MORTAL in THE AENEID - sense 3: as in: felt mortal agony

Ye gods, remove this plague from mortal view!

New pangs of mortal fear our minds assail; We tug at ev’ry oar, and hoist up ev’ry sail, And take th’ advantage of the friendly gale.

Perpetual hate and mortal wars proclaim, Against the prince, the people, and the name.

Admonish’d thus, and seiz’d with mortal fright, The queen provides companions of her flight: They meet, and all combine to leave the state, Who hate the tyrant, or who fear his hate.

Which, O! if pity mortal minds can move, If there be faith below, or gods above, If innocence and truth can claim desert, Ye Trojans, from an injur’d wretch avert.’

Now cast your eyes around, while I dissolve The mists and films that mortal eyes involve, Purge from your sight the dross, and make you see The shape of each avenging deity.

To their united force it yields, tho’ late, And mourns with mortal groans th’ approaching fate: The roots no more their upper load sustain; But down she falls, and spreads a ruin thro’ the plain.

Thus far she said, and farther speech forbears; A mortal paleness in her face appears: Yet the mistrustless Anna could not find The secret fun’ral in these rites design’d; Nor thought so dire a rage possess’d her mind.

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Mark her majestic voice, and more than mortal mien!

Greater than humankind she seem’d to look, And with an accent more than mortal spoke.

He breathes defiance, blood, and mortal war.

’T was night; and weary nature lull’d asleep The birds of air, and fishes of the deep, And beasts, and mortal men.

Then shalt thou call on injur’d Dido’s name: Dido shall come in a black sulph’ry flame, When death has once dissolv’d her mortal frame; Shall smile to see the traitor vainly weep: Her angry ghost, arising from the deep, Shall haunt thee waking, and disturb thy sleep.

Th’ ethereal vigor is in all the same, And every soul is fill’d with equal flame; As much as earthy limbs, and gross allay Of mortal members, subject to decay, Blunt not the beams of heav’n and edge of day.

He said, And plunging downward shot his radiant head; Dispell’d the breathing air, that broke his flight: Shorn of his beams, a man to mortal sight.

One more audacious mortal will be found; And I, thy daughter, wait another wound.

Thus mortal war was wag’d on either side.

Nor pow’rs above, nor destinies below Oppress our arms: with equal strength we go, With mortal hands to meet a mortal foe.

This is no mortal work, no cure of mine, Nor art’s effect, but done by hands divine.

And now both hosts their broken troops unite In equal ranks, and mix in mortal fight.

Who sent you down from heav’n, involv’d in air, Your share of mortal sorrows to sustain, And see your brother bleeding on the plain?

Then to his absent guest the king decreed A pair of coursers born of heav’nly breed, Who from their nostrils breath’d ethereal fire; Whom Circe stole from her celestial sire, By substituting mares produc’d on earth, Whose wombs conceiv’d a more than mortal birth.

I might have promis’d to myself those harms, Mad as I was, when I, with mortal arms, Presum’d against immortal pow’rs to move, And violate with wounds the Queen of Love.

Else should you not behold me here, alone, Involv’d in empty clouds, my friends bemoan, But, girt with vengeful flames, in open sight Engag’d against my foes in mortal fight.

Juturna heard, and, seiz’d with mortal fear, Forc’d from the beam her brother’s charioteer; Assumes his shape, his armor, and his mien, And, like Metiscus, in his seat is seen.

This, while the Trojans fled, the toughness held; But, vain against the great Vulcanian shield, The mortal-temper’d steel deceiv’d his hand: The shiver’d fragments shone amid the sand.

Proud of his steeds, he smokes along the field; His father’s hydra fills his ample shield: A hundred serpents hiss about the brims; The son of Hercules he justly seems By his broad shoulders and gigantic limbs; Of heav’nly part, and part of earthly blood, A mortal woman mixing with a god.

Deep skill’d in future fates, Halesus’ sire Did with the youth to lonely groves retire: But, when the father’s mortal race was run, Dire destiny laid hold upon the son, And haul’d him to the war, to find, beneath Th’ Evandrian spear, a memorable death.

As when a snake, surpris’d upon the road, Is crush’d athwart her body by the load Of heavy wheels; or with a mortal wound Her belly bruis’d, and trodden to the ground: In vain, with loosen’d curls, she crawls along; Yet, fierce above, she brandishes her tongue; Glares with her eyes, and bristles with her scales; But, groveling in the dust, her parts unsound she trails: So slowly to the port the Centaur tends, But, what she wants in oars, with sails amends.

…as by day: she seems, alone, To wander in her sleep, thro’ ways unknown, Guideless and dark; or, in a desart plain, To seek her subjects, and to seek in vain: Like Pentheus, when, distracted with his fear, He saw two suns, and double Thebes, appear; Or mad Orestes, when his mother’s ghost Full in his face infernal torches toss’d, And shook her snaky locks: he shuns the sight, Flies o’er the stage, surpris’d with mortal fright; The Furies guard the door and intercept his flight.

