Page:Aeneid (Conington 1866).djvu/394

Thick olive boughs in hand they bear,
And for indulgence crave:
Be burial granted to the slain
Whose mangled bodies load the plain:
No war may soldier wage, they say,
With vanquished men and senseless clay:
Who once his hosts, his kin were styled
Should find him e'en in victory mild.
The good Æneas owns their plea,
And thus bespeaks them courteously:
'What mischief, Latians, makes you slight
Our proffered love, and plunge in fight?
Ask ye that war in death may cease?
Fain would I grant the living peace.
I had not sought you, but the voice
Of oracles compelled my choice;
Fate bade me here my city place;
Nor war I with the Latian race.
No; 'twas your king forsook his word,
And Turnus' arms to mine preferred.
If Turnus waked the flames of strife,
'Twere just that Turnus risked his life.
To end the war by force of hand
And drive the Trojans from the land,
If such his boast, his part had been
To meet me here with blade as keen,
And he had lived who won the right
From favouring gods or inborn might.
Go now, prepare the funeral pyre,
And give your hapless friends to fire.'

He ended. Wildered with amaze
In silence each on each they gaze.
Then Drances, he whose age pursued
The Daunian youth with bitter feud,