Aeneid Book 10, lines 633 - 665

Turnus is lured away from battle

by Virgil

Stung by the death of his young protégé, Pallas, at the hands of Turnus, Aeneas cuts his way across the battlefield, killing many of Turnus’s troops. Aeneas’s enemy Juno, Queen of the Gods, fearing for Turnus’s safety, obtains permission from Jupiter to lure him off the battlefield and out of Aeneas’s way. The English is from John Dryden’s translation.

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Haec ubi dicta dedit, caelo se protinus alto
misit agens hiemem nimbo succincta per auras,
Iliacamque aciem et Laurentia castra petivit.
tum dea nube cava tenuem sine viribus umbram
in faciem Aeneae (visu mirabile monstrum)
Dardaniis ornat telis, clipeumque iubasque
divini adsimulat capitis, dat inania verba,
dat sine mente sonum gressusque effingit euntis,
morte obita qualis fama est volitare figuras
aut quae sopitos deludunt somnia sensus.
at primas laeta ante acies exsultat imago
inritatque virum telis et voce lacessit.
instat cui Turnus stridentemque eminus hastam
conicit; illa dato vertit vestigia tergo.
tum vero Aenean aversum ut cedere Turnus
credidit atque animo spem turbidus hausit inanem:
‘quo fugis, Aenea? thalamos ne desere pactos;
hac dabitur dextra tellus quaesita per undas.’
talia vociferans sequitur strictumque coruscat
mucronem, nec ferre videt sua gaudia ventos.
Forte ratis celsi coniuncta crepidine saxi
expositis stabat scalis et ponte parato,
qua rex Clusinis aduectus Osinius oris.
huc sese trepida Aeneae fugientis imago
conicit in latebras, nec Turnus segnior instat
exsuperatque moras et pontis transilit altos.
vix proram attigerat, rumpit Saturnia funem
avulsamque rapit revoluta per aequora navem.
illum autem Aeneas absentem in proelia poscit;
obvia multa virum demittit corpora morti,
tum levis haud ultra latebras iam quaerit imago,
sed sublime volans nubi se immiscuit atrae,
cum Turnum medio interea fert aequore turbo.

Thus having said, involv’d in clouds, she flies,
And drives a storm before her thro’ the skies.
Swift she descends, alighting on the plain,
Where the fierce foes a dubious fight maintain.
Of air condens’d a specter soon she made;
And, what Aeneas was, such seem’d the shade.
Adorn’d with Dardan arms, the phantom bore
His head aloft; a plumy crest he wore;
This hand appear’d a shining sword to wield,.
And that sustain’d an imitated shield.
With manly mien he stalk’d along the ground,
Nor wanted voice belied, nor vaunting sound.
(Thus haunting ghosts appear to waking sight,
Or dreadful visions in our dreams by night.)
The specter seems the Daunian chief to dare,
And flourishes his empty sword in air.
At this, advancing, Turnus hurl’d his spear:
The phantom wheel’d, and seem’d to fly for fear.
Deluded Turnus thought the Trojan fled,
And with vain hopes his haughty fancy fed.
“Whither, O coward?” (thus he calls aloud,
Nor found he spoke to wind, and chas’d a cloud,)
“Why thus forsake your bride! Receive from me
The fated land you sought so long by sea.”
He said, and, brandishing at once his blade,
With eager pace pursued the flying shade.
By chance a ship was fasten’d to the shore,
Which from old Clusium King Osinius bore:
The plank was ready laid for safe ascent;
For shelter there the trembling shadow bent,
And skipp’t and skulk’d, and under hatches went.
Exulting Turnus, with regardless haste,
Ascends the plank, and to the galley pass’d.
Scarce had he reach’d the prow: Saturnia’s hand
The haulsers cuts, and shoots the ship from land.
With wind in poop, the vessel plows the sea,
And measures back with speed her former way.
Meantime Aeneas seeks his absent foe,
And sends his slaughter’d troops to shades below.
The guileful phantom now forsook the shroud,
And flew sublime, and vanish’d in a cloud.
Too late young Turnus the delusion found,
Far on the sea, still making from the ground.

`

More Poems by Virgil

  1. Rites for the allies’ dead
  2. Aeneas joins the fray
  3. Dido falls in love
  4. Omens for Princess Lavinia
  5. The journey to Hades begins
  6. Aeneas reaches the Elysian Fields
  7. Signs of bad weather
  8. The infant Camilla
  9. More from Virgil’s farming Utopia
  10. Aeneas’s ships are transformed
  11. Sea-nymphs
  12. Aristaeus’s bees
  13. Mourning for Pallas
  14. Juno throws open the gates of war
  15. The Trojans prepare to set sail from Carthage
  16. The Syrian hostess
  17. A Fury rouses Turnus to war
  18. Aeneas rescues his Father Anchises
  19. Cassandra is taken
  20. The farmer’s starry calendar
  21. New allies for Aeneas
  22. The Trojans reach Carthage
  23. King Latinus grants the Trojans’ request
  24. The death of Pallas
  25. Aeneas’s vision of Augustus
  26. Juno’s anger
  27. Laocoon and the snakes
  28. Love is the same for all
  29. Juno is reconciled
  30. The death of Euryalus and Nisus
  31. In King Latinus’s hall
  32. The death of Dido.
  33. Aeneas prepares to tell Dido his story
  34. The Fury Allecto blows the alarm
  35. Mercury’s journey to Carthage
  36. King Mezentius meets his match
  37. Aeneas tours the site of Rome
  38. Help for Father Aeneas from Father Tiber
  39. The natural history of bees
  40. The Harpy’s prophecy
  41. Storm at sea!
  42. Anchises’s ghost invites Aeneas to visit the underworld
  43. Virgil begins the Georgics
  44. Turnus at bay
  45. What is this wooden horse?
  46. The Aeneid begins
  47. Rumour
  48. Hector visits Aeneas in a dream
  49. Souls awaiting punishment in Tartarus, and the crimes that brought them there.
  50. Fire strikes Aeneas’s fleet
  51. Charon, the ferryman
  52. Into battle
  53. Aeneas saves his son and father, but at a cost
  54. Dido’s release
  55. Dido and Aeneas: Hell hath no fury …
  56. Virgil predicts a forthcoming birth and a new golden age
  57. Catastrophe for Rome?
  58. Aeneas and Dido meet
  59. The Trojan Horse enters the city
  60. Dido and Aeneas: royal hunt and royal affair
  61. The Trojan horse opens
  62. The portals of sleep
  63. Aeneas is wounded
  64. Aeneas’s oath
  65. How Aeneas will know the site of his city
  66. Laocoon warns against the Trojan horse
  67. Virgil’s poetic temple to Caesar
  68. Turnus the wolf
  69. Virgil’s perils on the sea
  70. Aeneas learns the way to the underworld
  71. The death of Priam
  72. Aeneas comes to the Hell of Tartarus
  73. Aeneas arrives in Italy
  74. Palinurus the helmsman is lost
  75. Aeneas sees Marcellus, Augustus’s tragic heir
  76. Vulcan’s forge
  77. Aeneas prepares for a hopeless fight
  78. The farmer’s happy lot
  79. Dido’s story
  80. Jupiter’s prophecy
  81. Aeneas finds Dido among the shades
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