P. Vergilius Maro, Aeneid
Theodore C. Williams, Ed.

Alecto then,
prompt to the stroke of mischief, soared aloft
from where she spying sate, to the steep roof
of a tall byre, and from its peak of straw
blew a wild signal on a shepherd's horn,
outflinging her infernal note so far
that all the forest shuddered, and the grove
throbbed to its deepest glen. Cold Trivia's lake
from end to end gave ear, and every wave
of the white stream of Nar, the lonely pools
of still Velinus heard: while at the sound
pale mothers to their breasts their children drew.
Swift to the signal of the dreadful horn,
snatching their weapons rude, the freeborn swains
assembled for the fray; the Trojan bands
poured from their bivouac with instant aid
for young Ascanius. In array of war
both stand confronting. Not mere rustic brawl
with charred oak-staff and cudgel is the fight,
but with the two-edged steel; the naked swords
wave like dark-bladed harvest-field, while far
the brazen arms flash in the smiting sun,
and skyward fling their beam: so some wide sea,
at first but whitened in the rising wind,
swells its slow-rolling mass and ever higher
its billows rears, until the utmost deep
lifts in one surge to heaven. The first to fall
was Almo, eldest-born of Tyrrhus' sons,
whom, striding in the van, a loud-winged shaft
laid low in death; deep in his throat it clung,
and silenced with his blood the dying cry
of his frail life. Around him fell the forms
of many a brave and strong; among them died
gray-haired Galaesus pleading for a truce:
righteous he was, and of Ausonian fields
a prosperous master; five full flocks had he
of bleating sheep, and from his pastures came
five herds of cattle home; his busy churls
turned with a hundred ploughs his fruitful glebe.