisherman drives his boat and enters the blue, so at last Marcellus arms the youth snatched from the ravaging diseases, his companies duly purified. Eager, they stand round the standards, and at the heard clangour of the trumpets they breathe again, glad. They march against the enemy, and, if the fates should bring it, it is a joy amid battles to be able to die by the steel. They pity their comrades, who by a shameful lot, in the manner of cattle, poured out in dark beds an unpraised life. They look back on the mounds and dishonoured tombs, and it pleases them to have lain even in no sepulchre rather than to be vanquished by diseases. The leader first snatches the steep standards to the walls. Their faces, thinned by lying ill and by leanness, they hide in their helmets, and the evil pallor is veiled by the helmet, lest there be hope for the enemy. They pour the swift column upon the shattered walls and rush packed together: roofs untrodden by so many wars and so many citadels are taken by one entrance of the soldiery.

Through the whole world, where Titan is borne, no towns then would have matched themselves to the Isthmian dwellings. So many shrines of the gods and so many harbours within the walls, add the forums and the theatres raised on lofty columns and the moles contending with the sea, add in a long line the countless houses, and the proud country fields equalling them in space. What of the sacred groves enclosed by long porticoes on a stretched-out boundary, for the contest of the young men? What of the summits gleaming with so many captured beaks and the arms fixed for the gods, or those which the Marathonian enemy lost or which were brought from conquered Libya? Here the seat adorned with the trophies of Agathocles, here the mild wealth of Hieron; here the sacred antiquity of the craftsmen's hands. Nowhere brighter than in that age was the glory of painting; nor did the bronze delight which Ephyra knew; the cloth that brought back breathing faces in its woof would have vied with tawny gold — the cloth that Babylon engraves with the shuttle, or that glad Tyros with painted purple, and those which, varied by art in Attalic hangings, are written with the needle or on Memphite loom. And now together cups gleaming with silver, with which mixed gems sought their honour, images of the gods keeping the divinity given by art; besides, the gifts of the Red sea and the fleeces combed from the boughs, a womanish vanity. Having gained these roofs and riches, the Ausonian leader, after, lofty from the high rampart, he had looked down on the city trembling with clangour, and saw that it was placed in his nod whether the walls of kings should stand or the dawning light tomorrow should see no walls, groaned at his excessive power and shuddered that so much was permitted, and, the soldier's anger quickly recalled, bade the houses stand, granting that the temples be dwelt in by the ancient gods and inhabited. So to spare the conquered was in place of plunder, and Victory, content with herself and polluted by no blood, clapped her wings. You too bore the leader's tears, you to be remembered, defender of your country, meditating figures in the dust, nor troubled in mind, though so great a ruin struck. But the rest of the crowd, their minds loosed into joy, the conquered vied with the conquerors. He himself, a rival of the gods in genius, by his saving founded the city. Therefore there stands for the ages, and shall stand, a famous trophy and will give men to know the ancient ways of leaders. Happy peoples, if, as once wars were wont, so now too our peace would leave the cities unexhausted! But, did not the care of the man who has now given leisure to the world ward off the unbridled fury of laying all things waste, greedy plunderings would have stripped the lands and the sea.