Etext of The Aeneid of Virgil 
by Virgil translated by John Conington

Preface
Second Edition
Third Edition
Book I
Book II
Book III
Book IV
Book V
Book VI
Book VII
Book VIII
Book IX
Book X
Book XI
Book XII

Preface

The publication of a new translation of Virgil's Aeneid is a thing
which may not unreasonably be thought to require a few prefatory
words of excuse. It is true that the ground has not been
pre-occupied of late years by any version which has attained any
great degree of popularity. Previous to the present century, the
extant translations of the ’neid outnumbered those of the Iliad
and Odyssey in the proportion of nearly three to one: now, while
the press is sending forth version after version of one or both of the
Homeric poems, scarcely any one thinks it worth his while to
attempt a translation of the Roman epic. But it may be fairly
doubted whether Dryden did not close the question a hundred and
seventy years ago for any one not, like himself, a poet of
commanding original power. In the century which succeeded him
many literary men thought that they could improve upon him in
various ways; but the verdict of posterity has shown that they
judged wrongly. Pitt is the only one of these whose version can be
said to be at present in existence: a dubious privilege which it
owes to the fact of its having been included in the successive
collections of English poetry of which Johnson's was the first.
Dryden's style in poetry is sufficiently unlike that which finds most
favour in the present day: but it cannot be said to be obsolete. And
though in its minuter shades it affords rather a contrast than a
parallel to Virgil's, they have at all events the common quality of
being really poetical; that inner identity which far outweighs a
thousand points of external similarity, supposing these to be
attainable. Pope, writing according to his own genius, has
produced something so utterly different, in all its circumstantial
features, from the product of Homeric genius, that an artist of
confessedly inferior powers need not be discouraged from
attempting the task again: but there was no such radical difference
between the poet of Augustan Rome and the poet of Caroline
England as to render it impossible that the masterpiece of the one
should be adequately represented by the work which crowned the
literary labours of the other.

True as this doubtless is, it is perhaps nevertheless possible that a
justification may be found for an attempt like the present. It may
be said that the great works of antiquity require to be translated
afresh from time to time in order to preserve their interest as part
of modern literary culture. Each age will naturally think that it
understands an author whom it studies better than the ages which
have gone before it: and it is natural that this increased
appreciation should take the concrete form of a new translation.
The translation, if in any degree successful, will contribute in its
turn to extend and deepen the appreciation. It is not merely that
different passages will be better understood as criticism advances,
though that is something: it is that the work itself is better
comprehended as a literary work; that the poet's art is more fully
realised, as shown in the thousand minuti‘ which make the poem
what it is. A translation, as I have elsewhere remarked, may have
as a piece of embodied criticism a value which it would not
possess in virtue of its intrinsic merit. Again, there is something in
the mere fact of novelty; something in disturbing the cluster of
conventional associations which gathers round an author, and
compelling the reader to regard what he has hitherto admired
traditionally from a new point of view. It is well that we should
know how our ancestors of the Revolution period conceived of
Virgil: it is well that we should be obliged consciously to realise
how we conceive of him ourselves.

Some may think that the metre I have chosen possesses few
recommendations beyond the novelty of which I have just spoken.
I certainly do not pretend that it is the one true equivalent of the
Virgilian hexameter. Probably a better case could be made out for
both heroic blank verse and the heroic couplet: the ottava rima of
Tasso also, as has been suggested to me, might put in a claim, not
of course as giving the effect of particular lines, but as
representing the impression made by the whole. But the question is
not so much what is absolutely best, as what is best for the
individual translator. Blank verse really deserving the name I
believe with my lamented friend Mr. Worsley to be impossible
except to one or two eminent writers in a generation. The heroic
couplet would be difficult to wield to any one who was constantly
reminded that he was exposing himself thereby to a comparison
with Dryden. A regular stanza has trammels which would be more
sensibly felt in attempting to deal with Virgil's elaborately
complicated paragraphs, than in endeavouring to reproduce the
less highly organised structure of Homer's narrative. My chief
reason for adopting the metre which Scott has made popular was
that it seemed to give me my best chance of imparting to my work
that rapidity of movement which is indispensably necessary to a
long narrative poem. An ode of Horace is something to dwell on,
to scrutinise minutely: a poem like the ’neid is something to read
rapidly and continuously. A metre which gives the translator the
hope of making his work interesting as a story is so far successful:
a metre which does not give this hope fails. Marmion has been
read by multitudes who would find the perusal of the Paradise Lost
too severe an undertaking: and there can be little doubt that Scott
would have done unwisely had he tired to produce a Miltonic
poem. It is true of course that if Homer's heroes are, as my friend
Mr. Arnold so strongly contends, not mosstroopers, Virgil's have
still less of the Border character; but it is better to run the risk of
importing a few unseasonable associations, than to sacrifice the
living character of the narrative by making it stiff and cumbrous.
Apart from associations I believe that the metre of Marmion and
the Lord of the Isles is one that possesses high capabilities, even
for a translation of Virgil. It is not without dignity; it has lyrical
tones which lend themselves well to occasions of pathos. Its
variety enables it, by a change of measure, to mark those
transitions of feeling which no poet exhibits more frequently than
the author of the ’neid. No doubt it is the part of a great artist to
do as Virgil has done, and draw out all varieties of expression
from one and the same instrument: but to most of those who
engage in the work of translation it cannot but be an advantage to
employ a measure which is really several measures in one. I will
only venture to say that in more than one passage, where I have
myself been habitually most affected by the cadence of the Latin, I
have seemed to myself, rightly or wrongly, to have been able to
produce something of a corresponding effect by in one way or
another varying the measure. While wishing under all the
circumstances to guard carefully against anything like a servile
imitation of Scott, I have yet regarded him as my master rather
than Byron. Unlike as the spirit of Border warfare may be to the
spirit of the ’neid, the spirit of Oriental passion is still more
unlike. Even the ballad-like peculiarities of Scott have some
similarity to the epic commonplace which Virgil felt himself
obliged by the laws of his work to borrow from Homer. It must be
remembered too that Scott's poems, in respect of style, differ not a
little from each other. The style of the Lay is comparatively rude
and unpolished: the style of the Lord of the Isles is comparatively
cultivated and elaborate. I need not say that it is the latter type that
I have made my model rather than the former. I have sedulously
eschewed what Mr. Arnold calls the ballad slang, even where it
offered itself without the seeking: such expressions as 'out and
spoke,' 'well I wot,' 'all on Parnassus' slope,' I have left where I
found them. I have not indeed denied myself an occasional
archaism, any more than Virgil himself has done, as I cannot see
that 'mote' for 'might' and 'eyne' for 'eyes' are more objectionable
than 'faxo' for 'fecero' and 'aulai' for 'aul‘.' But I have excluded all
such primitive peculiarities as seemed inconsistent with high
finish, expletives like 'did say' and 'did sue,' and inversions like
'soon as the wildered child saw he.' In the versification I have
avoided, with scarce a single exception, that tripping anap‘stic
movement which deprives the Lay of dignity, and makes Harold
the Dauntless read like a burlesque: where I have introduced a
redundant syllable into a line, it has generally been in the case of
polysyllables, by the use of which I hoped to give the line of eight
syllables something of the stateliness of the heroic. Once and once
only have I ventured on a double rhyme. These details are
sufficiently trifling; and I mention them merely to show that in
appropriating a measure of considerable laxity to a heroic subject,
I have been more anxious to curtail than to extend the freedom I
have gained.

It would be vain to deny that during the progress of the translation
I have often been made sensible of the profound difference
between poetry like Scott's, which, with all its antiquarianism, is
still modern, and poetry like Virgil's, which, with all its modern
affinities, is still ancient. An ancient narrative is minute where a
modern one is brief: it is brief where a modern one is diffuse.
Virgil is full of details, but always rapid: the reader is carried past
a number of objects in succession, without being allowed, except
on very rare occasions, to pause at any. Scott too is rapid after his
fashion; but it is the rapidity of one who loves motion for its own
sake, and to whom time is of no particular value: after a gallop of a
few miles he is glad to pull up and descant on anything that he may
be passing on the roadside. Even the constant occurrence of 'sic
ait,' 'talia voce refert,' and the like, after every speech in the ’neid,
which of course it would be unjustifiable not to represent in a
translation, is enough to remind the translator that the taste of the
readers for whom Virgil wrote is different from the taste of those
whom he must himself endeavour to please. No doubt this
disparity between the ancient and the modern manner would have
made itself felt had I chosen a metre less connected by association
with the present century. Even Dryden, though his manner is far
less distinctively modern than that of Scott, surprises us from time
to time with something which we feel he would not have said had
he not been translating: even Pope, though he has taken almost
unlimited licence to omit or recast anything which did not suit his
notions of good taste in narrative, makes us occasionally sensible
that the story he is telling is not his own. But I have sometimes
thought that the style which I had adopted imposed on me
difficulties peculiar to itself, from which a more judicious choice
might have preserved me. Virgil was a more careful composer
than Scott or Byron, not only in the selection of his words, but in
the structure of his sentences. He was a great rhetorician, and a
master of that terse pointed style of which the Latinity of the silver
age is a development and an exaggeration. Sentences occur
repeatedly in his writings which require to be rendered as briefly
and compactly as those of Horace. Whether the octosyllabic metre
is congenial to that mode of writing I will not presume to say: but
it has not yet been applied to it, except, it may be, by writers like
Gay, whose style is confessedly too low for heroic poetry.
Consequently I have frequently had to write in a manner which I
was conscious was not the manner of my model, attempting to
impart to the shorter couplet some of that dignified
sententiousness which belongs more properly to the longer. If I
have failed in this, I can only excuse myself by pleading the
necessity of choosing among difficulties, which appears to be the
inevitable condition of the translator's work.

Perhaps I may be judged to have some advantage over my rhyming
predecessors in respect of closeness to the original. It would be
discreditable to me if the minute study which it has been my duty
and my pleasure to give to every line, I might almost say every
word, of my author in the prosecution of my commentary, did not
reflect itself to some degree in the translation. It is even possible
that a casual reader may overlook many instances of close
rendering; that he may suppose various forms of expression to be
gratuitous which have been really adopted in order to bring out
more fully the force, as I conceive it, of the Latin. The
characteristic art of Virgil's language, I must own, is a thing which
I have made no attempt to represent. Whether that peculiar habit
which I have mentioned elsewhere as common to him and to
Sophocles, the habit of hinting at two or three modes of expression
while actually employing one, is capable of being transferred into
English, I do not know: certainly none of his translators has
effected the transference. It is obvious that the experiment is one
to perform which would require the utmost nicety: everything
would depend on the exact poetical equivalence of the various
turns of phrase, either severally or as presented in combination:
and a shade more or less in each case might produce not beauty
but deformity. Such felicities, in fact, through well worthy of
critical investigation, are hardly to be discovered by critical search:
while the translator was seeking them, any spirit that there might
be in his verses would be apt to evaporate. It is only one to whom
they would suggest themselves naturally, in conformity I mean
with his natural genius, who would be able to employ them in
translation without injury to the character of his work: and he must
be another Virgil or another Sophocles. A translator not so
constituted will be better employed in endeavouring to bring about
resemblance to his author by applying a principle of compensation,
by strengthening his version in any way best suited to his powers,
so long as it be not repugnant to the genius of the original, and
trusting that the effect of the whole will be seen to have been cared
for, though the claims of the parts may appear to have been
neglected. Even the simpler peculiarities of Virgil's style, such as
his fondness for saying the same thing twice over in the same line,
I have not always been at pains to copy. What is graceful in the
Latin will not always be graceful in a translation: and to be
graceful is one of the first duties of a translator of the ’neid. It has
often happened that by ignoring a repetition I have been able to
include the entire sense of a hexameter in a single English line of
eight syllables; and in such cases I have been glad to make the
sacrifice. Not the least of the evils of the measure I have chosen is
a tendency to diffuseness: and in translating one of the least diffuse
of poets such a tendency requires a strong remedy. Accordingly,
the duty of conciseness has always been present to my mind; and
the result is that my translation, with its lines of eight and
occasionally six syllables, does not, I hope, exceed by much more
than one-half the number of lines in the original, where fifteen
syllables on the average go to the hexameter.

A similarity will occasionally be found between my own and other
versions. In the few cases where the arises from intentional
appropriation, or where I had reason to think that I had
unconsciously recollected the words of others, I have made the
requisite acknowledgment in the notes. Possibly in other instances
also there may have been unconscious recollection, as a
comparison of the three rhyming translators, Dryden, Pitt, and
Symmons, used to be a favourite occupation of my schoolboy
days. My coincidences, I believe, are oftener with Pitt's version
than with either of the others; a fact which I incline to attribute to
the more conventional character of his verses, which are seldom so
individual that they might not easily occur to two writers
independently. My knowledge of the different blank-verse
translations is very slight and occasional. I have not thought it
necessary to say anything in the notes of the renderings that I have
adopted, as what I have to urge in their favour will be found
elsewhere. In one or two instances I have ruled a disputed question
in one way as a commentator, in another way as a translator, but
only of course where a case could fairly be made out for either
view.

