, and Feronia glad in her greenwood: and where
the marsh of Satura lies black, and cold Ufens winds his way along the
valley-bottoms and sinks into the sea.

Therewithal came Camilla the Volscian, leading a train of cavalry,
squadrons splendid with brass: a warrior maiden who had never used her
woman's hands to Minerva's distaff or wool-baskets, but hardened to
endure the battle shock and outstrip the winds with racing feet. She
might have flown across the topmost blades of unmown corn and left the
tender ears unhurt as she ran; or sped her way over mid sea upborne by
the swelling flood, nor dipt her swift feet in the water. All the people
pour from house and field, and mothers crowd to wonder and gaze at her
as she goes, in rapturous astonishment at the royal lustre of purple
that drapes her smooth shoulders, at the clasp of gold that intertwines
her tresses, at the Lycian quiver she carries, and the pastoral myrtle
shaft topped with steel.

BOOK EIGHTH

THE EMBASSAGE TO EVANDER

When Turnus ran up the flag of war on the towers of Laurentum, and the
trumpets blared with harsh music, when he spurred his fiery steeds and
clashed his armour, straightway men's hearts are in tumult; all Latium
at once flutters in banded uprisal, and her warriors rage furiously.
Their chiefs, Messapus, and Ufens, and Mezentius, scorner of the gods,
begin to enrol forces on all sides, and dispeople the wide fields of
husbandmen. Venulus too is sent to the town of mighty Diomede to seek
succour, to instruct him that Teucrians set foot in Latium; that Aeneas
in his fleet invades them with the vanquished gods of his home, and
proclaims himself the King summoned of fate; that many tribes join the
Dardanian, and his name swells high in Latium. What he will rear on
these foundations, what issue of battle he desires, if Fortune attend
him, lies clearer to his own sight than to King Turnus or King Latinus.

Thus was it in Latium. And the hero of Laomedon's blood, seeing it all,
tosses on a heavy surge of care, and throws his mind rapidly this way
and that, and turns it on all hands in swift change of thought: even as
when the quivering light of water brimming in brass, struck back
[23-56]from the sunlight or the moon's glittering reflection, flickers
abroad over all the room, and now mounts aloft and strikes the high
panelled roof. Night fell, and over all lands weary creatures were fast
in deep slumber, the race of fowl and of cattle; w