"Go: my last charge to Turnus tell, To haste with succor, and repel The Trojans from the town--farewell." She spoke, and speaking, dropped her rein, Perforce descending to the plain. Then by degrees she slips away From all that heavy load of clay: Her languid neck, her drowsy head She droops to earth, of vigor sped: She lets her martial weapons go: The indignant soul flies down below. _Book XII._ Unappeased by Latinus' reiterated assertions that he is bestowing Lavinia upon a stranger merely to obey the gods, or by the entreaties in which Amata now joins, Turnus still refuses peace. More fighting therefore ensues, during which Aeneas is wounded in the thigh. While his leech is vainly trying to stanch his blood, Venus drops a magic herb into the water used for bathing his wounds and thus miraculously cures him. Plunging back into the fray, which becomes so horrible that Amata brings Lavinia home and commits suicide, Turnus and Aeneas finally meet in duel, but, although Juno would fain interfere once more in behalf of her protégé, Jupiter refuses to allow it. But he grants instead his wife's petition that the Trojan name and language shall forever be merged into that of the Latin race. "Let Latium prosper as she will, Their thrones let Alban monarchs fill; Let Rome be glorious on the earth, The centre of Italian worth; But fallen Troy be fallen still, The nation and the name." Toward the end of this momentous encounter, during which both heroes indulged in sundry boastful speeches, a bird warns Turnus that his end is near, and his sister Juturna basely deserts him. Driven to bay and deprived of all other weapons, Turnus finally hurls a rock at Aeneas, who, dodging this missile, deals him a deadly wound. Turnus now pitifully begs for mercy, but the sight of Pallas' belt, which his foe proudly wears, so angers Aeneas that, after wrathfully snatching it from him, he deals his foe the deadly blow which ends this epic. "What! in my friend's dear spoils arrayed To me for mercy sue? 'Tis Pallas, Pallas guides the blade: From your cursed blood his injured shade Thus takes atonement due." Thus as he spoke, his sword he drave With fierce and fiery blow Through the broad breast before him spread: The stalwart limbs grow cold and dead: One groan the indignant spirit gave, Then sought the shades below. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 5: All the quotations in this article are from Virgil's Aeneid, Conington's translation.] [Footnote 6: See the author's "Story of the Romans."] FRENCH EPICS The national epic in France bears the characteristic name of Chanson de Geste, or song of deed, because the trouvères in the north and the troubadours in the south wandered from castle to castle singing the prowesses of the lords and of their ancestors, whose reputations they thus made or ruined at will.