wrenches aside the foaming jaws of the impetuous steeds. While he is dragged along clinging to the yoke, the broad spear-head reaches his unguarded breast, cleaves the two-plated corslet, and tastes the surface of the flesh. Yet he, his shield before him, kept fronting and threatening the 20 foe, and protecting himself with his drawn sword, when the wheel careering onward strikes and flings him on the ground, and Turnus with a sweep of his blade between the bottom of the helmet and the breastplate’s topmost rim has lopped the head and left the trunk to welter. 25 While Turnus thus is dealing havoc over the field, Mnestheus, true Achates, and Ascanius have helped Æneas to the camp, all bleeding, and staying his halting steps by the help of a spear. There he frets and struggles to pull out the broken shaft, and calls for help the readiest 30 way, bidding them enlarge the wound with a broad sword, cut the weapon’s lodgment to the bottom, and send him to combat again. And now at his side was Iapis, son of Iasus, dearest of mankind to Phœbus, he to whom the god in his passionate fondness would fain have given his 35 own function, his own hand’s cunning, the augur’s insight, the lyre, the weapons of archery; but he, wishing to lengthen out the span of his bed-rid sire, chose rather to know the virtue of simples and the laws of the healing art, and to practise in silence an unambitious craft. There stood Æneas, fretting impatiently, propped on his massy spear, with a warrior concourse about him, and Iulus all in tears, yet himself unmoved by their sorrow. 5 The aged leech, his garments swathed round him in Pæon’s fashion, is plying busily the healing hand and Phœbus’ sovereign remedies all to no end, all to no end pulling at the dart and griping the steel with the pincer. No Fortune guides the course of skill, no patron Phœbus 10 lends his aid; and meanwhile the fierce alarms of the field grow louder and louder, and the mischief is nearer at hand. They see dust-clouds propping the sky, the horsemen gallop in, darts fall thick in the midst of the camp, and heavenward mounts the cruel din of warriors battling 15 or falling in the stern affray:—when, lo! Venus, struck to the heart by her son’s undeserved suffering, with a mother’s care plucks dittany[284] from Cretan Ida, a plant with downy leaves and a purple flower: wild goats know that simple well, if the flying arrow should lodge in their 20 flesh. Veiled by a dim cloud, the goddess brings it down; with it she impregnates the spring water gleaming in the caldron, imparting unseen powers, and sprinkles ambrosia’s[285] healthful juice and fragrant panacea. The old man rinsed the wound with the water so transformed, all 25 unwitting, and in a moment all pain was fled from the