Aeneid 12.791-842 and 887-952

(791) Meanwhile the all-powerful king of Olympus speaks to Juno, viewing the fights from a yellow cloud, "What end will there now be, wife? What finally remains? You yourself know and admit you know that Aeneas is owed to the sky as a native god and is born by the fates to the stars. What do you construct? Or to what hope do you cling in the cold clouds? Was it right that a god be violated by a mortal wound? or that the rescued sword--for what might Juturna avail without you--be returned to Turnus and that strength grow for the conquered? Stop now at last and bend to our prayers lest such grief consume you in silence and your sad cares flow back to me often from your sweet mouth. It is come to the end. You have been able to drive the Trojans on the lands or the seas, to summon unspeakable war, to mar a home and to mix wedding songs with grief: I forbid that you try farther."

(807) Thus Jupiter began; thus the Saturnian goddess with downcast face in reply, "Since indeed that your will was known to me, great Jupiter, I unwillingly left Turnus and the lands; nor would you see me alone now in my airy seat enduring worthy (and) unworthy things, but I would stand, girt with flames, under the battle-line itself and drawing the Teucrians into the hostile battles. I persuaded Juturna--I admit it--to help her wretched brother and approved that she dare greater things for his life, yet not that she contend with arrows, not with the bow; I swear by the implacable head of the Stygian fountain, which one superstition there is for the gods above. And now I yield, indeed, and I abandon the fights in loathing. I beg of you that which is held by no law of fate, for Latium, for the majesty of your peoples: when now they will construct peace by happy marriages (so be it), when now they will join laws and treaties, do not order that the native Latins change their old name, nor that they become Trojans and be called Teucrians or that the men change their language or alter their clothes. Let Latium be, let there be Alban kings through the ages, let Roman offspring be powerful with Italian virtue: Troy has fallen and you should allow that it has fallen with its name.

(829) Smiling at her, the originator of men and things: "You are the twin sister of Jove and the other offspring of Saturn, you roll such waves of anger under your heart. But come and calm this rage begun in vain: I give what you want, and I both beaten and willingly submit myself. The Ausonians will hold paternal speech and manners, and, as is their name, (so) will it be; the Teucrians will subside, only mixed with the body. I will add custom and rites of the sacred and I will make all Latins with one face. Hence you will see the race which will rise, mixed with Ausonian blood, go above men, above gods in piety, and not any race will celebrate your honors equally." Juno assented to these and happily changed her mind; meanwhile she left the sky and left her cloud.


(887) Aeneas pursues, opposite, and brandishes his huge, tree-like spear, and speaks thus from his savage chest, "What now then is the delay? Or why now, Turnus, do you retreat? Not by running, but with savage arms it must be contended face-to-face. Turn yourself into every shape and summon whatever powers whether in spirits or art; wish to follow lofty stars by wings and hide yourself shut in the hollow earth."

(894) That one, shaking his head, "Your hot words do not frighten me, fierce one; the gods scare me, and Jupiter as my enemy." And not having said more, he catches sight of a huge rock, a huge ancient rock, which lay by chance in the field, a boundary placed in the field to settle disputes in the fields. Scarcely twice six chosen men could lift it to their neck such bodies of men does now the earth produce; that hero turned it seized with a trembling hand against the enemy, riding higher and having moved at a run. But he recognized himself neither running nor going nor lifting with his hand nor moving the huge rock; his knees slip; his icy blood congeals with cold. Then the man's stone itself, rolling through the empty air, neither covered the whole space nor struck a blow.

(908) And just as in dreams when languid rest has pressed eyes in the night we seem to want to extend eager courses in vain and in the middle of our trials we give way, ill; the tongue is not strong and known strength is lacking in the body, neither voice nor words follow: thus Turnus, by whatever virtue he sought a way, the dread goddess denies success. Then various feelings turn in his chest; he sees the Rutulians and the city and delays with fear and trembles at death pressing in, and he does not ever see either where he might snatch himself, nor by any strength he might hold against the enemy, nor his chariot or his sister charioteer.

(919) Aeneas shakes his deadly spear at the wavering one, having chosen fortune with his eyes, and he launches from a great distance with his whole body. Rocks impelled from a city-battering siege engine never roar thus nor do such crashes burst forth from lightening. Like a black whirlwind the spear bearing harsh death flies and pierced the layers of the breastplate and the outer rings of his seven-layered shield; hissing it passes through the middle of his thigh. Huge Turnus falls to the ground, struck, on bent knee. The Rutulians rise with a groan and the whole mountain groans around and the high woods send back the call widely.

(930) That man, a humble suppliant, stretching forth his eyes and entreating right hand, says, "Indeed I deserve this and I do not beg off; use your advantage (lit. lot). If any care of a wretched parent can touch you, I beg--such a father even was Anchises to you--pity old Daunus and return me to my people, or if your prefer, a body despoiled of the light. You have won and the Ausonians have seen me, conquered, stretching out my palms; Lavinia is your wife; do not reach farther in hate (lit. pl.).

(939) Aeneas stood fierce in arms, rolling his eyes, and he repressed his right hand; and now and now more he had begun to bend the hesitating man with his speech, when the unlucky baldric appeared on his high shoulder and the straps of the boy Pallas gleamed with the known studs, whom Turnus had laid low, beaten by his wound, and he was wearing the hostile emblem on his shoulders. That one, after he drank in with his eyes the monuments and spoils of savage grief, burned with furies and terrible with anger: "Are you, wearing the spoils of my people, to be ripped hence from me? Pallas with this wound, Pallas sacrifices you and takes punishment from evil blood." Saying this, he buries the sword under the chest opposite, boiling hot; but the limbs of that man are loosened with chill, and his life flees with a groan, indignant, down to the shades.