“The Trojans follow, shouting loud, And closer still and closer crowd. So when the gathering swains assail A lion with their brazen hail, He, glaring rage, begins to quail, And sullenly departs: For shame his back he will not turn, Yet dares not, howsoe’er he yearn, To charge their serried darts: So Turnus lingeringly retires, And glows with ineffectual fires. Twice on the foe e’en then he falls, Twice routs and drives them round the walls: But from the camp in swarms they pour, Nor Juno dares to help him more. * * * * * At length, accoutred as he stood, Headlong he plunged into the flood. The yellow flood the charge received, With buoyant tide his weight upheaved, And cleansing off the encrusted gore, Returned him to his friends once more.” CHAPTER XI. THE DEATH OF PALLAS. The scene changes to Olympus, where Jupiter holds a council of the gods. He is as much troubled as in the Iliad with the dissensions in his own court, and holds the balance with difficulty between his queen and his daughter, each unscrupulous in their partisanship. Venus complains to him bitterly of the peril in which her son Æneas stands, by reason of Juno’s machinations. That goddess replies, with considerable show of reason, that Æneas has brought his troubles upon himself; that Latinus and Turnus and Lavinia were all going on peacefully before he came; and that--if the whole history of the Trojans must needs be discussed again--Venus herself, by her instrument Helen, was the mother of all the mischief. The king of the gods somewhat loses patience, and swears by the great river of Styx, with the awful nod which shakes Olympus, that Trojan and Rutulian shall even fight it out, and the Fates shall decide the question. So he dissolves the Olympian convocation.