And now the War-god’s heavy hand was dealing out to each equal measures of agony and carnage; alike they were slaying, alike falling dead, victors and vanquished by turns, flight unthought of both by these and by those. The gods in Jove’s palace look pityingly on the idle rage 25 of the warring hosts—alas, that death-doomed men should suffer so terribly! Here Venus sits spectator, there over against her Saturnian Juno. Tisiphone, ashy pale, is raving among thousands down below. But see! Mezentius, shaking his giant spear, is striding into the 30 field, an angry presence. Think of the stature of Orion, as he overtops the billows with his shoulders, when he stalks on foot through the very heart of Nereus’ mighty depths that part before him, or as carrying an aged ash in triumph from the hill-top he plants his tread on the 35 ground, and hides his head among the clouds above: thus it is that Mezentius in enormous bulk shoulders his way. Æneas spies him along the length of the battle, and makes haste to march against him. He abides undismayed, waiting for his gallant foe, and stands like column on its base; then, measuring with his eye the distance that may suffice for his spear, “Now let my right hand, the god of my worship, and the missile dart I am 5 poising, vouchsafe their aid! I vow that you, my Lausus, clad in spoils torn from yonder robber’s carcase, shall stand in your own person the trophy of Æneas.” He said, and threw from far his hurtling lance: flying onward, it glances aside from the shield, and strikes in the 10 distance noble Antores twixt side and flank, Antores, comrade of Hercules, who, sent from Argos, had cloven to Evander’s fortunes and sat him down in an Italian home. Now he falls, ill-fated, by a wound meant for other, and gazes on the sky, and dreams in death of his darling Argos. 15 Then good Æneas hurls his spear; through the hollow disk with its triple plating of brass, through the folds of linen and the texture wherein three bulls joined, it won its way and lodged low down in the groin, but its force held not on. In a moment Æneas, gladdened by the sight 20 of the Tuscan’s blood, plucks his sword from his thigh and presses hotly on his unnerved foe.