1 Astyr follows, excellent in beauty, Astyr, confident in his horse and glancing arms.
2 Likewise the seed of Hippolytus marched to war, Virbius most excellent in beauty, sent by his mother Aricia.
3 Here Pallas strains and pushes on, here Lausus opposite, nearly matched in age, excellent in beauty; but fortune had denied both return to their own land.
4 Here is Teucer's ancient brood, a generation excellent in beauty, high-hearted heroes born in happier years, Ilus and Assaracus, and Dardanus, founder of Troy.
5 But savage Cacus, infatuate to leave nothing undared or unhandled in craft or crime, drives four bulls of choice shape away from their pasturage, and as many heifers of excellent beauty.
6 This is he, the wanderer from a foreign home, foreshewn of fate for his son, and called to a realm of equal dominion, whose race should be excellent in valour and their might overbear all the world.
7 His lord laughed kindly on him, and bade a shield be brought forth, the workmanship of Didymaon, torn by him from the hallowed gates of Neptune's Grecian temple; with this special prize he rewards his excellence.
8 These words uttered, withdrawing swiftly homeward, he orders out his horses, and rejoicingly beholds them snorting before his face: those that Orithyia's self gave to grace Pilumnus, such as would excel the snows in whiteness and the gales in speed.
9 Furthermore there came, sent by King Archippus, the priest of the Marruvian people, dressed with prosperous olive leaves over his helmet, Umbro excellent in valour, who was wont with charm and touch to sprinkle slumberous dew on the viper's brood and water-snakes of noisome breath.
10 Dido herself, excellent in beauty, holds the cup in her hand, and pours libation between the horns of a milk-white cow, or moves in state to the rich altars before the gods' presences, day by day renewing her gifts, and gazing athirst into the breasts of cattle laid open to take counsel from the throbbing entrails.
11 The spear flies on; where haply stood opposite in ninefold brotherhood all the beautiful sons of one faithful Tyrrhene wife, borne of her to Gylippus the Arcadian, one of them, midway where the sewn belt rubs on the flank and the clasp bites the fastenings of the side, one of them, excellent in beauty and glittering in arms, it pierces clean through the ribs and stretches on the yellow sand.