The naves, in which the spokes were driv’n, were all with silver bound; The chariot’s seat two hoops of gold and silver strengthen’d round, Edg’d with a gold and silver fringe; the beam, that look’d before, Was massy silver; on whose top, gears all of gold it wore, And golden poitrils. Juno mounts, and her hot horses rein’d, That thirsted for contentión, and still of peace complain’d. Minerva wrapt her in the robe, that curiously she wove, With glorious colours, as she sate on th’ azure floor of Jove, And wore the arms that he puts on, bent to the tearful field. About her broad-spread shoulders hung his huge and horrid shield, Fring’d round with ever-fighting snakes; through it was drawn to life The miseries and deaths of fight; in it frown’d bloody Strife, In it shin’d sacred Fortitude, in it fell Púrsuit flew, In it the monster Gorgon’s head, in which held out to view Were all the dire ostents of Jove; on her big head she plac’d His four-plum’d glitt’ring casque of gold, so admirably vast It would an hundred garrisons of soldiers comprehend. Then to her shining chariot her vig’rous feet ascend; And in her violent hand she takes his grave, huge, solid lance, With which the conquests of her wrath she useth to advance, And overturn whole fields of men, to show she was the Seed Of him that thunders. Then heav’n’s Queen, to urge her horses’ speed, Takes up the scourge, and forth they fly. The ample gates of heav’n Rung, and flew open of themselves; the charge whereof is giv’n, With all Olympus, and the sky, to the distinguish’d Hours, That clear, or hide it all in clouds, or pour it down in show’rs. This way their scourge-obeying horse made haste, and soon they won The top of all the topful heav’ns, where aged Saturn’s son Sat sever’d from the other Gods; then stay’d the white-arm’d Queen Her steeds, and ask’d of Jove, if Mars did not incense his spleen With his foul deeds, in ruining so many and so great In the command and grace of Greece, and in so rude a heat? At which, she said, Apollo laugh’d, and Venus, who still sue To that mad God, for violence that never justice knew; For whose impiety, she ask’d, if, with his wishéd love, Herself might free the field of him? He bade her rather move Athenia to the charge she sought, who us’d of old to be The bane of Mars, and had as well the gift of spoil as he. This grace she slack’d not, but her horse scourg’d, that in nature flew Betwixt the cope of stars and earth; and how far at a view A man into the purple sea may from a hill descry, So far a high-neighing horse of heav’n at ev’ry jump would fly.[2] Arriv’d at Troy, where, broke in curls, the two floods mix their force, Scamander and bright Simois, Saturnia stay’d her horse, Took them from chariot, and a cloud of mighty depth diffus’d About them; and the verdant banks of Simois produc’d In nature what they eat in heav’n. Then both the Goddesses[3] March’d, like a pair of tim’rous doves, in hasting their access To th’ Argive succour.