To The Second edition

The kindness which has called for a second edition of my work so
soon has prevented me from improving it as much as I might have
done had I been able to contemplate it from a greater distance. I
have, however, as I hope, strengthened a few weak lines, and
corrected a few of the errors of taste and judgment into which I
had previously fallen. The remarks of my various crities I have
read with attention, and I trust with profit. If I have not always
been able to accept them in detail, I have found much to encourage
me in their general effect. The points against which they have been
directed have mostly been such as I had already felt to be
assailable, while I have been gratified to find the hope which I
entertained, that my translation might, nevertheless, give pleasure
to English readers as well as to students of the original, thus far
confirmed. Self-criticism is a proverbially difficult task: and
anything which tends to convince an author that he may in some
degree trust his own judgment cannot but be welcome and
reassuring. That judgment, I feel, may require to be widened and
deepened indefinitely; but it is in learning to trust it in its measure
that the hope of future improvement lies.

To The Third edition

The time that has passed since a new impression of this work was
last called for has given me the opportunity of making something
like a revision of the whole. I have introduced a number of
changes, which I trust I am not wrong in considering as
improvements; some in order to bring out the sense of the original
more correctly or more fully, some in the hope of bettering the
translation as a poem. Perhaps the only alterations which I need
mention particularly are some introduced into the version of the
catalogue at the end of the Seventh Book, a part of the poem which
I did not happen to have studied as a commentator before I
translated it, so that I was led inadvertently into several small
errors of detail.

There is, I feel, a danger of altering too much as well as of altering
too little, especially if a writer takes up his work at a considerable
distance from the time when it was first produced. Gifford recast
his translation of 'Juvenal,' three years after its original publication,
with eminent success: fourteen years later he published a third
edition, in which the abrupt vigour of the earlier work is too often
enfeebled and diluted. I should have little difficulty in persuading
myself that my translation might be rewritten with advantage; but,
independently of the consideration that a wholesale change would
be scarcely just to those to whose kind partiality I owe the
opportunity of revision, I am by no means confident that the
success of the result would justify the time and labour which I
should have to expend. Even as it is, I am sometimes afraid that in
trying to accommodate my version to new perceptions of the force
of the original, I have substituted a less natural for a more natural
mode of expression: and I have more than once allowed a reading
to remain which, though possible, I do not myself now believe to
be true, because I feared that such changes as I could introduce
would interfere with the flow of passages which with all their
defects had the advantage of being composed con amore. On the
whole, the number of lines in which alteration has been made, I
believe, does not exceed a hundred and fifty, a very small
percentage, I need not say, on the entire work; and, in many of
these, the change is comparatively inconsiderable.

