Book 8
to me in arms! O Tiber, in thy wave
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what helms and shields and mighty soldiers slain
shall in confusion roll! Yea, let them lead
their lines to battle, and our league abjure!”
He said: and from the lofty throne uprose.
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Straightway he roused anew the slumbering fire
sacred to Hercules, and glad at heart
adored, as yesterday, the household gods
revered by good Evander, at whose side
the Trojan company made sacrifice
of chosen lambs, with fitting rites and true.
Then to his ships he tried him, and rejoined
his trusty followers, of whom he took
the best for valor known, to lend him aid
in deeds of war. Others he bade return
down stream in easy course, and tidings bear
to young Ascanius of the new event,
and of his father. Horses then were brought
for all the Teucrians to Etruria bound;
and for Aeneas one of rarest breed,
o'er whom a tawny robe descended low,
of lion-skin, with claws of gleaming gold.
Noised swiftly through the little town it flies
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that to the precinct of the Tuscan King
armed horsemen speed. Pale mothers in great fear
unceasing pray; for panic closely runs
in danger's steps; the war-god drawing nigh
looms larger; and good sire Evander now
clings to the hand of his departing son
and, weeping without stay, makes sad farewell:
“O, that great Jove would give me once again
my vanished years! O, if such man I were,
as when beneath Praeneste's wall I slew
the front ranks of her sons, and burned for spoil
their gathered shields on my triumph day;
or when this right hand hurled king Erulus
to shades below, though—terrible to tell —
Feronia bore him with three lives, that thrice
he might arise from deadly strife o'erthrown,
and thrice be slain—yet all these lives took I,
