Monday, September 24, 2012
Livy 1.2
Then the Aborigines
and the Trojans were attacked in war at the same time. Turnus, the king of the Rutulians, to
whom Lavinia had been betrothed before the arrival of Aeneas, scarcely enduring
that a stranger was preferred to himself, at once had brought war against
Latinus and Aeneas. [Neutra]
Neither line came from this contest happy; the Rutulians were defeated, but the
victors, the Aborigines and the Trojans, lost their leader Latinus. [Inde] Thence Turnus and the Rutulians,
despairing in resources, flee to the flowering power of the Etruscans and
Mezentius, their king, who, ruling at Caere, then a wealthy city, already then
from the beginning very little happy at the origin of the new city, and thought
then the Trojan state grew more by too much than was safe for the natives,
joined allied arms to the Rutulians hardly reluctantly. [Aeneas] Aeneas, against the terror of
such war to reconcile the spirits of the Aborigines to himself, they all were
under not only the same law but also name, called both nations (lit. singular) "Latins."
And then the Aborigines did not
yield to the Trojans in zeal and faith toward king Aeneas. [Fretus] And confidence grew in their
spirits of the two peoples more day by day (so that) Aeneas, although Etruria was
so great in wealth that already the fame of her name had filled not only the
lands but also the sea through the whole length of Italy from the Alps to the
straight of Sicily, yet, although he could repulse war with her mountains,
lead troops into battle. [Secundum]
The battle was favorable for the Latins, but it was the last of mortal acts for
Aeneas. He was placed, whatever it
is lawful and right that he be called, over the Numicus river; they call him ‘Jupiter
Indiges.’
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