Book I

Arms and the man I sing, who first
By fate of Ilian realm amerced,
To fair Italia onward bore,
And landed on Lavinium's shore: 
Long tossing earth and ocean o'er,
By violence of heaven, to sate
Fell Juno's unforgetting hate:
Much laboured too in battle-field,
Striving his city's walls to build,
And give his Gods a home:
Thence come the hardy Latin brood,
The ancient sires of Alba's blood,
And lofty-rampired Rome.
Say, Muse, for godhead how disdained,
Or wherefore wroth, Heaven's queen constrained
That soul of piety so long
To turn the wheel, to cope with wrong.
Can heavenly natures nourish hate
So fierce, so blindly passionate?
There stood a city on the sea
Manned by a Tyrian colony,
Named Carthage, fronting far to south
Italia's coast and Tiber's mouth,
Rich in all wealth, all means of rule,
And hardened in war's sternest school.
Men say the place was Juno's pride
More than all lands on earth beside;
E'en Samos' self not half so dear:
Here were her arms, her chariot here:
Here, goddess-like, to fix one day
The seat of universal sway,
Might Fate be wrung to yield assent,
E'en then her schemes, her cares were bent,
Yet had she heard that sons of Troy
Were born her Carthage to destroy;
From those majestic loins should spring
A nation like a warrior king,
Ordained for Libya's overthrow:
The web of Fate was woven so.
This was her fear: and fear renewed
The memory of that earlier feud,
The war at Troy she erst had waged
In darling Argos' cause engaged:
Nor yet had faded from her view
The insults whence those angers grew;
Deep in remembrance lives engrained
The judgment which her charms disdained.
The offspring of adulterous seed,
The rape of minion Ganymede:
With such resentments brimming o'er,
She tossed and tossed from shore to shore
The Trojan bands, poor relics these
Of Achillean victories,
Away from Latium: many a year,
Fate-driven, they wandered far and near:
So vast the labour to create
The fabric of the Roman state!
Scarce out of sight of Sicily
Troy's crews were spreading sail to sea,
Pleased o'er the foam to run,
When Juno, feeding evermore
The vulture at her bosom's core,
Thus to herself begun:
'What? I give way? has Juno willed,
And must her will be unfulfilled?
Too weak from Latium's coast to fling
Back to the sea this Trojan king?
Restrained by Fate? Could Pallas fire
The Argive fleet to wreak her ire,
And drown the crews, for one offence,
Mad Ajax' curst incontinence?
She from the clouds Jove's lightning cast,
Dispersed the ships, the billows massed,
Caught the scathed wretch, whose breast exhaled
Fierce flames, and on a rock impaled:
I who through heaven its mistress move,
The sister and the wife of Jove,
With one poor tribe of earth contend
Long years revolving without end.
Will any Juno's power adore
Henceforth, or crown her altars more?'
Such fiery tumult in her mind,
She seeks the birthplace of the wind,
’olia, realm for ever rife
With turbid elemental life:
Here ’olus in a cavern vast
With bolt and barrier fetters fast
Rebellious storm and howling blast.
They with the rock's reverberant roar
Chafe blustering round their prison-door:
He, throned on high, the sceptre sways,
Controls their moods, their wrath allays,
Break but that sceptre, sea and land
And heaven's ethereal deep
Before them they would whirl like sand,
And through the void air sweep.
But the great Sire, with prescient fear,
Had whelmed them deep in dungeon drear,
And o'er the struggling captives thrown
Huge masses of primeval stone,
Ruled by a monarch who might know
To curb them or to let them go:
Whom now as suppliant at his knees
Juno bespoke in words like these:
'O ’olus! since the Sire of all
Has made the wind obey thy call
To raise or lay the foam,
A race I hate now ploughs the sea,
Transporting Troy to Italy
And home-gods reft of home:
Lash thou thy winds, their ships submerge,
Or toss them weltering o'er the surge.
Twice seven bright nymphs attend on me,
The fairest of them Deiope:
Her will I give thee for thine own,
The partner of thy heart and throne,
With thee to pass unending days
And goodly children round thee raise.'
The God replies: 'O Queen, 'tis thine
To weigh thy will, to do it mine.
Thou givest me this poor kingdom, thou
Hast smoothed for me the Thunderer's brow;
Givest me to share the Olympian board,
And o'er the tempests mak'st me lord.'
He said, and with his spear struck wide
The portals in the mountain side:
At once, like soldiers in a band,
Forth rush the winds, and scour the land:
Then lighting heavily on the main,
East, South, and West with storms in train,
Heave from its depth the watery floor,
And roll great billows to the shore.
Then come the clamour and the shriek,
The sailors shout, the main-ropes creak:
All in a moment sun and skies
Are blotted from the Trojans' eyes:
Black night is brooding o'er the deep,
Sharp thunder peals, live lightnings leap:
The stoutest warrior holds his breath,
And looks as on the face of death.
At once ’neas thrilled with dread,
Forth from his breast, with hands outspread,
These groaning words he drew:
'O happy, thrice and yet again,
Who died at Troy like valiant men,
E'en in their parents' view!
O Diomed, first of Greeks in fray,
Why pressed I not the plain that day,
Yielding my life to you,
Where stretched beneath a Phrygian sky
Fierce Hector, tall Sarpedon lie:
Where Simois tumbles 'neath his wave
Shields, helms, and bodies of the brave?'
Now, howling from the north, the gale,
While thus he moans him, strikes his sail:
The swelling surges climb the sky;
The shattered oars in splinters fly;
The prow turns round, and to the tide
Lays broad and bare the vessel's side;
On comes a billow, mountain-steep,
Bears down, and tumbles in a heap.
These stagger on the billow's crest;
Those to the yawning depth deprest
See land appearing 'mid the waves,
While surf with sand in turmoil raves.
Three ships the South has caught and thrown
On scarce hid rocks, as Altars known,
Ridging the main, a reef of stone.
Three more fierce Eurus from the deep,
A sight to make the gazer weep,
Drives on the shoals, and banks them round
With sand, as with a rampire-mound.
One, which erewhile from Lycia's shore
Orontes and his people bore,
E'en in ’neas' anguished sight
A sea down crashing from the height
Strikes full astern: the pilot, torn
From off the helm, is headlong borne:
Three turns the foundered vessel gave,
Then sank beneath the engulfing wave.
There in the vast abyss are seen
The swimmers, few and fat between,
And warriors' arms and shattered wood
And Trojan treasures strew the flood.
And now Ilioneus, and now
Aletes old and grey,
Abas and brave Achates bow
Beneath the tempest's sway;
Fast drinking in through timbers loose
At every pore the fatal ooze,
Their sturdy barks give way.
Meantime the turmoil of the main,
The tempest loosened from its chain,
The waters of the nether deep
Upstarting from their tranquil sleep,
On Neptune broke: disturbed he hears,
And quickened by a monarch's fears,
His calm broad brow o'er ocean rears.
’neas' fleet he sees dispersed,
Whelmed by fierce wave and stormy burst:
Nor failed a brother's eye to read
Junonian rancour in the deed.
Forthwith he summoned East and West,
And thus his kingly wrath expressed: 
'How now? presume ye on your birth
To blend in chaos skies and earth,
And billowy mountains heavenward heave,
Bold Winds, without my sovereign leave?
Whom I but rather were it good
To pacify you troubled flood.
Offend once more, and ye shall pay
Upon a heavier reckoning-day.
Back to your master instant flee,
And tell him, not to him but me
The imperial trident of the sea
Fell by the lot's award:
His is that prison-house of stone,
A mansion, Eurus, all your own:
There let him lord it to his mind,
The jailor-monarch of the wind,
But keep its portal barred.'
He said, and, ere his words were done
Allays the surge, brings back the sun:
Triton and swift Cymothoe drag
The ships from off the pointed crag:
He, trident-armed, each dull weight heaves,
Through the vast shoals a passage cleaves,
Makes smooth the ruffled wave, and rides
Calm o'er the surface of the tides.
As when sedition oft has stirred
In some great town the vulgar herd,
And brands and stones already fly 
For rage has weapons always nigh 
Then should some man of worth appear
Whose stainless virtue all revere,
They hush, they hist: his clear voice rules
Their rebel wills, their anger cools:
So ocean ceased at once to rave,
When, calmly looking o'er the wave,
Girt with a range of azure sky,
The father bids his chariot fly.
The tempest-tossed ’nead‘
Strain for the nearest land,
And turn their vessels from the sea
To Libya's welcome strand.
Deep in a bay an island makes
A haven by its jutting sides,
Whereon each wave from ocean breaks,
And parting into hollows glides.
High o'er the cove vast rocks extend,
A beetling cliff at either end:
Beneath their summit far and wide
In sheltered silence sleeps the tide,
While quivering forests crown the scene,
A theatre of glancing green.
In front, retiring from the wave,
Opes on the view a rock-hung cave,
A home that nymphs might call their own,
Fresh springs, and seats of living stone:
No need of rope or anchor's bite
To hold the weary vessel tight.
Such haven now ’neas gains,
With seven lorn ships, the scant remains
Of what was once his fleet:
Forth leap the Trojans on the sand,
Lay down their brine-drenched limbs on land,
And feel the shore is sweet.
And first from flints together clashed
The latent spark Achates flashed,
Caught in sere leaves, and deftly nursed
Till into flame the fuel burst.
Then from the hold the crews o'ertoiled
Bring out their grain by ocean spoiled,
And gird themselves with fire and quern
To parch and grind the rescued corn.
Meanwhile ’neas scales a height
And sweeps the ocean with his sight;
Might he perchance a Capys mark,
An Antheus in his Phrygian bark,
Or trace the arms that wont to deck
Caicus on some labouring wreck.
No vessel seaward meets his eyes,
But on the shore three stags he spies,
Close followed by a meaner throng
That grazed the winding coasts along.
He catches from Achates' hand
Quiver and bow, and takes his stand;
And first the lordly leaders fall
With tree-like antlers branching tall;
Then, turning on the multitude,
He drives them routed through the wood,
Nor stays till his victorious bow
Has laid seven goodly bodies low,
For his seven ships; then portward fares,
And 'mid his crews the quarry shares.
The wine which late their princely host,
What time they left Trinacria's coast,
Bestowed in casks, and freely gave,
A brave man's bounty to the brave,
With like equality he parts,
And comforts their desponding hearts:
'Comrades and friends! for ours is strength
Has brooked the test of woes;
O worse-scarred hearts! these wounds at length
The Gods will heal, like those.
You that have seen grim Scylla rave,
And heard her monsters yell,
You that have looked upon the cave
Where savage Cyclops dwell,
Come, cheer your souls, your fears forget;
This suffering will yield us yet
A pleasant tale to tell.
Through chance, through peril lies our way
To Latium, where the fates display
A mansion of abiding stay:
There Troy her fallen realm shall raise:
Bear up, and live for happier days.'
Such were his words: on brow and tongue
Sat hope, while grief his spirit wrung.
They for their dainty food prepare,
Strip off the hide, the carcase bare,
Divide and spit the quivering meat,
Dispose the fire, the caldrons heat,
Then, stretched on turf, their frames refresh
With generous wine and wild deer's flesh.
And now, when hunger's rage was ceased,
And checked the impatience of the feast,
In long discourse they strive to track
And bring their missing comrades back.
Hope bandies questions with despair,
If yet they breathe the upper air,
Or down in final durance lie,
Deaf to their friends' invoking cry.
But chief ’neas fondly yearns,
And racks his heart for each by turns,
Now weeping o'er Orontes' grave,
Now claiming Lycus from the wave,
Brave Gyas, and Cloanthus brave.
And now an end had come, when Jove,
His broad view casting from above,
The countries and their people scanned,
The sail-fledged sea, the lowly land,
Last on the summit of the sky
Paused, and on Libya fixed his eye.
'Twas then sad Venus, as he mused,
Her starry eyes with tears suffused,
Bespoke him: 'Thou whose lightnings awe,
Whose will on heaven and earth is law,
What has ’neas done, or how
Could my poor Trojans cloud thy brow,
To suffer as they suffer now?
So many deaths the race has died:
And now behold them, lest one day
To Italy they win their way,
Barred from all lands beside!
Once didst thou promise with an oath
The Romans hence should have their growth,
Great chiefs, from Teucer's line renewed,
The masters of a world subdued:
Fate heard the pledge: what power has wrought
To turn the channel of thy thought?
That promise oft consoled my woe
For Ilium's piteous overthrow,
While I could balance weight with weight,
The prosperous with the adverse fate.
But now the self-same fortune hounds
The lorn survivors yet:
And hast thou, mighty King, no bounds
To their great misery set?
Antenor from the Greeks could scape,
Mid Hadria's deep recesses shape
His dangerous journey, and surmount
The perils of Timavus' fount,
Where with the limestone's reboant roar
Through nine loud mouths the sea-waves pour,
And all the fields are deluged o'er
Yet here he built Patavium's town,
His nation named, his arms laid down,
Now rests in honour and renown:
We, thine own race, on whom thy word
Olympian glories has conferred,
Our vessels lost, O shame untold!
Are traitorously bought and sold,
Still from Italis kept apart
To pacify one jealous heart.
Lo! piety with honour graced,
A monarch on his throne replaced!'
With that refulgence in his eye
Which soothes and humours of the sky,
Jove on his daughter's lips impressed
A gracious kiss, then thus addressed:
'Queen of Cythera! spare thy pain:
Thy children's fates unmoved remain:
Thine eyes shall have their pledged desire
And see Lavinium's walls aspire:
Thine arms at length shall bear on high
To bright possession in the sky
’neas the high-souled: nor aught
Has turned the channel of my thought.
He for I now will speak thee sooth,
Vexed as thou art by sorrow's tooth,
Will ope the volume and relate
The far-off oracles of Fate 
Fierce war in Italy shall wage,
Shall quell her peoples' patriot rage,
And give his veterans, worn with strife,
A city and a peaceful life,
Till summers three have seen him reign,
Three winters crowned the dire campaign.
But he, the father's darling child,
Ascanius, now Iulus styled
(Ilus the name the infant bore
Ere Ilium's sky was clouded o'er),
Shall thirty years of power complete,
Then from Lavinium's royal seat
Transfer the empire, and make strong
The walls of Alba named the Long.
Three hundred years in that proud town
Shall Hector's children wear the crown,
Till Ilia, priestess-princess, bear
By Mars' embrace a kingly pair.
Then, with his nurse's wolf-skin girt,
Shall Romulus the line assert,
Invite them to his new-raised home,
And call the martial city Rome.
No date, no goal I here ordain:
Theirs is an endless, boundless reign.
Nay Juno's self, whose wild alarms
Set ocean, earth, and heaven in arms,
Shall change for smiles her moody frown,
And vie with me in zeal to crown
Rome's sons, the nation of the gown.
So stands my will. There comes a day,
While Rome's great ages hold their way,
When old Assaracus's sons
Shall quit them on the Myrmidons,
O'er Phthia and Mycen‘ reign,
And humble Argos to their chain.
From Troy's fair stock shall C‘sar rise,
The limits of whose victories
Are ocean, of his fame the skies;
Great Julius, proud that style to bear,
In name and blood Iulus' heir.
Him, at the appointed time, increased
With plunder from the conquered East,
Thine arms shall welcome to the sky,
And worshippers shall find him nigh.
Then battles o'er the world shall cease,
Harsh times shall mellow into peace:
Then Vesta, Faith, Quirinus, joined
With brother Remus, rule mankind:
Grim iron bolt and massy bar
Shall close the dreadful gates of War:
Within unnatural Rage confined,
Fast bound with manacles behind,
His dark head pillowed on a heap
Of clanking armour, not in sleep,
Shall gnash his savage teeth, and roar
From lips incarnadined with gore.'
He said, and hastes from heaven to send
The son of Maia down;
Bids Carthage open to befriend
The Teucrians, realm and town,
Lest Dido, ignorant of fate,
Should drive the wanderers from her gate.
Swift Mercury cuts with plumy oar
The sky, and lights on Libya's shore.
At once he does the Sire's behest,
Each Tyrian smooths his rugged breast,
And chief the queen has thoughts of grace
And pity to the Teucrian race.
But good ’neas, through the night
Revolving many a care,
Determines with the dawn of light
Forth from the port to fare,
Explore the stranger clime, and find
What land is his, by stress of wind,
By what inhabitants possessed
(For waste he sees it), man or beast,
And back the tidings bear.
Within a hollowed rock's retreat,
Deep in the wood, he hides his fleet,
Defended by a leafy screen
Of forestry and quivering green:
Then with Achates moves along,
Wielding two spears, steel-tipped and strong
When in the bosom of the wood
Before him, lo, his mother stood,
In mien and gear a Spartan maid,
Or like Harpalyce arrayed,
Who tires fleet coursers in the chase,
And heads the swiftest streams of Thrace.
Slung from her shoulders hangs a bow;
Loose to the wind her tresses flow;
Bare was her knee; her mantle's fold
The gathering of a knot controlled.
And 'Saw ye, youths,' she asks them, 'say,
One of my sisters here astray,
A silvan quiver at her side,
And for a scarf a lynx's hide,
Or pressing on the wild boar's track
With upraised dart and voiceful pack?'
Thus Venus: Venus' son replied:
'No sister we of thine have spied:
What name to call thee, beauteous maid?
That look, that voice the God betrayed;
Can it be Ph bus' sister bright,
Or some fair Nymph, has crossed our sight?
Be gracious, whosoe'er thou art,
And lift this burden from our heart;
Instruct us, 'neath what sky at last,
Upon what shore, our lot is cast;
We wander here, by tempest blown,
The people and the place unknown.
O say! and many a victim's life
Before thy shrine shall stain my knife.'
Then Venus: 'Nay, I would not claim
A goddess' venerable name:
The buskins and the bow I bear
Are but what Tyrian maidens wear
The Punic state is this you see,
Agenor's Tyrian colony:
But all around the Libyans dwell,
A race in war untamed and fell.
The sceptre here queen Dido sways,
Who fled from Tyre in other days,
To 'scape a brother's frenzy: long
And dark the story of her wrong;
To thread each tangle time would fail,
So learn the summits of the tale.
Sych‘us was her husband once,
The wealthiest of Ph nicia's sons:
She loved him; nor her sire denied,
But made her his, a virgin bride.
But soon there filled the ruler's place
Her brother, worst of human race,
Pygmalion: 'twixt the kinsman came
Fierce hatred, like a withering flame.
With avarice blind, by stealthy blow
The monster laid Sych‘us low,
E'en at the altar, recking nought
What passion in his sister wrought:
Long time he hid the foul offence,
And, feigning many a base pretence,
Beguiled her love-sick innocence.
But, as she slept, before her eyes
She saw in pallid ghastly guise
Her lord's unburied semblance rise;
The murderous altar he revealed,
The death-wound, gaping and unhealed,
And all the crime the house concealed:
Then bids her fly without delay,
And shows, to aid her on her way,
His buried treasures, stores untold
Of silver and of massy gold.
She heard, and, quickened by affright,
Provides her friends and means of flight.
Each malcontent her summons hears,
Who hates the tyrant, or who fears;
The ships that in the haven rode
They seize, and with the treasures load:
Pygmalion's stores o'er ocean speed,
And woman's daring wrought the deed.
The spot they reached where now your eyes
See Carthage-towers in beauty rise:
There bought them soil, such space of ground
As one bull's hide could compass round;
There fixed their site; and Byrsa's name
Preserves the action fresh in fame.
But who are you? to whom allied?
Whence bound and whither?' Deep he sighed,
And thus with labouring speech replied:
'Fair Goddess! should thy suppliants show
From first to last their tale of woe,
Or ere it ceased the day were done,
And closed the palace of the sun.
We from old Troy, if Tyrian ear
Have chanced the name of Troy to hear,
Driven o'er all seas, are thrown at last
