'O Lord, O everlasting Governor of men and things--for what else may we yet supplicate?--beholdest thou how the Rutulians brave it, and Turnus, borne charioted through the ranks, proudly sweeps down the tide of battle? Bar [22-58]and bulwark no longer shelter the Trojans; nay, within the gates and even on the mounded walls they clash in battle and make the trenches swim with blood. Aeneas is away and ignorant. Wilt thou never then let our leaguer be raised? Again a foe overhangs the walls of infant Troy; and another army, and a second son of Tydeus rises from Aetolian Arpi against the Trojans. Truly I think my wounds are yet to come, and I thy child am keeping some mortal weapons idle. If the Trojans steered for Italy without thy leave and defiant of thy deity, let them expiate their sin; aid not such with thy succour. But if so many oracles guided them, given by god and ghost, why may aught now reverse thine ordinance or write destiny anew? Why should I recall the fleets burned on the coast of Eryx? why the king of storms, and the raging winds roused from Aeolia, or Iris driven down the clouds? Now hell too is stirred (this share of the world was yet untried) and Allecto suddenly let loose above to riot through the Italian towns. In no wise am I moved for empire; that was our hope while Fortune stood; let those conquer whom thou wilt. If thy cruel wife leave no region free to Teucrians, by the smoking ruins of desolated Troy, O father, I beseech thee, grant Ascanius unhurt retreat from arms, grant me my child's life. Aeneas may well be tossed over unknown seas and follow what path soever fortune open to him; him let me avail to shelter and withdraw from the turmoil of battle. Amathus is mine, high Paphos and Cythera, and my house of Idalia; here, far from arms, let him spend an inglorious life. Bid Carthage in high lordship rule Ausonia; there will be nothing there to check the Tyrian cities. What help was it for the Trojans to escape war's doom and thread their flight through Argive fires, to have exhausted all those perils of sea and desolate lands, while they seek Latium and the towers of a Troy rebuilt? Were it not better to have [59-91]clung to the last ashes of their country, and the ground where once was Troy? Give back, I pray, Xanthus and Simoïs to a wretched people, and let the Teucrians again, O Lord, circle through the fates of Ilium.' Then Queen Juno, swift and passionate: