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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