ry over them in any sally or foray, they always came home laden
with booty, as well as exultant in triumph and pride; while if the
Latins conquered the Trojans in a battle, they had nothing but the
empty honor to reward them. The Trojans, too, were hardy, enduring,
and indomitable. The alternative with them was victory or destruction.
Their protracted voyage, and the long experience of hardships and
sufferings which they had undergone, had inured them to privation and
toil, so that they proved to the Latins and Rutulians to be very
obstinate and formidable foes.

At length, as usual in such cases, indications gradually appeared that
both sides began to be weary of the contest. Latinus availed himself
of a favorable occasion which offered, to propose that embassadors
should be sent to AEneas with terms of peace. Turnus was very much
opposed to any such plan. He was earnestly desirous of continuing to
prosecute the war. The other Latin chieftains reproached him then with
being the cause of all the calamities which they were enduring, and
urged the unreasonableness on his part of desiring any longer to
protract the sufferings of his unhappy country, merely to gratify his
own private resentment and revenge. Turnus ought not any longer to
ask, they said, that others should fight in his quarrel; and they
proposed that he should himself decide the question between him and
AEneas, by challenging the Trojan leader to fight him in single combat.

Latinus strongly disapproved of this proposal. He was weary of war and
bloodshed, and wished that the conflict might wholly cease; and he
urged that peace should be made with AEneas, and that his original
design of giving him Lavinia for his wife should be carried into
execution. For a moment Turnus seemed to hesitate, but in looking
towards Lavinia who, with Amata her mother, was present at this
consultation, he saw, or thought he saw, in the agitation which she
manifested, proofs of her love for him, and indications of a wish on
her part that he and not AEneas should win her for his bride.

He accordingly without any farther hesitation or delay agreed to the
proposal of the counsellor. The challenge to single combat was given
and accepted, and on the appointed day the ground was marked out for
the duel, and both armies were drawn up upon the field, to be
spectators of the fight.

After the usual preparations the conflict began; but, as frequently
occurs in such cases, it was not lo