“Acestes fired with just disdain to see A plain usurped without a victory, Reproached Entellus thus, who sate beside, And heard and saw, unmoved, the Trojan’s pride. ‘Once, but in vain, a champion of renown, So tamely can you bear the ravished crown, The prize in triumph borne before your sight, And shun for fear the danger of the fight. Where is your Eryx now, the boasted name, The god who taught your thundering arm the game? Where now your baffled honour? where the spoil That filled your house, and fame that filled our isle?’ Entellus thus: ‘My soul is still the same, Unmoved with fears, and moved with martial fame; But my chill blood is curdled in my veins, And scarce the shadow of a man remains. Oh! could I turn to that fair prime again, That prime of which this boaster is so vain, The brave, who this decrepit age defies, Should feel my force without the promised prize.’” Entellus then throws down the gauntlets of Eryx (engraved under Cæstus, pp. xiii., xiv.), but Dares, declining the ponderous weapons, old Entellus offers to accommodate him, by permission of the umpires, with a round or two with a lighter pair. “‘But if the challenger these arms refuse, And cannot wield their weight, or dare not use; If great Æneas and Acestes join In his request, these gauntlets I resign: Let us with equal arms perform the fight, And let him learn to fear since I forego my right. This said, Entellus for the fight prepares, Stripped of his quilted coat, his body bares: Composed of mighty bones and brawn he stands, A goodly towering object on the sands. Then just Æneas equal arms supplied, Which round their shoulders to their wrists they tied. Both on the tiptoe stand, at full extent, Their arms aloft, their bodies inly bent; Their heads from aiming blows they bear afar, With clashing gauntlets then provoke the war. One on his youth and pliant limbs relies, One on his sinews and his giant size. This last is stiff with age, his motion slow; He heaves for breath, he staggers to and fro, And clouds of issuing smoke his nostrils loudly blow Yet equal in success, they ward, they strike, Their ways are different, but their art alike. Before, behind, the blows are dealt; around Their hollow sides the rattling thumps resound; A storm of strokes, well meant, with fury flies, And errs about their temples, ears, and eyes— Nor always errs, for oft the gauntlet draws A sweeping stroke along the crackling jaws. Hoary with age Entellus stands his ground, But with his warping body wards the wound. His hand and watchful eye keep even pace, While Dares traverses and shifts his place,