There is a winding vale
for armed deception and insidious war
well fashioned, and by interlacing leaves
screened darkly in; a small path thither leads,
through strait defile-a passage boding ill.
Above it, on a mountain's lofty brow,
are points of outlook, level spaces fair,
and many a safe, invisible retreat
from whence on either hand to challenge war,
or, standing on the ridges, to roll down
huge mountain boulders. Thither Turnus fared,
and, ranging the familiar tract, chose out
his cunning ambush in the dangerous grove.
Vergil. Aeneid. Theodore C. Williams. trans. Boston. Houghton Mifflin Co. 1910.
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