In heav’n the Dirae call’d, and still at hand, Before the throne of angry Jove they stand, His ministers of wrath, and ready still The minds of mortal men with fears to fill, Whene’er the moody sire, to wreak his hate On realms or towns deserving of their fate, Hurls down diseases, death and deadly care, And terrifies the guilty world with war.

Behold Torquatus the same track pursue; And, next, the two devoted Decii view: The Drusian line, Camillus loaded home With standards well redeem’d, and foreign foes o’ercome The pair you see in equal armor shine, Now, friends below, in close embraces join; But, when they leave the shady realms of night, And, cloth’d in bodies, breathe your upper light, With mortal hate each other shall pursue: What wars, what wounds, what slaughter shall ensue!

His eager foe, determin’d to the chase, Stretch’d at his length, gains ground at ev’ry pace; Now to his beamy head he makes his way, And now he holds, or thinks he holds, his prey: Just at the pinch, the stag springs out with fear; He bites the wind, and fills his sounding jaws with air: The rocks, the lakes, the meadows ring with cries; The mortal tumult mounts, and thunders in the skies.

Thus Venus: thus her son replied again: "None of your sisters have we heard or seen, O virgin! or what other name you bear Above that style— O more than mortal fair!

Or tell what other chance conducts your way, To view with mortal eyes our dark retreats, Tumults and torments of th’ infernal seats."

"Scarce had the rising sun the day reveal’d, Scarce had his heat the pearly dews dispell’d, When from the woods there bolts, before our sight, Somewhat betwixt a mortal and a sprite, So thin, so ghastly meager, and so wan, So bare of flesh, he scarce resembled man.

) But I, the consort of the Thunderer, Have wag’d a long and unsuccessful war, With various arts and arms in vain have toil’d, And by a mortal man at length am foil’d.

""O father, can it be, that souls sublime Return to visit our terrestrial clime, And that the gen’rous mind, releas’d by death, Can covet lazy limbs and mortal breath?"

Then thus replied her awful son, who rolls The radiant stars, and heav’n and earth controls: "How dare you, mother, endless date demand For vessels molded by a mortal hand?

From Tuscan Coritum he claim’d his birth; But after, when exempt from mortal earth, From thence ascended to his kindred skies, A god, and, as a god, augments their sacrifice," He said.

Then thus he call’d aloud, inflam’d with wrath: "Mortal, whate’er, who this forbidden path In arms presum’st to tread, I charge thee, stand, And tell thy name, and bus’ness in the land.

Unmov’d he holds his eyes, By Jove’s command; nor suffer’d love to rise, Tho’ heaving in his heart; and thus at length replies: "Fair queen, you never can enough repeat Your boundless favors, or I own my debt; Nor can my mind forget Eliza’s name, While vital breath inspires this mortal frame.

No sooner were his eyes in slumber bound, When, from above, a more than mortal sound Invades his ears; and thus the vision spoke: "Seek not, my seed, in Latian bands to yoke Our fair Lavinia, nor the gods provoke.

Then Jove, to soothe his sorrow, thus began: "Short bounds of life are set to mortal man.

But when she view’d the garments loosely spread, Which once he wore, and saw the conscious bed, She paus’d, and with a sigh the robes embrac’d; Then on the couch her trembling body cast, Repress’d the ready tears, and spoke her last: "Dear pledges of my love, while Heav’n so pleas’d, Receive a soul, of mortal anguish eas’d: My fatal course is finish’d; and I go, A glorious name, among the ghosts below.

He said, and seiz’d at once the loosen’d rein; For Liger lay already on the plain, By the same shock: then, stretching out his hands, The recreant thus his wretched life demands: "Now, by thyself, O more than mortal man!

But, when a thousand rolling years are past, (So long their punishments and penance last,) Whole droves of minds are, by the driving god, Compell’d to drink the deep Lethaean flood, In large forgetful draughts to steep the cares Of their past labors, and their irksome years, That, unrememb’ring of its former pain, The soul may suffer mortal flesh again."

Meantime the King of Gods and Mortal Man Held conference with his queen, and thus began: "My sister goddess, and well-pleasing wife, Still think you Venus’ aid supports the strifeSustains her Trojans— or themselves, alone, With inborn valor force their fortune on?

First, from the quarter of the morn, there sprung A light that sign’d the heav’ns, and shot along; Then from a cloud, fring’d round with golden fires, Were timbrels heard, and Berecynthian choirs; And, last, a voice, with more than mortal sounds, Both hosts, in arms oppos’d, with equal horror wounds: "O Trojan race, your needless aid forbear, And know, my ships are my peculiar care.

Meantime Latonian Phoebe, from the skies, Beheld th’ approaching war with hateful eyes, And call’d the light-foot Opis to her aid, Her most belov’d and ever-trusty maid; Then with a sigh began: "Camilla goes To meet her death amidst her fatal foes: The nymphs I lov’d of all my mortal train, Invested with Diana’s arms, in vain.

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