And Rome, triumphant, with his presence bless’d. Three hundred temples in the town he plac’d; With spoils and altars ev’ry temple grac’d. Three shining nights, and three succeeding days, The fields resound with shouts, the streets with praise, The domes with songs, the theatres with plays. All altars flame: before each altar lies, Drench’d in his gore, the destin’d sacrifice. Great Caesar sits sublime upon his throne, Before Apollo’s porch of Parian stone; Accepts the presents vow’d for victory, And hangs the monumental crowns on high. Vast crowds of vanquish’d nations march along, Various in arms, in habit, and in tongue. Here, Mulciber assigns the proper place For Carians, and th’ ungirt Numidian race; Then ranks the Thracians in the second row, With Scythians, expert in the dart and bow. And here the tam’d Euphrates humbly glides, And there the Rhine submits her swelling tides, And proud Araxes, whom no bridge could bind; The Danes’ unconquer’d offspring march behind, And Morini, the last of humankind. These figures, on the shield divinely wrought, By Vulcan labour’d, and by Venus brought, With joy and wonder fill the hero’s thought. Unknown the names, he yet admires the grace, And bears aloft the fame and fortune of his race. BOOK IX THE ARGUMENT. Turnus takes advantage of Aeneas’s absence, fires some of his ships (which are transformed into sea nymphs,) and assaults his camp. The Trojans, reduced to the last extremities, send Ninus and Euryalus to recall Aeneas; which furnishes the poet with that admirable episode of their friendship, generosity, and the conclusion of their adventure. While these affairs in distant places pass’d, The various Iris Juno sends with haste, To find bold Turnus, who, with anxious thought, The secret shade of his great grandsire sought. Retir’d alone she found the daring man, And op’d her rosy lips, and thus began: “What none of all the gods could grant thy vows, That, Turnus, this auspicious day bestows. Aeneas, gone to seek th’ Arcadian prince, Has left the Trojan camp without defence; And, short of succours there, employs his pains In parts remote to raise the Tuscan swains. Now snatch an hour that favours thy designs; Unite thy forces, and attack their lines.” This said, on equal wings she pois’d her weight, And form’d a radiant rainbow in her flight.