On Libya's coast by chance-sent blast.
’neas I, who bear on board
My home-gods, rescued from the sword:
Men call me good; and vulgar fame
Above the stars exalts my name.
My quest is Italy, the place
That nursed my Jove-descended race.
My ships were twenty when I gave
My fortunes to the Phrygian wave;
My goddess-mother lent me light,
And oracles prescribed my flight:
And now scarce seven survive the strain
Of boisterous wind and billowy main.
I wander o'er your Libyan waste,
From Europe and from Asia chased,
Unfriended and unknown.' No more
His plaint of anguish Venus bore,
But interrupts ere yet 'tis o'er:
'Whoe'er you are, I cannot deem
Unloved of heaven you drink the beam
Of sunlight; else had never Fate
Conveyed you to a Tyrian's gate.
Take heart and follow on the road,
Still making for the queen's abode.
You yet shall witness, mark my word,
Your friends returned, your fleet restored;
The winds are changed, and all are brought
To port, or augury is naught,
And vain the lore my parents taught.
Mark those twelve swans that hold their way
In seemly jubilant array,
Whom late, down swooping from on high,
Jove's eagle scattered through the sky:
Now see them o'er the land extend
Or hover, ready to descend:
They, rallying, sport on noisy wing,
And circle round the heaven, and sing:
E'en so your ships, your martial train,
Have gained the port, or stand to gain.
Then pause not further, but proceed,
Still following where the road shall lead.'
She turned, and flashed upon their view
Her stately neck's purpureal hue;
Ambrosial tresses round her head
A more than earthly fragrance shed;
Her falling robe her footprints swept,
And showed the goddess as she stept;
While he, at length his mother known,
Pursues her with complaining tone:
'And art thou cruel like the rest?
Why cheat so oft thy son's fond eyes?
Why cannot hand in hand be pressed,
And speech exchanged without disguise?'
So ring the words of fond regret
While toward the town his face is set.
But Venus either traveller shrouds
With thickest panoply of clouds,
That none may see them, touch, nor stay,
Nor, idly asking, breed delay.
She through the sky to Paphos moves,
And seeks the temple of her loves,
Where from a hundred altars rise
Rich steam and flowerets' odorous sighs.
Meantime, the path itself their clue,
With speed their journey they pursue;
And now they climb the hill, whose frown
On the tall towers looks lowering down,
And beetles o'er the fronting town.
’neas marvelling views the pile
Of stately structures, huts erewhile,
Marvelling, the lofty gates surveys,
The pavements, and the loud highways.
On press the Tyrians, each and all:
Some raise aloft the city's wall,
Or at the fortress' base of rock
Toil, heaving up the granite block:
While some for dwellings mark the ground,
Select a site and trench it round,
Or choose the rulers and the law,
And the young senate clothe with awe.
They hollow out the haven; they
The theatre's foundations lay,
And fashion from the quarry's side
Tall columns, germs of scenic pride.
So bees, when spring-time is begun,
Ply their warm labour in the sun,
What time along the flowery mead
Their nation's infant hope they lead;
Or with clear honey charge each cell,
And make the hive with sweetness swell,
The workers of their loads relieve,
Or chase the drones that gorge and thieve:
With toil the busy scene ferments,
And fragrance breathes from thymy scents.
'O happy they,' ’neas cries,
As to the roofs he lifts his eyes,
'Whose promised walls already rise!'
Then enters, 'neath his misty screen,
And threads the crowd, of all unseen.
Midway within the city stood
A spreading grove of hallowed wood,
The spot where first the Punic train,
Fresh from the shock of storm and main,
The token Juno had foretold
Dug up, the head of charger bold;
Sign of a nation formed for strife
And born to years of plenteous life.
A temple there began to tower
To Juno, rich with many a dower
Of human wealth and heavenly power,
The oblation of the queen:
Brass was the threshold of the gate,
The posts were sheathed with brazen plate,
And brass the valves between.
First in that spot once more appears
A sight to soothe the traveller's fears,
Illumes with hope ’neas' eye,
And bids him trust his destiny.
As, waiting for the queen, he gazed
Around the fane with eyes upraised,
Much marvelling at a lot so blessed,
At art by rival hands expressed,
And labour's mastery confessed,
O wonder! there is Ilium's war,
And all those battles blazed afar:
Here stands Atrides, Priam here,
And chafed Achilles, either's fear.
He starts: the tears rain fast and hot:
And 'Is there, friend,' he cries, 'a spot
That knows not Troy's unhappy lot?
See Priam! ay, praise waits on worth
E'en in this corner of the earth;
E'en here the tear of pity springs,
And hearts are touched by human things.
Dismiss your fear: we sure may claim
To find some safety in our fame.'
He said; and feeds his hungry heart
With shapes of unsubstantial art,
In fond remembrance groaning deep,
While briny floods his visage steep.
There spreads and broadens on his sight
The portraiture of Greece in flight,
Pressed by the Trojan youth; while here
Troy flies, Achilles in her rear.
Not far removed with tears he knows
The tents of Rhesus, white as snows,
Through which, by sleep's first breath betrayed,
Tydides makes his murderous raid,
And camp-ward drives the fiery brood
Of coursers, ere on Trojan food
They browse, or drink of Xanthus' flood.
Here Troilus, shield and lance let go,
Poor youth, Achilles' ill-matched foe,
Fallen backward from the chariot seat,
Whirls on, yet clinging by his feet,
Still grasps the reins: his hair, his neck
Trail o'er the ground in helpless wreck,
And the loose spear he wont to wield
Makes dusty scoring on the field.
Meantime to partial Pallas' fane
Moved with slow steps a matron train;
With smitten breasts, dishevelled, pale,
Beseechingly they bore the veil:
She motionless as stone remained,
Her cruel eyes to earth enchained.
Thrice, to Achilles' chariot bound,
Had Hector circled Ilium round,
And now the satiate victor sold
His mangled enemy for gold.
Deep groaned the gazer to survey
The spoils, the arms, the lifeless clay,
And Priam, with weak hands outspread
In piteous pleading for the dead.
Himself too in the press he knows,
Mixed with the foremost line of foes,
And swarthy Memnon, armed for war,
With followers from the morning star.
Penthesilea leads afield
The sisters of the moony shield,
One naked breast conspicuous shown,
By looping of her golden zone,
And burns with all the battle's heat,
A maid, the shock of men to meet.
While thus with passionate amaze
’neas stood in one set gaze,
Queen Dido with a warrior train
In beauty's pride approached the fane.
As when upon Eurotas' banks
Or Cynthus' summits high
Diana leads the Oread ranks
In choric revelry,
Girt with her quiver, straight and tall,
Though all be gods, she towers o'er all;
Latona's mild maternal eyes
Beam with unspoken ecstasies:
So Dido looked; so 'mid the throng
With joyous step she moved along,
As pressing on to antedate
The birthday of her nascent state.
Then, 'neath the temple's roofing shell,
On stairs that mount the inner cell,
Throned on a chair of queenly state,
Hemmed round by glittering arms, she sate.
Thus circled by religious awe
She gives the gathered people law,
By chance-drawn lot or studious care
Assigning each his labour's share.
When lo! a concourse to the fane:
He looks: amid the shouting train
Lost Antheus and Sergestus pressed,
And brave Cloanthus, and the rest,
Driven by fierce gales the water o'er,
And landed on a different shore.
Astounded stand 'twixt fear and joy
Achates and the chief of Troy:
They burn to hail them and salute,
But wildering wonder keeps them mute.
So, peering through their cloudy screen,
They strive the broken tale to glean,
Where rest the vessels and the crew,
And wherefore thus they come to sue:
For every ship her chief had sent,
And clamouring towards the fane they went.
Then, audience granted by the queen,
Ilioneus spoke with placid mien:
'Lady, whom gracious Jove has willed
A city in the waste to build,
And minds of savage temper school
By justice' humanizing rule,
We, tempest-tost on every wave,
Poor Trojans, your compassion crave
From hideous flame our barks to save:
Commiserate our wretched case,
And war not on a pious race.
We come not, we, to spoil and slay
Your Libyan households, sweep the prey
Off to the shore, then haste away:
Meek grows the heart by misery cowed,
And vanquished souls are not so proud.
A land there is, by Greece of old
Knows as Hesperia, rich its mould,
Its children brave and free:
 notrians were its planters: Fame
Now gives the race their leader's name,
And calls it Italy.
There lay our course, when, grief to tell,
Orion, rising with a swell,
Hurled us on shoals, and scattered wide
O'er pathless rocks along the tide
'Mid swirling billows: thence our crew
Drifts to your coast, a rescued few.
What tribe of human kind is here?
What barbarous region yields such cheer?
E'en the cold welcome of the sand
To travellers is barred and banned:
Ere earth we touch, they draw the sword,
And drive us from the bare sea-board.
If men and mortal arms ye slight,
Know there are Gods who watch o'er right.
’neas was our king, than who
The breath of being none e'er drew,
More brave, more pious, or more true:
If he still looks upon the sun,
No spectre yet, our fears are done,
Nor need you doubt to assume the lead
In rivalry of generous deed.
Sicilia too, no niggard field,
Has towns to hold us, arms to shield,
And king Acestes, brave and good,
In heart a Trojan, as in blood.
Give leave to draw our ships ashore,
There smooth the plank and shape the oar:
So, should our friends, our king survive,
For Italy we yet may strive:
But if our hopes are quenched, and thee,
Best father of the sons of Troy,
Death hides beneath the Libyan sea,
Nor spares to us thy princely boy,
Yet may we seek Sicania's land,
Her mansions ready to our hand,
And dwell where we were guests so late,
The subjects of Acestes' state.'
So spoke Ilioneus: and the rest
With shouts their loud assent expressed.
Then, looking downward, Dido said:
'Discharge you, Trojans, of your dread:
An infant realm and fortune hard
Compel me thus my shores to guard.
Who knows not of ’neas' name,
Of Troy, her fortune and her fame,
And that devouring war?
Our Punic breasts have more of fire,
Nor all so retrograde from Tyre
Doth Ph bus yoke his car.
Whate'er your choice, the Hesperian plain,
Or Eryx and Acestes' reign,
My arms shall guard you in your way,
My treasuries your needs purvey.
Or would a home on Libya's shores
Allure you more? this town is yours:
Lay up your vessels: Tyre and Troy
Alike shall Dido's thoughts employ.
And would we had your monarch too,
Driven hither by the blast, like you,
The great ’neas! I will send
And search the coast from end to end,
If haply, wandering up and down,
He bide in woodland or in town.'
In breathless eagerness of joy
Achates and the chief of Troy
Were yearning long the cloud to burst:
And thus Achates spoke the first:
'What now, my chief, the thoughts that rise
Within you? see, before your eyes
Your fleet, your friends restored;
Save one, who sank beneath the tide
E'en in our presence: all beside
Confirms your mother's word.'
Scarce had he said, the mist gives way
And purges brightening into day;
’neas stood, to sight confest,
A very God in face and chest:
For Venus round her darling's head
A length of clustering locks had spread,
Crowned him with youth's purpureal light,
And made his eyes gleam glad and bright:
Such loveliness the hands of art
To ivory's native hues impart:
So 'mid the gold around it placed
Shines silver pale or marble chaste.
Then in a moment, unforeseen
Of all, he thus bespeaks the queen:
'Lo, him you ask for! I am he,
’neas, saved from Libya's sea.
O, only heart that deigns to mourn
For Ilium's cruel care!
That bids e'en us, poor relics, torn
From Danaan fury, all outworn
By earth and ocean, all forlorn,
Its home, its city share!
We cannot thank you; no, nor they,
Our brethren of the Dardan race,
Who, driven from their ancestral place,
Throughout the wide world stray.
May Heaven, if virtue claim its thought,
If justice yet avail for aught,
Heaven, and the sense of conscious right,
With worthier meed your acts requite!
What happy ages gave you birth?
What glorious sires begat such worth?
While rivers run into the deep,
While shadows o'er the hillside sweep,
While stars in heaven's fair pasture graze,
Shall live your honour, name, and praise,
Whate'er my destined home.' He ends,
And turns him to his Trojan friends;
Ilioneus with his right hand greets,
And with the left Serestus meets;
Then to the rest like welcome gave,
Brave Gyas and Cloanthus brave.
Thus as she listened, first his mien,
His sorrow next, entranced the queen,
And 'Say,' cries she, 'what cruel wrong
Pursued you, goddess-born, so long?
What violence has your navy driven
On this rude coast, of all 'neath heaven?
And are you he, on Simois' shore
Whom Venus to Anchises bore,
’neas? Well I mind the name,
Since Teucer first to Sidon came,
Driven from his home, in hope to gain
By Belus' aid another reign,
What time my father ruled the land
Of Cyprus with a conqueror's hand.
Then first the fall of Troy I knew,
And heard of Grecia's kings, and you.
Oft, I remember, would he glow
In praise of Troy, albeit her foe;
Oft would he boast, with generous pride,
Himself to Troy's old line allied.
Then enter, chiefs, these friendly doors;
I too have had my fate, like yours,
Which, many a suffering overpast,
Has willed to fix me here at last.
Myself not ignorant of woe,
Compassion I have learned to show.'
She speaks, and speaking leads the way
To where her palace stands,
And through the fanes a solemn day
Of sacrifice commands.
Nor yet unmindful of his friends,
Her bounty to the shore she sends,
A hundred bristly swine,
A herd of twenty beeves, of lambs
A hundred, with their fleecy dams,
And spirit-cheering wine.
And now the palace they array
With all the state that kings display,
And through the central breadth of hall
Prepare the sumptuous festival:
There, wrought with many a fair design,
Rich coverlets of purple shine:
Bright silver loads the boards, and gold
Where deeds of hero-sires are told,
From chief to chief in sequence drawn,
E'en from proud Sidon's earliest dawn.
Meantime ’neas, loth to lose
The father in the king,
Sends down Achates to his crews:
'Haste, to Ascanius bear the news,
Himself to Carthage bring.'
A father's care, a father's joy,
All centre in the darling boy.
Rich presents too he bids be brought,
Scarce saved when Troy's last fight was fought,
A pall with stiffening gold inwrought,
A veil, the marvel of the loom,
Edged with acanthus' saffron bloom
These Leda once to Helen gave,
And Helen from Mycen‘ bore,
What time to Troy she crossed the wave
With that her unblessed paramour;
The sceptre Priam's eldest fair,
Ilione, was wont to bear;
Her necklace, and her coronet
With gold and gems in circle set.
Such mandate hastening to obey,
Achates takes his shore-ward way.
But Cytherea's anxious mind
New arts, new stratagems designed,
That Cupid, changed in mien and face,
Should come in sweet Ascanius' place,
Fire with his gifts the royal dame,
And thread each leaping vein with flame.
The palace of deceit she fears,
The double tongues of Tyre;
Fell Juno's form at night appears,
And burns her like a fire.
So to her will she seeks to move
The winged deity of Love:
'My son, my strength, my virtue born,
Who laugh'st Jove's Titan bolts to scorn,
To thee for succour I repair,
And breathe the voice of suppliant prayer.
How Juno drives from coast to coast
Thy Trojan brother, this thou know'st,
And oft hast bid thy sorrows flow
With mine in pity of his woe.
Him now this Tyrian entertains,
And with soft speech his stay constrains:
But I, I cannot brook with ease
Junonian hospitalities;
Nor, where our fortunes hinge and turn,
Canshe long rest in unconcern.
Fain would I first ensnare the dame,
And wrap her leagured heart in flame;
So, ere she change by power malign,
’neas' love shall bind her mine.
Such triumph how thou mayst achieve,
The issue of my thought receive.
To Sidon's town the princely heir,
The darling motive of my care,
Sets out at summons of his sire,
With presents, saved from flood and fire.
Him, in the bands of slumber tied,
In high Cythera I will hide,
Or blest Idalia, safe and far,
Lest he perceive the plot, or mar.
Thou for one night supply his room,
Thyself a boy, the boy assume;
That when the queen, with rapture glowing,
While boards blaze rich, and wine is flowing,
Shall make thee nestle in her breast,
And to thy lips her lips are prest,
The stealthy plague thou mayst inspire,
And thrill her with contagious fire.'
Young Love obeyed, his plumage stripped,
And, laughing, like Iulus tripped.
But Venus on her grandson strows
The dewy softness of repose,
And laps him in her robe, and bears
To tall Idalia's fragrant airs,
Where soft amaracus receives
And gently curtains him with leaves:
While Cupid, tutored to obey,
Beside Achates takes his way,
And bears the presents, blithe and gay.
Arrived, he finds the Tyrian queen
On tapestry laid of gorgeous sheen,
In central place, her guests between.
There lies ’neas, there his train,
All stretched at ease on purple grain.
Slaves o'er their hands clear water pour,
Deal round the bread from basket-store,
And napkins thick with wool:
Within full fifty maids supply
Fresh food, and make the hearths blaze high:
A hundred more of equal age,
Each with her fellow, girl and page,
Serve to the gathered company
The meats and goblets full.
The invited Tyrians throng the hall,
And on the broidered couches fall.
They marvel as the gifts they view,
They marvel at the bringer too,
The features where the God shines through,
The tones his mimic voice assumes,
The pall, the veil with saffron blooms.
But chiefly Dido, doomed to ill,
Her soul with gazing cannot fill,
And, kindling with delirious fires,
Admires the boy, the gift admires.
He, having hung a little space
Clasped in ’neas' warm embrace,
And satisfied the fond desire
Of that his counterfeited sire,
Turns him to Dido. Heart and eye
She clings, she cleaves, she makes him lie
Lapped in her breast, nor knows, lost fair,
How dire a God sits heavy there.
But he, too studious to fulfil
His Acidalian mother's will,
Begins to cancel trace by trace
The imprint of Sych‘us' face,
And bids a living passion steal
On senses long unused to feel.
Soon as the feast begins to lull,
And boards are cleared away,
They place the bowls, all brimming full,
And wreathe with garlands gay.
Up to the rafters mounts the din,
And voices swell and heave within:
From the gilt roof hang cressets bright,
And flambeau-fires put out the night.
The queen gives charge: a cup is brought
With massy gold and jewels wrought,
Whence ancient Belus quaffed his wine,
And all the kings of Belus' line.
Then silence reigns: 'Great Jove, who know'st
The mutual rights of guest and host,
O make this day a day of joy
Alike to Tyre and wandering Troy,
And may our children's children feel
The blessing of the bond we seal!
Be Bacchus, giver of glad cheer,
And bounteous Juno, present here!
And, Tyrians, you with frank good-will
Our courteous purpose fulfil.'
She spoke, and on the festal board
The meed of due libation poured,
Touched with her lip the goblet's edge,
Then challenged Bitias to the pledge.
He grasped the cup with eager hold,
And drenched him with the foaming gold.
The rest succeed. Iopas takes
His gilded lyre, its chords awakes,
The long-haired bard, rehearsing sweet
The descant learned at Atlas' feet.
He sings the wanderings of the moon,
The sun eclipsed in deathly swoon,
Whence humankind and cattle came,
And whence the rain-spout and the flame,
Arcturus and the two bright Bears,
And Hyads weeping showery tears,
Why winter suns so swiftly go,
And why the weary nights move slow.
With plaudits Tyre the minstrel greets,
And Troy the loud acclaim repeats.
And now discourse succeeds to song:
Poor Dido makes the gay night long,
Still drinking love-draughts, deep and strong:
Much of great Priam asks the dame,
Much of his greater son:
Now of Tydides' steeds of flame,
Now in what armour Memnon came,
Now how Achilles shone.
'Nay, guest,' she cries, 'vouchsafe a space
The tale of Danaan fraud to trace,
The dire misfortunes of your race,
These wanderings of your own:
For since you first 'gan wander o'er
Yon homeless world of sea and shore,
Seven summers nigh have flown.'

