772Next the soldiery of unjust Amulius ruled the Ausonian realm, and old Numitor, by his grandson's gift, takes back the kingdom he had lost, and at the festival of Pales the walls of the city are founded; and Tatius and the Sabine fathers wage war, and Tarpeia, having opened the way to the citadel, was stripped of her life, deserving its penalty, beneath heaped arms. 778Then the men born at Cures, like silent wolves, suppress their voices and attack bodies overcome by sleep and make for the gates, which the son of Ilia had closed with a firm bar: yet Saturn's daughter herself opened one, and made no noise as she turned the hinge.
783Venus alone perceived that the bars of the gate had fallen, and she would have closed it, except that gods may never undo the acts of gods. 785Ausonian naiads held a spot adjoining Janus' shrine, wet with a cold spring: she asks them for help, nor did the nymphs withstand the goddess's just request, and they drew forth the veins and streams of their fountain; 789yet the gates of open Janus were not yet impassable, nor had the water blocked the way: they put yellowish sulphur beneath the abundant spring and set the hollow veins on fire with smoking pitch. 793By these and other forces the heat penetrated to the depths of the spring, and you waters, who only lately dared to rival the Alpine cold, you yield not even to fire itself!
796The twin doorposts smoke with the fiery spray, and the gate, promised in vain to the hard Sabines, was blocked by the new spring, until the soldiers of Mars could put on their arms; 799after Romulus had offered battle of his own accord, and the Roman earth had been strewn with Sabine bodies and strewn with its own, and the impious sword had mixed the blood of son-in-law with the blood of father-in-law, they resolved nevertheless that the war be ended with peace and not fought out to the last, and that Tatius should share the kingdom. 805Tatius had died, and you, Romulus, were giving laws equally to both peoples, when Mars, laying aside his helmet, addresses the father of gods and men in these words: 'The time has come, father, since the Roman state is strong on a great foundation and depends on a single guardian, to pay the reward (it was promised to me and to your worthy grandson!) and to take him from the earth and set him in heaven.
812You once said to me, with the council of the gods present (for I remember, and I noted the dutiful words in my mindful heart), "There will be one whom you shall raise to the blue of heaven": let the sum of your words be fulfilled!' 816The almighty nodded and hid the air in dark clouds and terrified the world with thunder and lightning: Gradivus knew these for sure signs of the abduction promised him, and, leaning on his spear, fearless, he mounted his horses, which strained at the bloodstained pole, and cracked the lash of his whip, and, gliding headlong through the air, halted on the top of the wooded Palatine hill and carried off the son of Ilia as he was giving laws, not as a tyrant, to his Quirites: his mortal body dissolved through the thin air, as a leaden ball flung from a broad sling usually melts away in mid-sky.
827A beautiful form comes over him, more worthy of the lofty couches of the gods, such as is the form of Quirinus in his robe of state. 829His wife was weeping for him as lost, when royal Juno orders Iris to descend to Hersilia along her curving path and to bring her message thus to the widow: 'O matron, chief glory of Latium and of the Sabine race, most worthy to have been before the wife of so great a man, and now of Quirinus, cease your weeping, and, if you have a longing to see your husband, with me as guide make for the grove that grows green on Quirinus' hill and shades the temple of the Roman king.' 838Iris obeys and, gliding down to earth along her painted arc, addresses Hersilia with the words she was bidden.
840She, scarcely raising her eyes with modest face, said, 'O goddess (for it is not easy for me to say which goddess you are, yet it is clear that you are a goddess), lead me, O lead me, and show me my husband's face; if the fates grant that I may see him just once, I shall confess that I have received heaven.' 845Without delay, she enters the hills of Romulus with the maiden daughter of Thaumas: there a star, gliding from the heavens, fell to the earth, and, her hair blazing from its light, Hersilia departed with the star into the air. 849The founder of the Roman city receives her with familiar hands and changes her old name along with her body and calls her Hora, who is now a goddess joined to Quirinus.