retain its home in that congenial breast. Now, gracious sire, I return to you and the august matter that asks our 25 counsel. If you have no hope beyond in aught our arms can do, if we are so wholly forlorn, destroyed root and branch by one reverse, and our star can never rise again, then pray we for peace and stretch craven hands in suppliance. Yet, oh, had we but one spark of the worth that 30 once was ours, that man I would esteem blest beyond others in his service and princely of soul, who, sooner than look on aught like this, has lain down in death and once for all bitten the dust. But if we have still store of power, and a harvest of youth yet unreaped, if there are cities 35 and nations of Italy yet to come to our aid, if the Trojans as well as we have won their glory at much bloodshed’s cost—for they too have their deaths—the hurricane has swept over all alike—why do we merely falter on the threshold? why are we seized with shivering ere the trumpet blows? Many a man’s weal has been restored by time and the changeful struggles of shifting days: many a man has Fortune, fair and foul by turns, made her sport 5 and then once more placed on a rock. Grant that we shall have no help from the Ætolian and his Arpi: but we shall from Messapus, and the blest Tolumnius, and all the leaders that those many nations have sent us; nor small shall be the glory which will wait on the flower of Latium 10 and the Laurentine land. Ay, and we have Camilla,[279] of the noble Volscian race, with a band of horsemen at her back and troops gleaming with brass. If it is I alone that the Teucrians challenge to the fight, and such is your will, and my life is indeed the standing obstacle to the good of 15 all, Victory has not heretofore fled with such loathing from my hands that I should refuse to make my venture for a hope so glorious. No, I will confront him boldly, though he should prove great as Achilles, and don harness like his, the work of Vulcan’s art. To you and to my royal father-in-law 20 have I here devoted this my life, I, Turnus, second in valour to none that went before me. ‘For me alone Æneas calls.’ Vouchsafe that he may so call! nor let Drances in my stead, if the issue be Heaven’s vengeance, forfeit his life, or, if it be prowess and glory, bear that prize 25 away!”