Aeneas (Legendary character) -- Poetry; Epic poetry, Latin -- Translations into English
Thee too, Ufens, mountainous Nersae sent forth to battle, of noble fame
and prosperous arms, whose race on the stiff Aequiculan clods is rough
beyond all other, and bred to continual hunting in the woodland; they
till the soil in arms, and it is ever their delight to drive in fresh
spoils and live on plunder.
Furthermore there came, sent by King Archippus, the priest of the
Marruvian people, dressed with prosperous olive leaves over his helmet,
Umbro excellent in valour, who was wont with charm and touch to sprinkle
slumberous dew on the viper's brood and water-snakes of noisome breath.
Yet he availed not to heal the stroke of the Dardanian spear-point, nor
was the wound of him helped by his sleepy charms and herbs culled on the
Massic hills. Thee the woodland of Angitia, thee Fucinus' glassy wave,
thee the clear pools wept. . . .
Likewise the seed of Hippolytus marched to war, Virbius [762-796]most
excellent in beauty, sent by his mother Aricia. The groves of Egeria
nursed him round the spongy shore where Diana's altar stands rich and
gracious. For they say in story that Hippolytus, after he fell by his
stepmother's treachery, torn asunder by his frightened horses to fulfil
a father's revenge, came again to the daylight and heaven's upper air,
recalled by Diana's love and the drugs of the Healer. Then the Lord
omnipotent, indignant that any mortal should rise from the nether shades
to the light of life, launched his thunder and hurled down to the
Stygian water the Phoebus-born, the discoverer of such craft and cure.
But Trivia the bountiful hides Hippolytus in a secret habitation, and
sends him away to the nymph Egeria and the woodland's keeping, where,
solitary in Italian forests, he should spend an inglorious life, and
have Virbius for his altered name. Whence also hoofed horses are kept
away from Trivia's temple and consecrated groves, because, affrighted at
the portents of the sea, they overset the chariot and flung him out upon
the shore. Notwithstanding did his son train his ruddy steeds on the
level plain, and sped charioted to war.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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