The Aeneid

by Virgil

Beneath that summit, sheltered by a thick ilex, there stood a mound of earth, the massive tomb of Dercennus, one of the Laurentians’ most ancient kings. Here first the lovely goddess 1130 descends with speed; then, halting, she spies Arruns from that high barrow. As she saw him, bright in armor and puffed up with pointless pride, she cries: “Why are you running off? Come here, come here to claim your death, to take the prize 1135 we owe you for Camilla! Shall one like you, even you, die by Diana’s arrows?” At this the Thracian virgin drew a swift shaft from her gilded quiver; and she stretched her leveled bow, long, taut, drawing it back 1140 until the curved points met; with even hands she pulled the bow until her left could touch the arrow’s iron tip, until her right could feel the bowstring and her breast. At once he heard the hissing shaft, the whirring air; 1145 and in that very instant iron drove deep in his chest. But Arruns’ heedless comrades desert him as he gasps, groans out his last along the battlefield’s unknowing dust. And Opis wings her way to high Olympus. 1150