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.

LXXIV. Then cries Evander, clinging, and with tears
Insa