snakes of noisome breath.
Yet he availed not to heal the stroke of the Dardanian spear-point, nor
was the wound of him helped by his sleepy charms and herbs culled on the
Massic hills. Thee the woodland of Angitia, thee Fucinus' glassy wave,
thee the clear pools wept. . . .
Likewise the seed of Hippolytus marched to war, Virbius [762-796]most
excellent in beauty, sent by his mother Aricia. The groves of Egeria
nursed him round the spongy shore where Diana's altar stands rich and
gracious. For they say in story that Hippolytus, after he fell by his
stepmother's treachery, torn asunder by his frightened horses to fulfil
a father's revenge, came again to the daylight and heaven's upper air,
recalled by Diana's love and the drugs of the Healer. Then the Lord
omnipotent, indignant that any mortal should rise from the nether shades
to the light of life, launched his thunder and hurled down to the
Stygian water the Phoebus-born, the discoverer of such craft and cure.
But Trivia the bountiful hides Hippolytus in a secret habitation, and
sends him away to the nymph Egeria and the woodland's keeping, where,
solitary in Italian forests, he should spend an inglorious life, and
have Virbius for his altered name. Whence also hoofed horses are kept
away from Trivia's temple and consecrated groves, because, affrighted at
the portents of the sea, they overset the chariot and flung him out upon
the shore. Notwithstanding did his son train his ruddy steeds on the
level plain, and sped charioted to war.
Himself too among the foremost, splendid in beauty of body, Turnus moves
armed and towers a whole head over all. His lofty helmet, triple-tressed
with horse-hair, holds high a Chimaera breathing from her throat Aetnean
fires, raging the more and exasperate with baleful flames, as the battle
and bloodshed grow fiercer. But on his polished shield was emblazoned in
gold Io with uplifted horns, already a heifer and overgrown with hair, a
lofty design, and Argus the maiden's warder, and lord Inachus pouring
his stream from his embossed urn. Behind comes a cloud of infantry, and
shielded columns thicken over all the plains; the Argive men and
Auruncan forces, the Rutulians and old Sicanians, the Sacranian ranks
and Labicians with [797-817]painted shields; they who till thy dells, O
Tiber, and Numicus' sacred shore, and whose ploughshare goes up and down
on the Rutulian hills and the Circaean headland, over whose fields
Jupiter of Anxur watches
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