Now comes Clausus of Cures in the pride of his youthful 20 frame, and strikes Dryops from a distance under the chin with the strong impact of his stark spear, and piercing his throat, robs him even as he speaks of life and breath alike: the wounded man strikes the earth with his forehead and vomits from his lips clotted blood. 25 Three, too, from Thrace, of Boreas’ noblest lineage, and three sent to battle by Idas their sire and Ismarus their country, he lays low by this chance or that. To his side runs Halesus and the Auruncan bands; comes to his aid, too, the seed of Neptune, steed-famed Messapus. Now 30 these, now those, strain to win the ground: the struggle is on Ausonia’s very threshold. As in the spacious heaven jarring winds meet in battle, alike in spirit and in strength, winds, storm-clouds, and ocean, neither yields to the other: long doubtful hangs the fight; all stand in death 35 grips, front to front: even such the meeting of the army of Troy and the army of Latium: foot is set close to foot, and man massed with man. But in another part of the field, where a torrent had scattered wide whirling stones and trees uprooted from its banks, soon as Pallas saw his Arcadians, unused to wage war on foot, flying before the chase of Latium, in that the cragginess of the soil had driven them to discard their 5 steeds, he tries the one remedy in sore distress, and now with prayers, now with bitter speeches, inflames their valour: “Whither fly ye, mates? By your gallant deeds I conjure you—by your chief Evander’s name and victories won at his bidding—by my own promise, now 10 shooting up in rivalry with my father’s glory—trust not to your feet. It is the sword that must hew us a way through the foe. Where yonder host of men presses in thickest mass is the path by which our noble country is calling you and your general Pallas back to her arms. 15 No deities sit heavy on us: by a mortal foe we are pressed, mortals ourselves: we have as many lives, as many hands as they. Lo there! the sea hems us in with mighty ocean-barrier; earth is closed to our flight: shall the sea or Troy be our goal?” This said, he dashes at the midst 20 of the hostile throng. The first that meets him is Lagus, brought to the spot by fates unkind; him, while tugging a stone of enormous weight, he pierces with his whirled javelin, just where the spine running down the back was parting the ribs, and recovers the weapon from its lodgment 25 among the bones. Nor can Hisbo surprise him in the fact, spite of his hopes; for Pallas catches him rushing on in blind fury for the pain of his comrade’s death, and buries the sword in his distended lungs. Next his blow lights on Sthenelus, and Anchemolus of Rhœtus’ 30