Soon as Turnus set high on Laurentum’s tower the ensign of war, and the horns clanged forth their harsh music, soon as he shook the reins in the mouth of his fiery steeds, and clashed his armour, at once came a stirring of men’s souls: all Latium conspires in tumultuous rising, 5 and the warrior bands are inflamed to madness. The generals, Messapus and Ufens and Mezentius, scorner of the gods, assume the lead, mustering succour from all sides and unpeopling the fields of their tillers far and wide. Venulus too is sent to the town of mighty Diomede 10 to entreat help, and set forth that the Teucrians are planting foot in Latium: that Æneas is arrived by sea and intruding his vanquished home-gods, and announcing himself as the Latians’ destined king; that many tribes are flocking to the standard of the Dardan chief, and the 15 contagion of his name is spreading over Latium’s length and breadth. What is to be the end of such a beginning, what, should fortune favour him, he promises to himself as the issue of the battle, Diomede will know better than king Turnus or king Latinus. 20 So go things in Latium. The chief of Laomedon’s line sees it all, and is tossed on a sea of cares; now on this point, now on that, he throws in a moment the forces of his mind, hurrying it into all quarters and sweeping the whole range of thought: as in water a flickering beam 25 on a brazen vat, darted back by the sun or the bright moon’s image, flits far and wide over the whole place, now at last mounting to the sky and striking the ceiling of the roof. Night came, and tired life the earth over, bird and beast alike, were lapped deep in slumber, when 30 Æneas, good king, troubled at heart by the anxious war, stretched himself on the bank under heaven’s chilly cope, and let repose at last steal over his frame. Before him appeared in person the god of the place, old Tiber of the pleasant stream, rising among the poplar foliage: a gray mantle of transparent linen floated about him, and his 5 hair was shaded with bushy reeds: and thus he began to address the chief and relieve his care: “O offspring of heaven’s stock, who are bringing back to us safe from the foe the city of Troy, and preserving Pergamus in enduring life, yourself looked for long on the Laurentian 10 soil and in the fields of Latium, here is your abiding place of rest, here, distrust it not, permanence for your home-gods: let not war’s threatenings make you afraid, the swellings of the anger of heaven have all given way. Even now, that you may not think this the idle coinage 15 of sleep, under the oaks on the bank you shall find an enormous swine lying with a litter of thirty head just born, white herself throughout her lazy length, her children