"Age cannot stale, nor creeping years impair Stout hearts as ours, nor make our strength decay.
Our hoary heads the heavy helmet bear.
Our joy is in the foray, day by day To reap fresh plunder, and to live by prey.
Ye love to dance, and dally with the fair, In saffron robes with purple flounces gay.
Your toil is ease, and indolence your care, And tunics hung with sleeves, and ribboned coifs ye wear.
LXXX.

"Go Phrygian women, for ye are not men! Hence, to your Dindymus, and roam her heights With Corybantian eunuchs! Get ye, then, And hear the flute, harsh-grating, that invites With twy-mouthed music to her lewd delights, Where boxen pipe and timbrel from afar Shriek forth the summons to her sacred rites.
Put by the sword, poor dotards as ye are, Leave arms to men, like us, nor meddle with the war." LXXXI.

Such taunts Ascanius brooked not.

Stung with pride, A shaft he fitted to the horse-hair twine, And, turning, stood with outstretched arms, and cried: "Bless, Jove omnipotent, this bold design: Aid me, and yearly offerings shall be thine.
A milk-white steer--I bind me to the vow-- Myself will lead, the choicest, to thy shrine, Tall as his mother, and with gilded brow, And butting horns, and hoofs, that spurn the sand e'en now." LXXXII.

Jove heard, and leftward, where the sky was blue, Thundered aloud.