Meantime, in the mansions above Latona’s daughter was addressing Opis the swift, a maiden comrade of her sacred train, and was uttering these words in tones of 5 sorrow: “Ah, maiden, Camilla is on her way to the ruthless war; in vain she girds herself with the arms of our sisterhood, dear to me that she is beyond all beside: for no new tenderness this that has come on Diana, nor sudden the spell wherewith it stirs her heart. When Metabus, 10 exiled for the hate which tyranny genders, was parting from Privernum, his ancient city, as he fled from the heart of the combat, he bore away his infant child to share his banishment, and varying Casmilla, her mother’s name, called her Camilla. The father, carrying her in his bosom, 15 was making for the long mountain slopes of the solitary woods, while bitter javelins were showering all around him, and the Volscians with circling soldiery hovering about: when lo! intercepting his flight was Amasenus, brimming and foaming over its banks, so vast a deluge of rain had 20 burst from the clouds. Preparing to plunge in, he is checked by tenderness for his child, and fears for the precious load. At last, as he pondered over every course, he hit suddenly on this resolve. There was a huge weapon, which he chanced to be carrying in his stalwart hand 25 as warriors use, sturdy with knots and seasoned timber: to it he fastens his daughter, enclosed in the cork-tree’s forest bark, and binds her neatly round the middle of the shaft; then, poising it in a giant’s grasp, he thus exclaims to heaven: ‘Gracious lady, dweller in the woods, 30 Latona’s maiden daughter, I vow to thy service this my child: thine are the first weapons that she wields as she flies from the foe through air to thy protection. Receive, I conjure thee, as thine own her whom I now entrust to the uncertain gale.’ He said, and, drawing back his arm, 35 hurled the javelin: loud roared the waves, while over the furious stream fled poor Camilla on the hurtling dart. But Metabus, pressed closer and closer by the numerous band, leaps into the river, and in triumph plucks from the grassy bank his offering to Trivia, the javelin and the maid. No cities opened to him house or stronghold, for his wild nature had never brooked submission: among the shepherds’ lonely mountains he passed his days. There in the 5 woods, among beasts’ savage lairs, he reared his daughter on milk from the breast of an untamed mare, squeezing the udder into her tender lips. And soon as the child first stood on her feet, he armed her hands with a pointed javelin, and hung from her baby shoulder a quiver and a 10 bow. For the golden brooch in her hair, for the long sweeping mantle, there hang from her head adown her back a tiger’s spoils.