Aeneid Bibliomancy Reading

This oracle points to a randomly selected line from The Aeneid. The surrounding passages are provided for context.

 

Your passage is from BOOK XI: THE LATINS’ LAST STAND: A WOMAN WARRIOR.

 

For Context:

BOOK XI: THE LATINS’ LAST STAND: A WOMAN WARRIOR

Messapus and Catillus, post your force
Along the fields, to charge the Trojan horse.

Some guard the passes, others man the wall;
Drawn up in arms, the rest attend my call.”

They swarm from ev’ry quarter of the town,
And with disorder’d haste the rampires crown.

Good old Latinus, when he saw, too late,
The gath’ring storm just breaking on the state,

Dismiss’d the council till a fitter time,
And own’d his easy temper as his crime,

Who, forc’d against his reason, had complied
To break the treaty for the promis’d bride.

Some help to sink new trenches; others aid
To ram the stones, or raise the palisade.

Hoarse trumpets sound th’ alarm; around the walls
Runs a distracted crew, whom their last labour calls.

A sad procession in the streets is seen,
Of matrons, that attend the mother queen:

High in her chair she sits, and, at her side,
With downcast eyes, appears the fatal bride.

They mount the cliff, where Pallas’ temple stands;
Pray’rs in their mouths, and presents in their hands,