The Æneid of Virgil translated into English proseVirgil
General
The Æneid of Virgil translated into English prose
Virgil
Aeneas (Legendary character); Epic poetry, Latin -- Translations into English; Legends -- Rome
But Lausus, himself a mighty portion of the war, suffers
not his troops to be dismayed by the hero’s dreadful
carnage: first he slays Abas, who had met him front to
front, the breakwater and barrier of fight. Down go the
sons of Arcadia, down go the Etruscans, and ye, too
Teucrians, whose frames Greece could not destroy. The
armies clash, their leaders and their powers the same.
The rear ranks close up the battle; nor weapon nor hand 5
can be moved for the crowd. Here is Pallas pushing and
pressing, there Lausus over against him: their years
scarcely differ; each has a comely form; but Fortune had
already written that neither should return to his home.
Yet were they not suffered to meet man to man by great 10
Olympus’ lord: each has his fate assigned him ere long at
the hand of a mightier enemy.
Turnus meanwhile is warned by his gracious sister to
come to Lausus’ aid; and with his flying car he cleaves
the intervening ranks. Soon as he met his comrades’ 15
eye: “You may rest from battle now; I alone am coming
against Pallas. Pallas is my due, and mine alone;
would that his sire were here to see us fight.” He said;
and his friends retired from the interdicted space. But
as the Rutulians withdraw, the young warrior, marvelling 20
at the haughty command, gazes astonished on Turnus,
rolls his eyes over that giant frame, and sweeps the whole
man from afar with fiery glance, and with words like
these meets the words of the monarch: “I shall soon be
famous either for kingly trophies won or for an illustrious 25
death; my sire is equal to either event; a truce to menace.”
This said, he marches into the middle space; while the
Arcadians’ blood chills and curdles about their hearts.
Down from his car leaps Turnus, and addresses himself to
fight on foot. And as when a lion has seen from a high 30
watch-tower a bull standing at distance in the field and
meditating fight, he flies to the spot, even thus looks
Turnus as he bounds along.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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