Book 7
adds fury to the hour. “Shall the land
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have Trojan lords? Shall Phrygian marriages
debase our ancient, royal blood—and I
be spurned upon the threshold?” Then drew near
the men whose frenzied women-folk had held
bacchantic orgies in the pathless grove,
awed by Amata's name: these, gathering,
sued loud for war. Yea, all defied the signs
and venerable omens; all withstood
divine decrees, and clamored for revenge,
prompted by evil powers. They besieged
the house of King Latinus, shouting-loud
with emulous rage. But like a sea-girt rock
unmoved he stood; like sea-girt rock when surge
of waters o'er it sweeps, or howling waves
surround; it keeps a ponderous front of power,
though foaming cliffs around it vainly roar;
from its firm base the broken sea-weeds fall.
But when authority no whit could change
their counsels blind, and each event fulfilled
dread Juno's will, then with complaining prayer
the aged sire cried loud upon his gods
and on th' unheeding air: “Alas,” said he,
“My doom is shipwreck, and the tempest bears
my bark away! O wretches, your own blood
shall pay the forfeit for your impious crime.
O Turnus! O abominable deed!
Avenging woes pursue thee; to deaf gods
thy late and unavailing prayer shall rise.
Now was my time to rest. But as I come
close to my journey's end, thou spoilest me
of comfort in my death.” With this the King
fled to his house and ceased his realm to guide.
A sacred custom the Hesperian land
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of Latium knew, by all the Alban hills
honored unbroken, which wide-ruling Rome
keeps to this day, when to new stroke she stirs
the might of Mars; if on the Danube's wave
resolved to fling the mournful doom of war,
or on the Caspian folk or Arabs wild;
