The Aeneid of Virgil, page 259 by Virgil
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reaty, and now at last plunges amid their lines. Sweeping terrible down the tide of battle he wakens fierce indiscriminate carnage, and flings loose all the reins of wrath.
What god may now unfold for me in verse so many woes, so many diverse slaughters and death of captains whom now Turnus, now again the Trojan hero, drives over all the field? Was it well, O God, that nations destined to everlasting peace should clash in so vast a shock? Aeneas [505-540]meets Sucro the Rutulian; the combat stayed the first rush of the Teucrians, but delayed them not long; he catches him on the side, and, when fate comes quickest, drives the harsh sword clean through the ribs where they fence the breast. Turnus brings down Amycus from horseback with his brother Diores, and meets them on foot; him he strikes with his long spear as he comes, him with his sword-point, and hangs both severed heads on his chariot and carries them off dripping with blood. The one sends to death Talos and Tanaïs and brave Cethegus, three at one meeting, and gloomy Onites, of Echionian name, and Peridia the mother that bore him; the other those brethren sent from Lycia and Apollo's fields, and Menoetes the Arcadian, him who loathed warfare in vain; who once had his art and humble home about the river-fisheries of Lerna, and knew not the courts of the great, but his father was tenant of the land he tilled. And as fires kindled dispersedly in a dry forest and rustling laurel-thickets, or foaming rivers where they leap swift and loud from high hills, and speed to sea each in his own path of havoc; as fiercely the two, Aeneas and Turnus, dash amid the battle; now, now wrath surges within them, and unconquerable hearts are torn; now in all their might they rush upon wounds. The one dashes Murranus down and stretches him on the soil with a vast whirling mass of rock, as he cries the names of his fathers and forefathers of old, a whole line drawn through Latin kings; under traces and yoke the wheels spurned him, and the fast-beating hoofs of his rus