“Let Latium prosper as she will,
   Their thrones let Alban monarchs fill;
   Let Rome be glorious on the earth,
   The centre of Italian worth;
   But fallen Troy be fallen still,
     The nation and the name.”

Toward the end of this momentous encounter, during which both heroes indulged in sundry boastful speeches, a bird warns Turnus that his end is near, and his sister Juturna basely deserts him.  Driven to bay and deprived of all other weapons, Turnus finally hurls a rock at Aeneas, who, dodging this missile, deals him a deadly wound.  Turnus now pitifully begs for mercy, but the sight of Pallas’ belt, which his foe proudly wears, so angers Aeneas that, after wrathfully snatching it from him, he deals his foe the deadly blow which ends this epic.

  “What! in my friend’s dear spoils arrayed
     To me for mercy sue? 
   ’Tis Pallas, Pallas guides the blade: 
   From your cursed blood his injured shade
     Thus takes atonement due.” 
   Thus as he spoke, his sword he drave
     With fierce and fiery blow
   Through the broad breast before him spread: 
   The stalwart limbs grow cold and dead: 
   One groan the indignant spirit gave,
     Then sought the shades below.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 5:  All the quotations in this article are from Virgil’s Aeneid, Conington’s translation.]

[Footnote 6:  See the author’s “Story of the Romans.”]

FRENCH EPICS

The national epic in France bears the characteristic name of Chanson de Geste, or song of deed, because the trouveres in the north and the troubadours in the south wandered from castle to castle singing the prowesses of the lords and of their ancestors, whose reputations they thus made or ruined at will.

In their earliest form these Chansons de Geste were invariably in verse, but in time the most popular were turned into lengthy prose romances.  Many of the hundred or more Chansons de Geste still preserved were composed in the northern dialect, or langue d’oil, and, although similar epics did exist in the langue d’oc, they have the “great defect of being lost,” and only fragments of Flamenca, etc., now exist.

There are three great groups or cycles of French epics:  first the Cycle of France, dealing specially with Charlemagne,—­the champion of Christianity,—­who, representing Christ, is depicted surrounded by twelve peers instead of twelve disciples.  Among these, to carry out the scriptural analogy, lurks a traitor, Ganelon; so, in the course of the poems, we are favored with biblical miracles, such as the sun pausing in its course until pagans can be punished, and angels appearing to comfort dying knights.  The finest sample of this cycle is without doubt the famous Chanson de Roland, of which a complete synopsis follows.  Other remarkable examples of this cycle are Aliscans, Raoul de Cambrai, Garin le Lorrain, Guillaume d’Orange, Les Quatre Fils d’Aymon, Ogier le Danois, etc.