Book II

Each eye was fixed, each lip compressed,
When thus began the heroic guest:
'Too cruel, lady, is the pain
You bid me thus revive again;
How lofty Ilium's throne august
Was laid by Greece in piteous dust,
The woes I saw with these sad eyne,
The deeds whereof large part was mine:
What Argive, when the tale were told,
What Myrmidon of sternest mould,
What foe from Ithaca could hear,
And grudge the tribute of a tear?
Now dews precipitate the night,
And setting stars to rest invite:
Yet, if so keen your zeal to know
In brief the tale of Troy's last woe,
Though memory shrinks with backward start,
And sends a shudder to my heart,
I take the word.
Worn down by wars,
Long beating 'gainst Fate's dungeon-bars,
As year kept chasing year,
The Danaan chiefs, with cunning given
By Pallas, mountain-high to heaven
A giant horse uprear,
And with compacted beams of pine
The texture of its ribs entwine.
A vow for their return they feign:
So runs the tale, and spreads amain.
There in the monster's cavernous side
Huge frames of chosen chiefs they hide,
And steel-clad soldiery finds room
Within that death-producing womb.
An isle there lies in Ilium's sight,
And Tenedos its name,
While Priam's fortune yet was bright,
Known for its wealth to fame:
Now all has dwindled to a bay,
Where ships in treacherous shelter stay.
Thither they sail, and hide their host
Along its desolated coast.
We thought them to Mycen‘ flown,
And rescued Troy forgets to groan.
Wide stand the gates: what joy to go
The Dorian camp to see,
The land disburthened of the foe,
The shore from vessels free!
There pitched Thessalia's squadron, there
Achilles' tent was set:
There, drawn on land, their natives were,
And there the battle met.
Some on Minerva's offering gaze,
And view its bulk with strange amaze:
And first Thym tes loudly calls
To drag the steed within our walls,
Or by suggestion from the foe,
Or Troy's ill fate had willed it so.
But Capys and the wiser kind
Surmised the snare that lurked behind:
To drown it in the whelming tide,
Or set the fire-brand to its side,
Their sentence is: or else to bore
Its caverns, and their depths explore.
In wild confusion sways the crowd:
Each takes his side and all are loud.
Girt with a throng of Ilium's sons,
Down from the tower Laocoon runs,
And, 'Wretched countrymen,' he cries,
'What monstrous madness blinds your eyes?
Think you your enemies removed?
Come presents without wrong
From Danaans? have you thus approved
Ulysses, known so long?
Perchance who knows? the bulk we see
Conceals a Grecian enemy,
Or 'tis a pile to o'erlook the town,
And pour from high invaders down,
Or fraud lurks somewhere to destroy:
Mistrust, mistrust it, men of Troy!
Whate'er it be, a Greek I fear,
Though presents in his hand he bear.'
He spoke, and with his arm's full force
Straight at the belly of the horse
His mighty spear he cast:
Quivering it stood: the sharp rebound
Shook the huge monster: and a sound
Through all its caverns passed.
And then, had fate our weal designed
Nor given us a perverted mind,
Then had he moved us to deface
The Greeks' accursed lurking-place,
And Troy had been abiding still,
And Priam's tower yet crowned the hill.
Now Dardan swains before the king
With clamorous demonstration bring,
His hands fast bound, a youth unknown,
Across their casual pathway thrown
By cunning purpose of his own,
If so his simulated speech
For Greece the walls of Troy might breach,
Nerved by strong courage to defy
The worst, and gain his end or die.
The curious Trojans round him flock,
With rival zeal a foe to mock.
Now listen while my tongue declares
The tale you ask of Danaan snares,
And gather from a single charge
Their catalogue of crimes at large.
There as he stands, confused, unarmed,
Like helpless innocence alarmed,
His wistful eyes on all sides throws,
And sees that all around are foes.
'What land,' he cries, 'what sea is left,
To hold a wretch of country reft,
Driven out from Greece while savage Troy
Demands my blood with clamorous joy?'
That anguish put our rage to flight,
And stayed each hand in act to smite:
We bid him name and race declare,
And say why Troy her prize should spare.
Then by degrees he laid aside
His fear, and presently replied:
'Truth, gracious king, is all I speak,
And first I own my nation Greek:
No; Sinon may be Fortune's slave;
She shall not make him liar or knave.
If haply to your ears e'er came
Belidan Palamedes' name,
Borne by the tearful voice of Fame,
Whom erst, by false impeachment sped,
Maligned because for peace he pled,
Greece gave to death, now mourns him dead, 
His kinsman I, while yet a boy,
Sent by a needy sire to Troy.
While he yet stood in kingly state,
'Mid brother kings in council great,
I too had power: but when he died,
By false Ulysses' spite belied
(The tale is known), from that proud height
I sank to wretchedness and night,
And brooded in my dolorous gloom
On that my guiltless kinsman's doom
Not all in silence; no, I swore,
Should Fortune bring me home once more,
My vengeance should redress his fate,
And speech engendered cankerous hate.
Thence dates my fall: Ulysses thence
Still scared me with some fresh pretence,
With chance-dropt words the people fired,
Sought means of hurt, intrigued, conspired.
Nor did the glow of hatred cool,
Till, wielding Calchas as his tool 
But why a tedious tale repeat,
To stay you from your morsel sweet?
If all are equal, Greek and Greek,
Enough; your tardy vengeance wreak
My death will Ithacus delight,
And Atreus' sons the boon requite.
We press, we yearn the truth to know,
Nor dream how doubly base our foe:
He, faltering still and overawed,
Takes up the unfinished web of fraud.
'Oft had we planned to leave your shore,
Nor tempt the weary conflict more.
O, had we done it! sea and sky
Scared us as oft, in act to fly:
But chiefly when completed stood
This horse, compact of maple wood,
Fierce thunders, pealing in our ears,
Proclaimed the turmoil of the spheres.
Perplexed, Eurypylus we send
To question what the fates portend,
And he from Ph bus' awful shrine
Brings back the words of doom divine:
'With blood ye pacified the gales,
E'en with a virgin slain,
When first ye Danaans spread your sails,
The shores of Troy to gain:
With blood ye your return must buy:
A Greek must at the altar die.'
That sentence reached the public ear,
And bred the dull amaze of fear:
Through every heart a shudder ran,
'Apollo's victim who the man?'
Ulysses, turbulent and loud,
Drags Calchas forth before the crowd,
And questions what the immortals mean,
Which way these dubious beckonings lean:
E'en then were some discerned my foe,
And silent watch the coming blow.
Ten days the seer, with bated breath,
Restrained the utterance big with death:
O'erborne at last, the word agreed
He speaks, and destines me to bleed.
All gave a sigh, as men set free,
And hailed the doom, content to see
The bolt that threatened each alike
One solitary victim strike.
The death-day came: the priests prepare
Salt cakes, and fillets for my hair;
I fled, I own it, from the knife,
I broke my bands and ran for life,
And in a marish lay that night,
While they should sail, if sail they might.
No longer have I hope, ah me!
My ancient fatherland to see,
Or look on those my eyes desire,
My darling sons, my grey-haired sire:
Perhaps my butchers may requite
On their dear heads my traitorous flight,
And make their wretched lives atone
For this, the single crime I own.
O, by the Gods, who all things view,
And know the false man from the true,
By sacred Faith, if Faith remain
With mortal men preserved from stain,
Show grace to innocence forlorn,
Show grace to woes unduly borne!
Moved by his tears, we let him live,
And pity crowns the boon we give:
King Priam bids unloose his cords,
And soothes the wretch with kindly words:
'Whoe'er you are, henceforth resign
All thought of Greece: be Troy's and mine:
Now tell me truth, for what intent
This fabric of the horse was meant;
An offering to your heavenly liege?
An engine for assault or siege?'
Then, schooled in all Pelasgian shifts,
His unbound hands to heaven he lifts:
'Ye slumberless, inviolate fires,
And the dread awe your name inspires!
Ye murderous altars, which I fled!
Ye fillets that adorned my head!
Bear witness, and behold me free
To break my Grecian fealty;
To hate the Greeks, and bring to light
The counsels they would hide in night,
Unchecked by all that once could bind,
All claims of country or of kind.
Thou, Troy, remember he'er to swerve,
Preserved thyself, thy faith preserve,
If true the story I relate,
If these, my prompt returns, be great.
'The warlike hopes of Greece were stayed,
E'en from the first, on Pallas' aid:
But since Tydides, impious man,
And foul Ulysses, born to plan,
Dragged with red hands, the sentry slain,
Her fateful image from your fane,
Her chaste locks touched, and stained with gore
The virgin coronal she wore,
Thenceforth the tide of fortune changed,
And Greece grew weak, her queen estranged.
Nor dubious were the signs of ill
That showed the goddess' altered will.
The image scarce in camp was set,
Out burst big drops of saltest sweat
O'er all her limbs: her eyes upraised
With minatory lightnings blazed;
And thrice untouched from earth she sprang
With quivering spear and buckler's clang.
'Back o'er the ocean!' Calchas cries:
'We shall not make Troy's town our prize,
Unless at Argos' sacred seat
Our former omens we repeat,
And bring once more the grace we brought
When first these shores our navy sought.'
So now for Greece they cross the wave,
Fresh blessings on their arms to crave,
Thence to return, so Calchas rules,
Unlooked for, ere your wonder cools.
Premonished first, this frame they planned
In your Palladium's stead to stand,
An image for an image given
To pacify offended Heaven.
But Calchas bade them rear it high
With timbers mounting to the sky,
That none might drag within the gate
This new Palladium of your state.
For, said he, if your hands profaned
The gift for Pallas' self ordained,
Dire havoc grant, ye powers, that first
That fate be his! on Troy should burst:
But if, in glad procession haled
By those your hands, your walls it scaled,
Then Asia should our homes invade,
And unborn captives mourn the raid.'
Such tale of pity, aptly feigned,
Our credence for the perjurer gained,
And tears, wrung out from fraudful eyes,
Made us, e'en us, a villain's prize,
'Gainst whom not valiant Diomede,
Nor Peleus' Lariss‘an seed,
Nor ten years' fighting could prevail,
Nor navies of a thousand sail.
But ghastlier portents lay behind,
Our unprophetic souls to bind.
Laocoon, named as Neptune's priest,
Was offering up the victim beast,
When lo! from Tenedos I quail,
E'en now, at telling of the tale 
Two monstrous serpents stem the tide,
And shoreward through the stillness glide.
Amid the waves they rear their breasts,
And toss on high their sanguine crests:
The hind part coils along the deep,
And undulates with sinuous sweep.
The lashed spray echoes: now they reach
The inland belted by the beach,
And rolling bloodshot eyes of fire,
Dart their forked tongues, and hiss for ire.
We fly distraught: unswerving they
Toward Laocoon hold their way;
First round his two young sons they wreathe,
And grind their limbs with savage teeth:
Then, as with arms he comes to aid,
The wretched father they invade
And twine in giant folds: twice round
His stalwart waist their spires are wound,
Twice round his neck, while over all
Their heads and crests tower high and tall.
He strains his strength their knots to tear,
While gore and slime his fillets smear,
And to the unregardful skies
Sends up his agonizing cries:
A wounded bull such moaning makes,
When from his neck the axe he shakes,
Ill-aimed, and from the altar breaks.
The twin destroyers take their flight
To Pallas' temple on the height;
There by the goddess' feet concealed
They lie, and nestle 'neath her shield.
At once through Ilium's hapless sons
A shock of feverous horror runs:
All in Laocoon's death-pangs read
The just requital of his deed,
Who dared to harm with impious stroke
Those ribs of consecrated oak.
'The image to its fane!' they cry:
'So soothe the offended deity.'
Each in the labour claims his share:
The walls are breached, the town laid bare:
Wheels 'neath its feet are fixed to glide,
And round its neck stout ropes are tied:
So climbs our wall that shape of doom,
With battle quickening in its womb,
While youths and maidens sing glad songs,
And joy to touch the harness-thongs.
It comes, and, glancing terror down,
Sweeps through the bosom of the town.
O Ilium, city of my love!
O warlike home of powers above!
Four times 'twas on the threshold stayed:
Four times the armour clashed and brayed.
Yet on we press with passion blind,
All forethought blotted from our mind,
Till the dread monster we install
Within the temple's tower-built wall.
E'en then Cassandra's prescient voice
Forewarned us of our fatal choice 
That prescient voice, which Heaven decreed
No son of Troy should hear and heed.
We, careless souls, the city through,
With festal boughs the fanes bestrew,
And in such revelry employ
The last, last day should shine on Troy.
Meantime Heaven shifts from light to gloom,
And night ascends from Ocean's womb,
Involving in her shadow broad
Earth, sky, and Myrmidonian fraud:
And through the city, stretched at will,
Sleep the tired Trojans, and are still.
And now from Tenedos set free
The Greeks are sailing on the sea,
Bound for the shore where erst they lay,
Beneath the still moon's friendly ray:
When in a moment leaps to sight
On the king's ship the signal light,
And Sinon, screened by partial fate,
Unlocks the pine-wood prison's gate.
The horse its charge to air restores,
And forth the armed invasion pours.
Thessander, Sthenelus, the first,
Slide down the rope: Ulysses curst,
Thoas and Acamas are there,
And great Pelides' youthful heir,
Machaon, Menelaus, last
