370But Venus, a mother frightened in her heart and not without reason, troubled by the threats of the Laurentines and the harsh uproar, addresses Vulcan, and begins thus in the golden bedchamber of her husband, breathing divine love into her words: 'While the Argive kings were laying waste in war Pergamum, which was doomed, and its towers fated to fall to hostile fire, I asked no help for the wretched, no arms of your skill and power, nor did I wish, dearest husband, to make you or your labours work in vain, though I owed much to the sons of Priam and had often wept for the hard toil of Aeneas.
381Now by Jupiter's commands he has taken his stand on the shores of the Rutulians: so I, the same, come as a suppliant and ask arms of your power, holy to me, a mother for her son. 383The daughter of Nereus could move you with her tears, so could the wife of Tithonus. 385See what peoples are gathering, what walls are sharpening the sword behind closed gates against me and for the destruction of my own.' 387She had spoken, and with her snowy arms on this side and that the goddess warms him in a soft embrace as he hesitates. 388He suddenly caught the familiar flame, and the known heat entered his marrow and ran through his melting bones: just as when at times a fiery rift, bursting forth with flashing thunder, runs gleaming with its light through the clouds.
393His wife, pleased with her wiles and conscious of her beauty, felt it. 394Then the father, bound by everlasting love, speaks: 'Why do you seek reasons from so far? 395Where, goddess, has your trust in me gone? 396If you had felt a like concern, then too it would have been right for us to arm the Teucrians: neither the almighty father nor the fates forbade Troy to stand and Priam to survive for ten more years. 400And now, if you are preparing to make war and this is your mind, whatever care I can promise in my art, whatever can be made from iron or molten electrum, whatever fires and blasts of air can do, cease by your entreaties to doubt your own power.' 404Having spoken these words he gave her the embraces she longed for, and, sinking into his wife's lap, sought calm sleep through his limbs.