of Turnus.  Then grasping the suppliant’s helmet, and forcing back his head so as to expose the neck, even as Magus renewed his petition he plunged the sword into his body to the hilt.  Near by, the luckless AEmonides, a priest of Apollo and Diana, who wore a sacred fillet on his temples and shone in burnished armor, fell a victim to his relentless spear, and the splendid arms he had worn were carried off by Serestus as an offering to Mars.  The Rutulians fled in terror before the raging chief; but King Caeculus of Praeneste, and Umbro, the leader of the Marsians, renewed the struggle.  A huge warrior named Tarquitus, the son of the nymph Dryope, dared to oppose himself to AEneas, but his fate was soon decided.  The hero first pierced his corselet with a spear, and then, as he lay wounded and imploring mercy, smote off his head with his sword.  Spurning the bleeding trunk, he furiously cried, “Lie there, haughty champion!  Thee no tender mother shall lodge in the earth, or place a tomb above thy body; to birds of prey thou shalt be left, or cast in the sea to be devoured by fishes.”  Still insatiable of slaughter, he drove into terrified flight Antaeus and Lycas, two of Turnus’s bravest followers.  But now the fierce Lucagus approached in a chariot drawn by two snow-white coursers.  These were guided by his brother Liger, while he himself flourished his sword in the air, and prepared to encounter AEneas, who on his part rushed forward to meet them.  “These,” cried Liger, “are not the steeds of Diomedes, nor this the plain of Troy.  Here an end shall be put at once to thy life and to the war.”  Against these insults AEneas prepared to give an answer otherwise than in words, and as Lucagus bent forward in readiness for the fight, the Trojan javelin whizzed through the rim of his shield, smote him in the groin, and hurled him, quivering in the pangs of death, out of the chariot.  AEneas assailed his dying ears with a bitter scoff:  “It is not, O Lucagus, the slowness of thy steeds in flight that hath lost thee thy chariot, but thou thyself, springing from thy seat, hast abandoned it.”  So saying, he seized the chariot; and now the miserable Liger, extending his hands in supplication, begged for his life.  “It was not in this fashion that thou spokest a little while since,” replied the relentless hero.  “It would not be fitting that thou shouldst desert thy brother.  Die, therefore, and attend him to the shades.”  With that he thrust the avenging sword through his heart, whence the trembling soul fled with a shriek.

So AEneas spread havoc amid the hostile ranks, and drove the forces of Turnus back in headlong rout, so that Ascanius and those who had hitherto been shut up in the fortifications were able to issue forth into the field.  Meanwhile Jupiter, watching from Olympus the fortunes of the day, accosted his consort.  “Thou art in the right, my cherished queen, in alleging that Venus gives her aid to the Trojans; for without divine aid, how would it be possible for any