Epeus, who the plot forecast.
They seize the city, buried deep
In floods of revelry and sleep,
Cut down the warders of the gates,
And introduce their banded mates.
It was the hour when Heaven gives rest
To weary man, the first and best:
Lo, as I slept, in saddest guise,
The form of Hector seemed to rise,
Full sorrow gushing from his eyes:
All torn by dragging at the car,
And black with gory dust of war,
As once on earth, his swoln feet bored,
And festering from the inserted cord.
Ah! what a sight was there to view!
How altered from the man we knew,
Our Hector, who from day's long toil
Comes radiant in Achilles' spoil,
Or with that red right hand, which casts
The fires of Troy on Grecian masts!
Blood-clotted hung his beard and hair,
And all those many wounds were there,
Which on his gracious person fell
Around the walls he loved so well.
Methought I first the chief addressed,
With tears like his, and labouring breast:
'O daystar of Dardanian land!
O faithful heart, unconquered hand!
What means this lingering? from what shore
Comes Hector to his home once more?
Ah! since we saw you, many a woe
Has brought your friends, your country low;
And weary eyes and aching brow
Are ours that look upon you now!
What cause has marred that clear calm mien,
Or why those wounds, unclosed and green?'
He answers not, nor recks him aught
Of those the idle quests I sought;
But with a melancholy sigh,
'Ah, goddess-born,' he warns me, 'fly!
Escape these flames: Greece holds the walls;
Proud Ilium from her summit falls.
Think not of king's or country's claims:
Country and king, alas! are names:
Could Troy be saved by hands of men,
This hand had saved her then, e'en then.
The gods of her domestic shrines
That country to your care consigns:
Receive them now, to share your fate:
Provide them mansions strong and great,
The city's walls, which Heaven has willed
Beyond the seas you yet shall build.'
He said, and from the temple brings
Dread Vesta, with her holy things,
Her awful fillets, and the fire
Whose sacred embers ne'er expire.
Meantime throughout the city grow
The agonies of wildering woe:
And more and more, though deep in shade
My father's palace stood embayed,
The tumult rises on the ear,
And clashing armour hurtles fear.
I start from sleep, the roof ascend,
And with quick heed each noise attend.
E'en as, while southern winds conspire,
On standing harvests falls the fire,
Or as a mountain torrent spoils
Field, joyous crop, and oxen's toils,
And sweeps whole woods: the swain spell-bound
Hears from a rock the unwonted sound.
O, then I saw the tale was true:
The Danaan fraud stood clear to view.
Thy halls already, late so proud,
Deiphobus, to fire have bowed:
Ucalegon has caught the light:
Sigeum's waves gleam broad and bright.
Then come the clamour and the blare,
And shouts and clarions rend the air:
I clutch my arms with reeling brain,
But reason whispers, arms are vain:
Yet still I burn to raise a power,
And, rallying, muster at the tower:
Fury and wrath within me rave,
And tempt me to a warrior's grave.
Lo! Panthus, scaped from death by flight,
Priest of Apollo on the height,
His gods, his grandchild at his side,
Makes for my door with frantic stride 
'Ha! Othrys' son, how goes the fight?
What forces muster at the height?'
I spoke: he heaves a long-drawn breath:
''Tis come, our fated day of death.
We have been Trojans: Troy has been:
She sat, but sits no more, a queen:
Stern Jove an Argive rule proclaims:
Greece holds a city wrapt in flames,
There in the bosom of the town
The tall horse rains invasion down,
And Sinon, with a conqueror's pride
Deals fiery havoc far and wide.
Some keep the gates, as vast a host
As ever left Mycen‘'s coast:
Some block the narrows of the street,
With weapons threatening all they meet:
The stark sword stretches o'er the way,
Quick-glancing, ready drawn to slay,
While scarce our sentinels resist,
And battle in the flickering mist.'
So, stirred by Heaven and Othrys' son,
Forth into flames and spears I run,
Where yells the war-fiend, and the cries
Of slayer and slain invade the skies.
Bold Rhipeus links him to my side,
And Epytus, in arms long tried:
And Hypanis and Dymas hail
And join us in the moonbeam pale,
With young Cor bus, Mygdon's child,
Who came to Troy with yearning wild
Cassandra's love to gain,
And, prompt to yield a kinsman's aid,
His troop with Priam's hosts arrayed:
Ah wretch, whom his demented maid
Had warned, but warned in vain!
So, when I saw them round me form,
And knew their blood was pulsing warm,
I thus began: 'Brave spirits, wrought
To noblest temper, all for nought,
If desperate venture ye desire,
Ye see our lost estate:
Gone from each fane, each secret shrine,
Are those who made this realm divine:
The town ye aid is wrapped in fire:
Come, rush we on our fate.
No safety may the vanquished find
Till hope of safety be resigned.'
So valour grew to madness. Then,
Like gaunt wolves rushing from their den,
Whom lawless hunger's sullen growl
Drives forth into the night to prowl,
The while, with jaws all parched and black,
Their famished whelps expect them back,
Amid the volley and the foe,
With death before our eyes, we go
On through the town, while darkness spreads
Its hollow covert o'er our heads.
What witness could recount aright
The woes, the carnage of that night,
Or make his tributary sighs
Keep measure with our agonies?
An ancient city topples down
From broad-based heights of old renown:
There in the street confusedly strown
Lie age and helplessness o'erthrown,
Block up the entering of the doors,
And cumber Heaven's own temple-floors.
Nor only Teucrian lives expire:
Sometimes the spark of generous fire
Revives in vanquished hearts again,
And Danaan victors swell the slain.
Dire agonies, wild terrors swarm,
And Death glares grim in many a form.
First, with a train of Danaan spears,
Androgeos in our path appears:
He deems us comrades of his own,
And hails us thus with friendly tone:
'Bestir you, gallants! why so slack?
See here, while others spoil and sack
The burning town, your tardy feet
But now are coming from the fleet!'
He said: the vague replies we make
Reveal at once his dire mistake:
He sees him fallen among the toils,
And voice and foot alike recoils.
As trampling through the thorny brake
The heedless traveller stirs a snake,
And in a sudden fear retires
From that fierce head, those gathering spires,
E'en so Androgeos at the sight
Was shrinking back in palsied fright.
We mass our arms, and close them round:
Surprised, and ignorant of the ground,
Their scattered ranks we breathless lay,
And Fortune crowns our first essay.
Flushed with wild joy, Cor bus cries,
'See Fortune beckoning from the skies!
When she to safety points the way,
What can be better than obey?
Come, change we bucklers, and advance
Each with a Grecian cognizance.
Who questions, when with foes we deal,
If craft or courage guides the steel?
Themselves shall give us arms to wield.'
He speaks, and from Androgeos tears
His plumy helm and figured shield,
Girds on an Argive sword, and wears.
And Rhipeus, Dymas, and the rest
Soon in the new-won spoils are dressed.
Mixed with the Greeks, we pass unknown,
'Neath heavenly favours not our own,
Wage many a combat in the gloom,
And many a Greek send down to doom.
Some seek the vessels and the shore:
Some, smit with fear more low,
Climb the huge horse, and hide once more
Within the womb they know.
Alas! a mortal may not lean
On Heaven, when Heaven averts its mien.
Ah see! the Priameian fair,
Cassandra, by her streaming hair,
Is dragged from Pallas' shrine,
Her wild eyes raised to Heaven in vain;
Her eyes, alas! for cord and chain
Her tender hands confine.
Cor bus brooked not such a sight,
But plunged infuriate in the fight.
We follow him, as blindly rash,
And, forming, on the spoilers dash:
When from the summit of the fane,
Or ere we deem, a murderous rain
Of Trojan darts our force o'erwhelms,
Misguided by those Argive helms.
Then, groaning deep their prey to lose,
The rallied Danaans round us close:
Fell Ajax and the Atridan pair,
And all Thessalia's host were there:
As when the tempest sounds alarms,
And winds conflicting rush to arms,
Notus and Zephyr join the war,
And Eurus in his orient car:
The lashed woods howl: hoar Nereus raves,
And troubles all his realm of waves.
They too, whom erst in dusk of night
Our cunning practice turned to flight,
Come forth: our lying arms they know,
And in our tones perceive a foe.
At once they crush us, swarm on swarm:
And first beneath Peneleos' arm,
The warlike goddess' shrine before,
Cor bus welters in his gore.
Then Rhipeus dies: no purer son
Troy ever bred, more jealous none
Of sacred right: Heaven's will be done.
Dymas and Hypanis are slain,
By comrades cruelly mista'en;
Nor pious deed, nor Ph bus' wreath,
Could save thee, Panthus, from thy death.
Ye embers of expiring Troy,
Ye funeral flames of all my joy,
Bear witness, in your dying glow,
I shunned nor dart nor fronting foe,
And had it been my fate to bleed
My hand had earned the doom decreed.
Thence forced, to other scenes we flee,
Pelias and Iphitus with me,
This laden with his years and slow,
That halting from Ulysses' blow:
For hark! the growing tumult calls
For rescue to the palace halls.
O, there a giant battle raged!
Who saw it sure had thought
No war in Troy was elsewhere waged,
No deaths beside were wrought:
So fierce the fray our eyes that met,
The Danaans streaming to the roof,
And every gate by foes beset,
Screened by a penthouse javelin-proof.
Close to the walls the ladders cling:
From step to step the assailants spring,
E'en by the doors: a shield enfolds
Their left: their right a corbel holds.
The Dardans, reckless in despair,
The turrets and the roofs uptear
(E'en to such weapons Fortune drives
Brave patriots, struggling for their lives),
And hurl the gilded beams below,
The pride of ages long ago;
While others on the threshold stand,
And guard the entry, sword in hand,
My heart leaps up, the halls to save,
And help the vanquished to be brave.
A secret postern-gate was there,
Which oped behind a thoroughfare
Through Priam's courts: in happier day
Andromache would pass that way
Alone, to greet the royal pair,
And lead with her her youthful heir.
By this the palace roof I gain,
Whence our poor Trojans, all in vain,
Were showering down their missile rain.
With sheer descent, a turret high
Rose from the roof into the sky,
Whence curious gazers might look down
And see the camp, the fleet, the town:
This, where the flooring timbers join
The stronger stone, we undermine
And tumble o'er: it falls along,
Down crashing on the assailant throng:
But other Danaans fill their place,
And darts and stones still rain apace.
Full in the gate see Pyrrhus blaze,
A meteor, shooting steely rays:
So flames a serpent into light,
On poisonous herbage fed,
Which late in subterranean night
Through winter lay as dead:
Now from its ancient weeds undressed
Invigorate and young,
Sunward it rears its glittering breast
And darts its three-forked tongue.
There at his side Automedon,
True liegeman both to sire and son,
And giant Periphas, and all
The Scyrian youth assail the wall
And firebrands roofward dart:
Himself the first with two-edged axe
The brazen-plated doors attacks,
And makes their hinges start:
Now through the heart of oak he drives
His weapon, and a loophole rives.
There stands revealed the house within,
Where the long hall retires:
The stately privacy is seen
Of Priam and his sires,
And on the threshold guards appear
In warlike pomp of shield and spear.
But far within the palace swarms
With tumult and confused alarms:
The deep courts wail with woman's cries:
The clamour strikes the spangled skies.
Pale matrons run from place to place,
And clasp the doors in wild embrace.
Strong as his father, Pyrrhus strains,
Nor bar nor guard his force sustains:
The hacked door reels 'neath blow on blow,
Breaks from its hinges, and lies low.
Force wins her footing: in they rush,
The Danaan hordes, the foremost crush
And deluge with an armed tide
The spacious level far and wide.
Less fierce when, breaking from its bounds,
The water surges o'er the mounds,
Down pours it, tumbling in a heap,
O'er all the fields with headlong sweep,
And whirls before it fold and sheep.
These eyes beheld fell Pyrrhus there
Intoxicate with gore,
Beheld the curst Atridan pair
Within the sacred door,
Beheld pale Hecuba, and those
The brides her hundred children chose,
And dying Priam at the shrine
Staining the hearth he made divine.
Those fifty nuptial chambers fair,
That promised many a princely heir,
Those pillared doors in pride erect,
With gold and spoils barbaric decked,
Lie smoking on the ground: the Greek
Is potent, where the fires are weak.
Perhaps you ask of Priam's fate:
He, when he sees his town o'erthrown,
Greeks bursting through his palace gate
And thronging chambers once his own,
His ancient armour, long laid by,
Around his palsied shoulders throws,
Girds with a useless sword his thigh,
And totters forth to meet his foes.
Within the mansion's central space,
All bare and open to the day,
There stood an altar in its place,
And, close beside, an aged bay,
That drooping o'er the altar leaned,
And with its shade the home-gods screened.
Here Hecuba and all her train
Were seeking refuge, but in vain,
Huddling like doves by storms dismayed,
And clinging to the gods for aid.
But soon as Priam caught her sight,
Thus in his youthful armour dight,
'What madness,' cries she, 'wretched spouse,
Has placed that helmet on your brows?
Say, whither fare you? times so dire
Bent knees, not lifted arms require:
Could Hector now before us stand,
No help were in my Hector's hand.
Take refuge here, and learn at length
The secret of an old man's strength:
One altar shall protect us all:
Here bide with us, or with us fall.'
She speaks, and guides his trembling feet
To join her in the hallowed seat.
