1 Nay, behold apart the Decii and the Drusi, Torquatus with his cruel axe, and Camillus returning with the standards.
2 To each will I give two glittering Gnosian spearheads of polished steel, and an axe chased with silver to bear away; one and all shall be honoured thus.
3 Tyrrheus cheers on his array, panting hard, with his axe caught up in his hand, as he was haply splitting an oaken log in four clefts with cross-driven wedges.
4 Armour besides hangs thickly on the sacred doors, captured chariots and curved axes, helmet-crests and massy gateway-bars, lances and shields, and beaks torn from warships.
5 The tall ash echoes to the axe's strokes; they overturn pines that soar into the sky, and busily cleave oaken logs and scented cedar with wedges, and drag mountain-ashes on their groaning waggons.
6 All seek out arms; and now they rub their shields smooth and make their spearheads glitter with fat lard, and grind their axes on the whetstone: rejoicingly they advance under their standards and hear the trumpet note.
7 They move into the ancient forest, the deep coverts of game; pitch-pines fall flat, ilex rings to the stroke of axes, and ashen beams and oak are split in clefts with wedges; they roll in huge mountain-ashes from the hills.
8 Podalirius pursues and overhangs with naked sword the shepherd Alsus as he rushes amid the foremost line of weapons; Alsus swings back his axe, and severs brow and chin full in front, wetting his armour all over with spattered blood.
9 He at once strains his hands to tear their knots apart, his fillets spattered with foul black venom; at once raises to heaven awful cries; as when, bellowing, a bull shakes the wavering axe from his neck and runs wounded from the altar.