are overcome by sleep. Two Trojan sentinels, Nisus and Euryalus, seize the opportunity and steal past the Rutulian guards, purposing to communicate with Æneas. But they stop by the way to slaughter their sleeping enemies, and are slain by a troop of cavalry. Turnus causes their heads to be borne on spears in front of his forces, while his brother-in-law taunts the Trojans as twice captured Phrygians, and compares the hardihood of the Latins with their luxurious ways, telling them,—

'Leave men, like us, in arms to deal,

Nor bruise your lily hands with steel.'

Iulus, however, who, in fulfilment of his promise, has comforted the mother of Euryalus, sends an arrow through the boaster's temples. The battle becomes general, valiant deeds are enacted on both sides, and Turnus fights so gallantly that the Trojans are almost defeated, until Juno dares not help him any longer, and he retreats backwards towards the river, when,

'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.'

The scene now changes to Olympus, where Jupiter is troubled, as in the Iliad, with the dissensions between his wife and daughter, and swears, with an awful nod, that the Trojans and Rutulians shall fight it out. The contest is renewed the following morning, but succour for the Trojans is at hand. During the night Æneas is leading the Etruscan ships along the Tyrrhenian coast, with young Pallas by his side, when suddenly his galley is surrounded by the nymphs, into which his vessels have been changed, who warn him of his companions' danger. At daybreak he enters the Tiber, and raises aloft his shield, which the Trojans recognise with shouts, and Turnus hurries down to oppose the landing of their leader with his reinforcements. The Arcadian horsemen get into confusion on the beach; but Pallas rallies them, and has disabled the Rutulian twin

brothers, Thymber and Larides, when he encounters Turnus, and, venturing a combat with him, is slain. The victor bids the Arcadians bear the body home for burial, taking from it as a trophy only an embroidered belt, which he girds over his armour. Eneas, hearing of the young prince's death, rushes furiously towards Turnus, but Juno beguiles him into a ship which carries him to Ardea. Æneas turns upon Mezentius, the father of Camilla, and, having wounded him, kills his son. The crippled sire remounts his charger, and desperately hurls his javelins at the Trojan chief, who at last spears his opponent's horse, which, rolling over, pins his rider to the ground, and the fallen champion fearlessly bares his neck to the sword of his foe.

Wrapped in a robe embroidered by Dido, with his horse following the bier, and his lance and helmet borne in the procession, the body of Pallas is escorted to Laurentum, his father Evander's capital, with military honours; and there is a truce of twelve days between the armies for the burial of their dead. The Latins now seek the aid of Diomed, one of the Trojan heroes who has settled in Italy, but he declines to fight against Æneas, who, while they are debating a compromise, marches on their city. Turnus deputes Camilla, with her Volscian horsemen, to meet the enemy, while he lays an ambuscade in a wooded valley. She singles out Chlorus, a soldier-priest, whose brilliant accoutrements attract her, and chases him over the field; but she is wounded by a Tuscan spear, and—

'In vain she strives, with dying hands,

To wrench away the blade,

Fixed in her ribs the weapon stands,
Closed by the wound it made.

Bloodless and faint, she gasps for breath,

Her heavy eyelids close in death,
Her cheeks' bright colours fade.'

Conington.

On the morrow Turnus announces his intention to meet Æneas in single combat; the challenge is sent; and joyfully accepted. Æneas declares that if the victory falls to Turnus, the Trojans will make war no more against Latium; and that should he be the conqueror,

'I will not force Italia's land
To Teucrian rule to bow;

I seek no sceptre for my hand,
No diadem for my brow;

Let race and race, unquelled and free,
Join hands in deathless amity.'

the

Before the rivals meet, however, Juno causes Rutulians to break the truce. An eagle is seen bearing off a swan, but is put to flight when the flock turn and pursue him; which their seer interprets as an omen that they should turn on Æneas, for whom Turnus is no match, and hurls his javelin into the Trojan ranks. The fight becomes general, and Æneas, while endeavouring unarmed to stay it, is struck by a cowardly arrow. But Venus heals her son's wound, and he at once seeks out Turnus, who, with a presage of his fate, becomes pale and unnerved; and his sister, a demi-goddess and a favourite of Juno, acting as his charioteer, drives him in another direction. Baffled in his search, Æneas suddenly throws all his forces against the town, and Turnus sees it already in flames. His courage now returns, and, leaping from his chariot, he makes for the wall where Æneas is leading the attack. The two chiefs advance, and the combat between them commences, first with spears, and next with swords. Now Turnus's is broken, and he takes to flight pursued by his foe, against whom he hurls a stone which twelve degenerate men could hardly lift; but he is unmanned, and—

'The stone, as through the void it passed,
Failed of the measure of its cast,

Nor held its purpose true,

Dim shapes before his senses reel,

On host and town he turns his sight;
He quails, he trembles at the steel,

Nor knows to fly, nor knows to fight.'

Æneas strikes with all his frame, and pierces him through the thigh; he begs his life, and the conqueror half relents, until his eye falls upon the belt of Pallas which Turnus had girded in triumph over his armour, when

'Live fury kindling every vein.
He cries with terrible disdain,--

What! in my friend's dear spoils arrayed,

To me for mercy sue?

'Tis Pallas, Pallas guides the blade,

From your cursed blood his injured shade
Thus takes the atonement due.

And as he spoke his sword he drave,
With fierce and heavy blow,

Through the broad breast before him spread;
The stalwart limbs grow cold and dead,
One groan the indignant spirit gave,

Then sought the shades below.'

And thus the Æneid ends.

Conington.

|IBULLUS was a Roman of equestrian family, whose poetry, it is considered, possesses more neatness

and finish than that of Catullus, and whose tastes were more domestic and conservative. He appears to have accompanied his patron, Messala, to Aquitania, as in one of his poems he claims a share in the fame of his victories; but peaceful subjects were evidently more congenial to him, and most of his compositions relate either to love, or to rural scenery and rustic festivals. His elegies to his mistress Delia are elegantly expressed, but tinged with melancholy; they are interesting chiefly for the references they contain to Roman customs, such as the use of dice to ascertain their luck, and the worship of the Egyptian goddess Isis by the fashionable ladies of the period. In one of them he alludes to a witch, whose arts he professes to have secured against a suspected rival :—

'Her have I known the stars of heaven to charm,
The rapid river's course by spells to turn,

Cleave graves, bid bones descend from pyres still warm,
Or coax the manes forth from silent urn.

Hell's rabble now she calls with magic scream,
Now bids them milk-sprent to their homes below;
At will lights cloudy skies with sunshine's gleam,
At will 'neath summer orbs collects the snow."

Davies.

R