See, fled from murdering Pyrrhus, runs
Polites, one of Priam's sons:
Through foes, through javelins, wounded sore,
He circles court and corridor,
While Pyrrhus follows in his rear
With outstretched hand and levelled spear;
Till just before his parents' eyes,
All bathed in blood, he falls and dies.
With death in view, the unchilded sire
Checked not the utterance of his ire:
'May Heaven, if Heaven be just to heed
Such horrors, render worthy meed,'
He cries, 'for this atrocious deed,
Which makes me see my darling die,
And stains with blood a father's eye.
But he to whom you feign you owe
Your birth, Achilles, 'twas not so
He dealt with Priam, though his foe:
He feared the laws of right and truth:
He heard the suppliant's prayer with ruth,
Gave Hector's body to the tomb,
And sent me back in safety home.'
So spoke the sire, and speaking threw
A feeble dart, no blood that drew:
The ringing metal turned it back,
And left it dangling, weak and slack.
Then Pyrrhus: 'Take the news below,
And to my sire Achilles go:
Tell him of his degenerate seed,
And that and this my bloody deed.
Now die:' and to the altar-stone
Along the marble floor
He dragged the father, sliddering on
E'en in his child's own gore:
His left hand in his hair he wreathed,
While with the right he plied
His flashing sword, and hilt-deep sheathed
Within the old man's side.
So Priam's fortunes closed at last:
So passed he, seeing as he passed
His Troy in flames, his royal tower
Laid low in dust by hostile power,
Who once o'er lands and peoples proud
Sat, while before him Asia bowed:
Now on the shore behold him dead,
A nameless trunk, a trunkless head.
O then I felt, as ne'er before,
Chill horror to my bosom's core.
I seemed my aged sire to see,
Beholding Priam, old as he,
Gasp out his life: before my eyes
Forlorn Creusa seemed to rise,
Our palace, sacked and desolate,
And young Iulus, left to fate.
Then, looking round, the place I eyed,
To see who yet were at my side.
Some by the flames were swallowed: some
Had leapt to earth: the end was come.
I stood alone, when lo! I mark
In Vesta's temple crouching dark
The traitress Helen: the broad blaze
Gives me full light, as round I gaze.
She, shrinking from the Trojan's hate
Made frantic by their city's fate,
Nor dreading less the Danaan sword,
The vengeance of her injured lord, 
She, Troy's and Argos' common fiend,
Sat cowering, by the altar screened.
My blood was fired: fierce passion woke
To quit Troy's fall by one sure stroke.
'What? to Mycen‘ shall she go,
A conqueress, in a pageant show,
See home, sire, children, spouse again,
With Phrygian menials in her train?
Good Priam slaughtered? Troy no more?
The Dardan plains afloat with gore?
No; though no glory be to gain
From vengeance on a woman ta'en,
Yet he that rids the world of guilt
May claim the praise of blood well spilt:
'Twere joy to satiate righteous ire,
And slake my country's funeral fire.'
Thus was I raving, past control,
In aimless turbulence of soul,
When sudden dawning on the night
(Ne'er had I known her face so bright)
My mother flashed upon my sight,
Confessed a goddess, with the mien
And stature that in heaven are seen:
Reproachfully my hand she pressed,
And thus from roseate lips addressed:
'My son, what cruel wrongs excite
Your wrath to such pernicious height?
What mean you by this madness? where
Left you that love to me you bear?
And will you not at least inquire
What fate betides your time-worn sire?
If your Creusa still survive?
If young Ascanius be alive?
All these are trembling as for life,
With Grecian bands around them rife,
And, but for me, had sunk o'erpowered
By flame, or by the sword devoured.
Not the loathed charms of Sparta's dame,
Nor Paris, victim of your blame, 
No, 'tis the Gods, the Gods destroy
This mighty realm, and pull down Troy.
Behold! for I will purge the haze
That darkles round your mortal gaze
And blunts its keenness mark me still,
Nor disobey your mother's will 
Here, where you see huge blocks unfixed,
And dust and smoke in whirlwind mixed,
Great Neptune with his three-forked mace
Upheaves the ramparts from their place,
And rocks the town from cope to base.
Here Juno at the Sc‘an gates,
Begirt with steel, impatient waits,
And clamorous from the navy calls
Her comrades to the captured walls.
Look back; see Pallas o'er the tower
With cloud and Gorgon redly lower.
E'en Jove to Greece his strength affords,
And fights from heaven 'gainst Dardan swords.
Then fly, and give the struggle o'er;
Myself will guard you, till once more
You stand before your father's door.'
She spoke, and vanished from my sight,
Lost in the darkness of the night.
Dire presences their forms disclose,
And powers of terror, Ilium's foes.
That vision showed me Neptune's town
In blazing ruin sinking down:
As rustics strive with many a stroke
To fell some venerable oak,
It still keeps nodding to its doom,
Still bows its head, and shakes its plume,
Till, by degrees o'ercome, one groan
It heaves, and on the hill lies prone.
Down from my perilous height I glide,
Safe sheltered by my heavenly guide,
So thread my way through foes and fire:
The darts give place, the flames retire.
But when I gained Anchises' door,
And stood within my home once more,
My sire, whom I had hoped to bear
Safe to the hills with chiefest care,
Refused to lengthen out his span
And live on earth an exiled man.
'You, you,' he cries, 'bestir your flight,
Whose blood is warm, whose limbs are light:
Had Heaven not willed my life to cease,
Heaven would have kept my home in peace.
Enough, that I have once been saved,
Survivor of a town enslaved.
Now leave me: be your farewell said
To this my corpse, and count me dead.
My hand shall win me death: the foe
Such mercy as I need will show,
Will strip my spoils, and pass for brave.
He lacks not much that lacks a grave.
Long have I lived to curse my birth,
A useless cumberer of the earth,
E'en from the day when Heaven's dread sire
In anger scathed me with his fire.'
So talked he, obstinately set:
While we, our eyes with sorrow wet,
All on our knees, wife, husband, boy,
Implore O let him not destroy
Himself and us, nor lend his weight
To the incumbent load of fate!
He hears not, but refuses still,
Unchanged alike in place and will.
Desperate, again to arms I fly,
And make my wretched choice to die:
For what deliverance now was mine,
What help in fortune or design?
'What? leave my sire behind and flee?
Such words from you? such words to me?
The watch that guards a parent's lip,
Lets it such dire suggestion slip?
If Heaven in truth has willed to spare
No relic of a town so fair,
If you and all wherein you joy
Must burn to feed the flames of Troy,
See there, Death waits you at the door:
See Pyrrhus, steeped in Priam's gore,
Repeats his double crime once more:
The son before his father's eyes,
The father at the altar dies.
O mother! was it then for this
I passed where fires and javelins hiss
Safe in thy conduct, but to see
Foes in my home's dear sanctuary,
All murdered, father, wife, and child,
Each in the other's blood defiled?
My arms! my arms! the fatal day
Calls, and the vanquished must obey;
Return me to the Danaan crew!
Let me the yielded fight renew!
No; one at least these walls contain
Who will not unavenged be slain.'
Once more I gird me for the field,
And to my arm make fast my shield,
And issue from the door; when see!
Creusa clings around my knee,
And offers with a tender grace
Iulus to his sire's embrace:
'If but to perish forth you fare,
Take us with you, your fate to share
But if you hope that help may come
From sword and shield, first guard your home.
Think, think to whom you leave your child,
Your sire, and her whom bride you styled.'
So cried she, and the tearful sound
Was filling all the chambers round,
When sudden in the house we saw
A sight for wonderment and awe:
Between us while Iulus stands
'Mid weeping eyes and clasping hands,
Lo! from the summit of his head
A lambent flame was seen to spread,
Sport with his locks in harmless play,
And grazing round his temples stray.
We hurrying strive his hair to quench,
And the blest flame with water drench.
But sire Anchises to the skies
In rapture lifts voice, hands, and eyes:
'Vouchsafe this once, almighty Jove,
If prayer thy righteous will can move,
And if our care have earned us thine,
Give aid, and ratify this sign.'
Scarce had the old man said, when hark!
It thundered left, and through the dark
A meteor with a train of light
Athwart the sky gleamed dazzling bright.
Right o'er our palace-roof it crossed,
Then in Id‘an woods was lost,
Still glittering on: a fiery trail
Succeeds, and sulphurous fumes exhale.
At this my sire his form uprears,
Salutes the Gods, the star reveres:
'Lead on, blest sign! no more I crave:
Gods, save my house, my grandchild save!
You sent this augury of joy;
Where you are present, there is Troy.
I yield, I yield, nor longer shun
To share the exile of my son.'
He ceased: and near and yet more near
The loud flame strikes on eye and ear.
'Come, mount my shoulders, dear my sire:
Such load my strength shall never tire.
Now, whether fortune smiles or lowers,
One risk, one safety shall be ours.
My son shall journey at my side,
My wife her steps by mine shall guide,
At distance safe. What next I say,
Attend, my servants, and obey.
Without the city stands a mound
With Ceres' ruined temple crowned:
A cypress spreads its branches near,
Hoar with hereditary fear.
Part we our several ways, to meet
At length beside that hallowed seat.
You, father, in your arms upbear
Troy's household gods with duteous care:
For me, just scaped from battle-fray,
On holy things a hand to lay
Were desecration, till I lave
My body in the running wave.'
So saying, in a lion's hide
I robe my shoulders, mantling wide,
And stoop beneath the precious load:
Iulus fastens to my side,
His steps scarce matching with my stride:
My wife behind me takes her road.
We travel darkling in the shade,
And I, whom through that fearful night
Nor volleyed javelins had dismayed
Nor foeman hand to hand in fight,
Now start at every sound, in dread
For him I bore and him I led.
And now the gates I neared at last,
And all the journey seemed o'erpast,
When trampling feet my ear assail;
My father, peering through the gloom,
Cries 'Haste, my son! O haste! they come:
I see their shields, their glittering mail.'
'Twas then, alas! some power unkind
Bereft me of my wildered mind.
While unfrequented paths I thread,
And shun the roads that others tread,
My wife Creusa did she stray,
Or halt exhausted by the way?
I know not parted from our train,
Nor ever crossed our sight again.
Nor e'er my eyes her figure sought,
Nor e'er towards her turned my thought,
Till when at Ceres' hallowed spot
We mustered, she alone was not,
And her companions, spouse and son,
Looked round and saw themselves undone.
Ah, that sad hour! whom spared I then,
In my wild grief, of gods and men?
What woe, in all the town o'erthrown,
Thought I more cruel than my own?
My father and my darling boy,
And, last not least, the gods of Troy,
To my retainers I confide
And in the winding valley hide,
While to the town once more I go,
And shining armour round me throw,
Resolved through Troy to measure back
From end to end my perilous track.
First to the city's shadowed gate
I turn me, whence we passed so late,
My footsteps through the darkness trace,
And cast my eyes from place to place.
A shuddering on my spirit falls,
And e'en the silence' self appals.
Then to my palace I repair,
In hope, in hope, to find her there:
In vain, the foes had forced the door,
And flooded all the mansion o'er.
Fanned by the wind, the flame upsoars
Roof-high; the hot blast skyward roars.
Departing thence, I seek the tower,
The ruined seat of Priam's power.
There Ph nix and Ulysses fell
In the void courts by Juno's cell
Were set the spoil to keep;
Snatched from the burning shrines away,
There Ilium's mighty treasure lay,
Rich altars, bowls of massy gold,
And captive raiment, rudely rolled
In one promiscuous heap;
While boys and matrons, wild with fear,
In long array were standing near.
With desperate daring I essayed
To send my voice along the shade,
Roused the still streets, and called in vain
Creusa o'er and o'er again.
Thus while in agony I pressed
From house to house the endless quest,
The pale sad spectre of my wife
Confronts me, larger than in life.
I stood appalled, my hair erect,
And fear my tongue-tied utterance checked,
While gently she her speech addressed,
And set my troubled heart at rest:
'Why grieve so madly, husband mine?
Nought here has chanced without design:
Fate and the Sire of all decree
Creusa shall not cross the sea.
Long years of exile must be yours,
Vast seas must tire your labouring oars;
At length Hesperia you shall gain,
Where through a rich and peopled plain
Soft Tiber rolls his tide:
There a new realm, a royal wife,
Shall build again your shattered life.
Weep not your dear Creusa's fate:
Ne'er through Mycen‘'s haughty gate
A captive shall I ride,
Nor swell some Grecian matron's train,
I, born of Dardan princes' strain,
To Venus' seed allied:
Heaven's mighty Mother keeps me here:
Farewell, and hold our offspring dear.'
Then, while I dewed with tears my cheek,
And strove a thousand things to speak,
She melted into night:
Thrice I essayed her neck to clasp:
Thrice the vain semblance mocked my grasp,
As wind or slumber light.
So now, the long, long night o'erpast,
I reach my weary friends at last.
There with amazement I behold
New-mustering comrades, young and old,
Sons, mothers, bound from home to flee,
A melancholy company.
They meet, prepared to brave the seas
And sail with me where'er I please.
Now, rising o'er the heights of Ide,
Shone the bright star, day's orient guide:
The Danaans swarmed at every door,
Nor seemed there hope of safety more:
I yield to fate, take up my sire,
And to the mountain's shade retire.

