554Rumour flies suddenly, spread through the little city, that horsemen are going swiftly to the shores of the Tyrrhenian king. 556Mothers redouble their vows in fear, and fear comes closer to danger, and the image of Mars now looms larger. 558Then father Evander, grasping the right hand of his departing son, clings to it, weeping without end, and speaks thus: 'Oh, if Jupiter would bring back to me the years that are past, (such as I was when beneath Praeneste itself I laid low the front rank and as victor burned heaps of shields, and with this right hand sent King Erulus down to Tartarus, to whom at his birth his mother Feronia (dreadful to tell) had given three lives; 565three times he had to take up arms, three times he had to be laid low in death; 566yet this right hand then took from him all his lives and stripped him of as many sets of arms): I would not now be torn away from your sweet embrace, my son, nor would Mezentius ever have insulted this neighbouring head and dealt so many savage deaths with the sword, nor bereaved the city of so many citizens.
572But you, O gods above, and you, Jupiter, greatest ruler of the gods, pity, I beg, the Arcadian king and hear a father's prayers. 574If your divine will, if the fates keep Pallas safe for me, if I am to live to see him and to meet him again: I pray for life, I can endure to bear any toil. 578But if, Fortune, you threaten some unspeakable mischance: now, oh now, let me break off my cruel life, while cares are uncertain, while hope of the future is in doubt, while I hold you in my embrace, dear boy, my late and only delight, and let no heavier news wound my ears.' 583These words the father poured out at their last parting: his servants carried him, fainting, into the house.