they know.
Light from their shoulders hang the quiver and the bow.

XXV. With blazoned troops came Abas, gaunt and grim.
Golden Apollo on the stern he bore.
Six hundred Populonia gave to him,
All trained to battle, and three hundred more
Sent Ilva, rich in unexhausted ore.
Third came Asylas, who the voice divine
Expounds to man, and kens, with prescient lore,
The starry sky, the hearts of slaughtered kine,
The voices of the birds, the lightning's warning sign.

XXVI. A thousand from Alphaeus' Tuscan town
Of Pisa, with him to the war proceed,
In bristling ranks, all spearmen of renown.
Next, Astur--comeliest Astur--clad in weed
Of divers hues, and glorying in his steed:
Three hundred men from ancient Pyrgos fare,
From Caere's home, from Minio's fruitful mead,
And they who breathe Gravisca's tainted air.
One purpose fills them all, to follow and to dare.

XXVII. Nor would I leave thee, Cinyras, untold,
Liguria's chief, nor, though a few were thine,
Cupavo. Emblem of his sire of old,
The swan's white feathers on his helmet shine,
Thy fault, O Love. When Cycnus, left to pine
For Phaethon, the poplar shades among,
Soothed his sad passion with the Muse divine,
Old age with hoary plumage round him clung;
Starward he soared from earth and, soaring up, still sung.

XXVIII. Now comes his son, with his Ligurian bands,
Oaring their bark. A Centaur from the prow
Looms o'er the waves a-tiptoe, with his hands
A vast rock heaving, as in act to throw;
The long keel ploughs the furrowed deep below.
Next, from his home the gallant Ocnus came,
The son of Manto, who the Fates doth know,
Brave child of Tiber. He his mother's name
And walls to Mantua gave,--great Mantua, rich in fame,

XXIX. And rich in heroes, though diversely bred.
Three separate stems four-fold the state compose,
Herself, of Tuscan origin, the head.
Five hundred warriors, all Mezentius' foes,
And armed for vengeance, from her walls arose.
Mincius in front, veiled in his sedges grey
(Fair stream, whose birth from sire Benacus flows),
Shines on the poop, and seaward points the way;
Swift speeds the bark of pine, with foemen for the fray.

XXX. Last, huge Aulestes, rising with his row
Of hundred oarsmen, beats the watery lea.
The lashed deeps boil; big Triton from the prow
Sounds his loud shell, that frights