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Eight Rutulian warriors he struck down, and captured them alive, destining them as victims to be offered to the shade of Pallas, and to drench with their blood the flames of the hero's funeral pyre.
Be ready then at the dawn of morning with your troops, and bear with you to the fight the arms and armor which Vulcan has made. To-morrow's sun shall see many of the Rutulian enemy slain." She ceased, and parting, to the bark A measured impulse gave; Like wind-swift arrow to its mark It darts along the wave. The rest pursue. In wondering awe The chief revolves the things he saw.
In fact, Livy, who gives the more usual Roman version, says nothing of the Greeks, but joins Latinus and the Latian aborigines to Aeneas while he musters the Etruscans under the Rutulian, Turnus. The explanation for Vergil's striking departure from the usual patriotic version of the legend is rather involved and need not be examined here.
Now Nisus had conceived the idea of making his way through the Rutulian lines and conveying to AEneas at Pallanteum news of the dangerous situation of his people in the besieged camp, and he thought he would carry out his project while the enemy were all asleep outside the walls. Euryalus approved of the enterprise, and he begged that he himself might be permitted to take part in it.
But Nisus rushes amidst them, and alone among them all makes at Volscens, keeps to Volscens alone: round him the foe cluster, and on this side and that hurl him back: none the less he presses on, and whirls his sword like lightning, till he plunges it full in the face of the shrieking Rutulian, and slays his enemy as he dies.
The Rutulian king bravely advanced to attack the supposed Trojan chief, upon which the spectre, wheeling about, hastily retreated towards the river. Turnus followed, loudly upbraiding AEneas as a coward. It happened that at the shore there was a ship, connected with the land by a plank bridge or gangway.
Eager for vengeance, he hastened through the battle field in search of Turnus, slaying many chiefs of the enemy whom he encountered on his way. But he was not yet to meet the Rutulian king face to face, for Juno, by Jupiter's permission, led Turnus off the field, and saved him for a time from the wrath of the Trojan hero.
When their frenzy seemed heightened and her first task complete, the purpose and all the house of Latinus turned upside down, the dolorous goddess flies on thence, soaring on dusky wing, to the walls of the gallant Rutulian, the city which Danaë, they say, borne down on the boisterous south wind, built and planted with Acrision's people.
But at last his citizens, outwearied by his mad excesses, surround him and his house in arms, cut down his comrades, and hurl fire on his roof. Amid the massacre he escaped to the refuge of Rutulian land and the armed defence of Turnus' friendship. So all Etruria hath risen in righteous fury, and in immediate battle claim their king for punishment.
The unfortunate Rutulian now turned and fled over the field, calling loudly on his friends to bring him his sword. AEneas followed in pursuit, threatening death to any one who should venture to approach, and thus five times round the lists they ran.
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