Book 12
After such farewell word, he from the gates
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in mighty stature strode, and swung on high
his giant spear. With him in serried line
Antheus and Mnestheus moved, and all the host
from the forsaken fortress poured. The plain
was darkened with their dust; the startled earth
shook where their footing fell. From distant hill
Turnus beheld them coming, and the eyes
of all Ausonia saw: a chill of fear
shot through each soldier's marrow; in their van
Juturna knew full well the dreadful sound,
and fled before it, shuddering. But he
hurried his murky cohorts o'er the plain.
As when a tempest from the riven sky
drives landward o'er mid-ocean, and from far
the hearts of husbandmen, foreboding woe,
quake ruefully,—for this will come and rend
their trees asunder, kill the harvests all,
and sow destruction broadcast; in its path
fly roaring winds, swift heralds of the storm:
such dire approach the Trojan chieftain showed
before his gathered foes. In close array
they wedge their ranks about him. With a sword
Thymbraeus cuts huge-limbed Osiris down;
Mnestheus, Arcetius; from Epulo
Achates shears the head; from Ufens, Gyas;
Tolumnius the augur falls, the same
who flung the first spear to the foeman's line.
Uprose to heaven the cries. In panic now
the Rutules in retreating clouds of dust
scattered across the plain. Aeneas scorned
either the recreant or resisting foe
to slaughter, or the men who shoot from far:
for through the war-cloud he but seeks the arms
of Turnus, and to single combat calls.
The warrior-maid Juturna, seeing this,
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distraught with terror, strikes down from his place
Metiscus, Turnus' charioteer, who dropped
forward among the reins and off the pole.
Him leaving on the field, her own hand grasped
