Spiked truncheons they are wont to fling,
But fit them with a leathern string:
A target shields the good left hand,
And curved like Pruner’s hook the brand
They wield when foot to foot they stand.
Unnamed in this our minstrelsy,
Born to old Telon, Capreæ’s king,
By Naiad of Sebethus’ spring;
The son contemned his sire’s domain,
And stretched o’er neighbouring lands his reign.
Sarrastes’ tribes his rule obey,
And fields where Sarnus’ waters play,
Who Batulum and Rufræ hold
Or till Celennæ’s fruitful mould,
Or those whom fair Abella sees
Down-looking through her apple-trees,
All wont in Teuton sort to throw
Nail-studded maces ’gainst the foe;
Their helm of bark from cork-tree peeled,
Of brass their sword, of brass their shield.
Brave Ufens, born ’neath happy star:
Hard as their clods the Æquian race,
Inured to labour in the chase;
In armour sheathed, they till their soil,
Heap foray up, and live by spoil.
An olive-garland round his helm,
Bold Umbro, priest at once and knight,
By king Archippus sent to fight;
Who baleful serpents knew to steep
By hand and voice in charmed sleep,
Soothed their fierce wrath with subtlest skill,
And from their bite drew off the ill.
But ah! his medicines could not heal
The death-wound dealt by Dardan steel;
His slumberous charms availed him nought,
Nor herbs on Marsian mountains sought
And cropped with magic shears;
For thee Anguitia’s woody cave,
For thee the glassy Fucine wave,
For thee the lake shed tears.
Hippolytus’ fair offspring came,
In lone Egeria’s forest reared,
Where Dian’s shrine is loved and feared.
For lost Hippolytus, ’tis said,
By cruel stepdame’s cunning dead,
Dragged by his frightened steeds, to sate
His angry sire’s vindictive hate,
Was called once more to realms above,
By Pæon’s skill and Dian’s love.
Then Jove, incensed that man should rise
From darkness to the upper skies,
The leech that wrought such healing hurled
With lightning down to Pluto’s world.
But Trivia kind her favourite hides
And to Egeria’s care confides,
To live in woods obscure and lone,
And lose in Virbius’ name his own.
’Tis thence e’en now from Trivia’s shrine
The horn-hoofed steeds are chased,
Since, scared by monsters of the brine,
The chariot and the youth divine
They tumbled on the waste.
Yet ne’ertheless with horse and car
His dauntless son essays the war.
His comely head the rest above:
On his tall helm the triple cone
Chimæra in relief is shown;
The monster’s gaping jaws expire
Hot volumes of Ætnæan fire:
And still she flames and raves the more
The deeper floats the field with gore.
With bristling hide and lifted horns
Io, all gold, his shield adorns,
E’en as in life she stood;
There too is Argus, warder stern,
And Inachus from graven urn,
Her father, pours his flood.
A cloud of footmen at his back
And shielded hosts the plain made black;
Auruncans, Argives, brave and bold,
Rutulians and Sicanians old,
Sacranians thirsting for the field,
Labici with enamelled shield;
Who Tiber’s lawns with furrow score
And pure Numicius’ sacred shore,
Subdue Rutulian slopes, and plough
Circeius’ steep reluctant brow:
Where Anxur boasts her guardian Jove
And greenly blooms Feronia’s grove;
Where Satura’s unlovely mere
In sullen quiet sleeps,
And Ufens gropes through marshland drear
And hides him in the deeps.
Camilla fair, the Volscian maid,
A troop of horsemen in her wake
In pomp of gleaming steel arrayed;
Stern warrior queen! those tender hands
Ne’er plied Minerva’s ministries:
A virgin in the fight she stands,
Or winged wings in speed outvies.
Nay, she might fly o’er fields of grain
Nor crush in flight the tapering wheat,
Nor let the billows touch her feet.
Where’er she moves, from house and land
The youths and ancient matrons throng,
And fixed in greedy wonder stand
Beholding as she speeds along:
In kingly dye that scarf was dipped:
’Tis gold confines those tresses’ flow:
Her pastoral wand with steel is tipped,
And Lycian are her shafts and bow.
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