LXVIII. "Advance, brave Chief of Italy and Troy! Advance; young Pallas at thy side shall fare, My hope, my solace, and my heart's best joy. With thee to teach him, he shall learn to share The war's grim work, the warrior's toil to bear; From earliest youth to marvel at thy deeds, And try to match them. Horsemen shall be there, Ten score, the choicest that Arcadia breeds; Two hundred more, his own, the gallant stripling leads." LXIX. He spake: AEneas and Achates stood With down-fixt eyes, musing the strange event. Dark thoughts were theirs, and sorrowful their mood; When lo, to leftward Cytherea sent A sign amid the open firmament. A flash of lightning swift from ether sprang With thunder. Turmoil universal blent Earth, sea and sky; the empyrean rang With arms, and loudly pealed the Tuscan trumpet's clang. LXX. Upward they look: again and yet again Comes the loud crash of thunder, and between A cloud that frets the firmamental plain, With bright, red flash amid the sky serene, The glitter of resounding arms is seen. All tremble; but AEneas hails the sign Long-promised. "Ask not," he exclaims, "what mean These prodigies and portents; they are mine. Me great Olympus calls; I hear the voice divine. LXXI. "This sign my Goddess-mother vowed to send, If war should threaten; thus in armed array From heaven with aid she promised to descend. Ah, woe for thee, Laurentum, soon the prey Of foeman! What a reckoning shalt thou pay To me, ill-fated Turnus! How thy wave Shall redden, Tiber, as it rolls away Helmets, and shields and bodies of the brave! Ay, let them break the league, and bid the War-god rave." LXXII. He spake, and, rising from his seat, renews The slumbering fires of Hercules, and tends The hearth-god's shrine of yesterday. Choice ewes They slay--Evander and his Trojan friends. Then to his comrades and the shore he wends, Arrays the crews, and takes the bravest there To follow him in fight. The rest he sends To young Ascanius down the stream, to bear News of his absent sire, and how the cause doth fare. LXXIII. With steeds, to aid the Tuscans, they provide The Teucrians. For AEneas forth is led The choicest, with a tawny lion's hide, All glittering with gilded claws, bespread. Now rumour through the little town hath sped, Of horsemen for the Tuscan king, with spear And shield for battle. Mothers, pale with dread, Heap vows on vows. The War-god, drawing near, Looms larger, and more close to danger draws the fear.