341Then Allecto, steeped in Gorgon poisons, first makes for Latium and the lofty palace of the Laurentine ruler, and besieged the silent threshold of Amata, whom, burning over the arrival of the Teucrians and the marriage of Turnus, a woman's cares and angers were consuming. 346At her the goddess flings one snake from her dark-blue hair and thrusts it into her bosom, to her innermost heart, so that maddened by the monster she may throw the whole house into confusion. 349Gliding between her clothes and smooth breasts, it winds on without a touch and deceives the frenzied woman, breathing its viper's breath into her: the huge snake becomes the twisted gold at her neck, becomes the band of her long fillet, and entwines her hair, and slides slippery over her limbs.
354And while the first infection, stealing in with its liquid poison, is seizing her senses and wrapping her bones in fire, and her mind has not yet caught the flame in all her breast, she spoke rather gently and in the usual way of mothers, weeping much over her daughter and the Phrygian marriage: 'Is Lavinia being given to the exiled Teucrians to marry, O father, and have you no pity for your daughter and yourself? 361And no pity for her mother, whom the treacherous pirate will abandon with the first north wind, making for the deep with the girl carried off? 363Is it not so that the Phrygian shepherd entered Lacedaemon and carried Helen, daughter of Leda, to the Trojan cities?
365What of your sacred word, what of your long care for your own people, and the right hand so often pledged to your kinsman Turnus? 367If a son-in-law is sought for the Latins from a foreign race, and this is settled, and the commands of your father Faunus press upon you, I for my part think every land that is free and stands apart from our rule is foreign, and that so the gods mean. 371And Turnus too, if the first origin of his house is traced back, has Inachus and Acrisius as forefathers, and the heart of Mycenae.'