sentinel on the summit of the Tarpeian fortress in the 15 temple’s front, holding the height of the Capitol, while the Romulean thatch looked fresh and sharp on the palace-roof. And there was the silver goose fluttering its wings in the gilded cloister, and shrieking that the Gauls were at the door. The Gauls were at hand marching among 20 the brushwood, and had gained the summit sheltered by the darkness and the kindly grace of dusky night. Golden is their hair and golden their raiment; striped cloaks gleam on their shoulders; their milk-white necks are twined with gold; each brandishes two Alpine javelins, 25 his body guarded by the long oval of his shield. There he had shown in relief the Salii in their dances and the naked Luperci, and the woolly peaks of their caps, and the sacred shields which fell from heaven: chaste matrons were making solemn progress through the city in their 30 soft-cushioned cars. At distance from these he introduces too the mansions of Tartarus, Pluto’s yawning portals, and the torments of crime, and thee, Catiline, poised on the beetling rock and quailing at grim Fury-faces: and the good in their privacy, with Cato as their lawgiver. 35 Stretching in its breadth among these swept the semblance of the swelling sea, all of gold, but the blue was made to foam with whitening billows; and all about it dolphins of bright silver in joyous circles were lashing the surface with their tails and cutting the tide. In the midst might be seen fleets of brazen ships, the naval war of Actium; you might remark the whole of Leucate aglow with the war-god’s array, and the waves one blaze of gold. On this 5 side is Augustus Cæsar leading the Italians to conflict, with the senate and the people, the home-gods and their mighty brethren, standing aloft on the stern: his auspicious brows emit twin-born flames, and his ancestral star dawns over his head. Elsewhere is Agrippa with the 10 winds and the gods at his back, towering high as he leads his column; his brows gleam with the beaked circle of a naval crown, the glorious ornament of war. On that side is Antonius with his barbaric powers and the arms of divers lands, triumphant from the nations of the dawn-goddess 15 and the red ocean’s coast, carrying with him Egypt and the strength of the East and the utmost parts of Bactria, and at his side—shame on the profanation!—his Egyptian spouse.[260] All are seen at once in fierce onward motion: the whole sea-floor foams up, torn by the backward 20 pull of the oars and by the three-fanged beaks. On to the deep! you would deem that uprooted Cyclades were swimming the sea, or that tall hills were meeting hills in battle; such the giant effort, with which the warriors urge on their tower-crowned ships.