Book III 

When harsh Omnipotence had brought
The power of Asia's kings to nought,
When Troy's Neptunian walls became
A prostrate mass of smouldering flame,
To diverse exile we are driven
In desert lands, by signs from Heaven.
There in Antandros under Ide
The wished-for vessels we provide,
Unknowing whither Fate may lead
Or what the settlement decreed,
And call our forces round. The sun
His summer course had scarce begun,
When now my sire Anchises gave
His voice to tempt the fated wave:
Weeping I quit the port, the shore,
The plains where Ilium stood before,
And homeless launch upon the main,
Son, friends, and home-gods in my train.
A realm lies near, of ample space
(Lycurgus ruled it once), called Thrace,
Allied of old to Ilium's powers,
Its home-gods federate with ours
While Fate was with us. Here I land,
And here along the winding strand
Trace out, alas! 'neath Fortune's frown,
The first beginnings of a town,
And from myself as founder call
’nead‘ the rising wall.
To my bright mother's power divine
And all the tenants of the skies,
So might they speed my new design,
I was performing sacrifice,
And on the shore to heaven's high king
A snow-white bull was slaughtering.
A mound was nigh, where spear-like wood
Of cornel and of myrtle stood.
I sought it, and began to spoil
Of that thick growth the high-heaped soil
And deck the altars with its green,
When lo! a ghastly sight was seen.
Soon as a tree from earth I rend,
Dark-flowing drops of blood descend,
And stain the ground with gore:
Fear shakes my frame from head to foot:
A second sapling I uproot,
Resolved to pierce the mystery dark:
See, trickling from a second bark
Blood follows as before!
With many a tumult in my soul,
I prayed the Dryads of the place,
And king Gradivus, whose control
Is felt through all the fields of Thrace,
That they would meliorate the sight
And make this heavy omen light.
But when the third tall shaft I seize,
And 'gainst the hillock press my knees 
Speak shall I, or be mute? 
E'en from the bottom of the mound
Is heard a lamentable sound:
'Why thus my frame, ’neas, rend?
Respect at length a buried friend,
Nor those pure hands pollute.
Trojan, not alien, is the blood
That oozes from the uptorn wood.
Fly this fell soil, these greedy shores:
The voice you hear is Polydore's.
From my gored breast a growth of spears
Its murderous vegetation rears.'
I heard, fear-stricken and amazed,
My speech tongue-tied, my hair upraised.
This Polydore erewhile by stealth
With store of delegated wealth
Unhappy Priam in despair
Sent to the Thracian monarch's care
When first Troy felt her prowess fail,
Encompassed by the leaguering pale.
Then, when our star its light withdraws,
False to divine and human laws,
The traitor joins the conqueror's cause,
Lays impious hands on Polydore,
And grasps by force the golden store.
Fell lust of gold! abhorred, accurst!
What will not men to slake such thirst?
Soon as my blood regains its heat,
The direful portent I repeat
To Troy's chief lords, and first my sire,
And their collective voice enquire.
All vote to fly from friendship's grave,
Quit the curst soil, and cross the wave.
So then to Polydore we pay
New rites, and heap his mound with clay:
Raised to the dead, two altars stand
With cypress wreathed and woollen band:
Around them Trojan matrons go,
Their hair unbound in sign of woe:
Bowls frothing warm with milk we pour
And cups of sacrificial gore,
Lay in the tomb the ghost to sleep,
And thrice invoke it, loud and deep.
Then, soon as man may trust the seas,
Invited by the crisp spring breeze,
My comrades drag along the sand
The well-dried ships, and crowd the strand.
So from the harbour forth we sail,
And land and town in distance fail.
Encircled by a billowy ring
A land there lies, the loved resort
Of Neptune, the ’g‘an king,
And the grey queen of Nereus' court
Long time the sport of ev'ry blast
O'er ocean it was wont to toss,
Till grateful Ph bus moored it fast
To Gyaros and high Myconos,
And bade it lie unmoved, and brave
The violence of wind and wave.
That port, all peace, receives our fleet:
We land, and hail Apollo's seat.
King Anius, king and priest in one,
With bay-crowned tresses hoar,
Hastes to accost us, and is known
Anchises' friend of yore.
We grasp his friendly hand in proof
Of welcome, and approach his roof.
The sacred temple I adored
Of immemorial stone:
'O grant us, Thymbra's gracious lord,
A mansion of our own!
Grant us a sure abiding place,
A habitation and a race!
Save our new Troy, the relics these
Of Achillean cruelties!
What guide to follow? what our goal?
Speak, Father, and inspire our soul.'
Scarce had I ceased, a trembling takes
The sacred courts, the bays divine,
The mountain to its centre shakes,
The tripod echoes from the shrine:
Prone as we fall with reverent fear,
A heavenly utterance strikes our ear:
'Stout Dardan hearts, the realm of earth
Where first your nation sprang to birth,
That realm shall now receive you back:
Go, seek your ancient mother's track.
There shall ’neas' house, renewed
For ages, rule a world subdued.'
Thus Ph bus: and bewildered joy
Ran murmuring through the ranks of Troy,
Each asking, what the city walls
Whereto the God his wanderers calls.
At this my sire, revolving o'er
The bygone memories of yore,
'Hear, noble chiefs, and learn,' cries he,
'The place of your expectancy.
In ocean lies Jove's island, Crete,
Where Ida stands, our nation's seat.
A hundred cities crown the isle,
And the broad fields with plenty smile.
Thence Teucer, our great sire, of yore
Took ship for the Rh tean shore,
If right I mind my tale,
And chose his kingdom: Ilium then
Not yet had risen: the tribes of men
Dwelt in the lowly vale.
Thence Cybele's majestic dame
And Corybantian cymbals came,
Thence Ida's grove, and mystic awe,
And lions, trained her car to draw.
Come then: let Heaven direct our feet:
Appease the winds, and sail for Crete.
It lies not far: be Jove at hand,
The third day's sun shall see us land.'
He spoke, and rendering each his due,
The victims at the altars slew,
A bull to Neptune, and a bull
To thee, Apollo bright,
A lamb to Tempest, black of wool,
To Western winds a white.
Idomeneus, we hear, has flown,
Driven from his home in Cretan land:
Fame tells us of an empty throne
And mansions ready to our hand.
Ortygia left, we skim the deeps
By Naxos' Bacchanalian steeps,
Olearos and Donysa green,
And Parian cliffs of dazzling sheen,
Pass Cyclad isles o'er ocean strown,
And seas with many a land thick sown.
The rowers sing merrily as we go,
'For Crete and our forefathers, ho!'
Fair winds escort us o'er the tide,
And soon 'neath Cretan coasts we glide.
The site determined, I lay down
The groundwork of my infant town,
Its name Pergamia call,
And bid the nation, proud to own
That title, guard their loved hearthstone,
And raise the fortress wall.
High on the beach their ships they draw,
Then take them wives, and till the land,
The while with equitable hand
I portion dwelling-place and law,
When sudden on man's feeble frame
From tainted skies a sickness came,
On trees and crops a poisonous breath,
A year of pestilence and death.
Their pleasant lives the sufferers yield,
Or drag their languid limbs with pain:
The dogstar burns the grassy field,
And sickening crops withhold the grain.
Back to Ortygia's shrine my sire
O'er ocean bids us go,
There sue for favour, and enquire
The limit of our woe,
What succour weary souls should try,
And whither, if we must, to fly.
'Twas night: all life in sleep was laid,
When lo! our household gods, the same
Whom through the midmost of the flame
From falling Ilium I conveyed,
Appeared before me while I lay
In slumber, bright as if in day,
Where through the inserted window stream
The glories of the full moonbeam;
Then thus their gentle speech addressed,
And set my troubled heart at rest:
'The word that Ph bus has to speak,
Should you his Delian presence seek,
He of his unsought bounty sends
E'en by the mouth of us, your friends.
We, who have followed yours and you
Since Ilium was no more,
We, who have sailed among your crew
The swelling billows o'er,
Your seed as demigods will crown,
And make them an imperial town.
Build you the walls decreed by fate,
And let them, like ourselves, be great,
Nor, till your task be done, forbear
The toil of flight, how long soe'er.
Change we our dwelling: not to Crete
Apollo called your truant feet.
There is a land, by Greece of old
Surnamed Hesperia, rich its mould,
Its children brave and free:
 notrians were its settlers: fame
Now gives the race its leader's name.
And calls it Italy.
Here Dardanus was born, our king,
And old Iasius, whence we spring:
Here our authentic seat.
Rise, tell your sire without delay
Our sentence, which let none gainsay:
Search till you find the Ausonian land,
And old Cortona: Jove has banned
Your settlement in Crete.'
Amazed by wonders heard and seen
(For 'twas no dream that mocked my eyes:
No; plain I seemed to recognize
Their cinctured locks, their well-known mien,
While at the sight chill clammy sweat
Burst forth, and all my limbs were wet)
That instant from my couch I rise,
With voice and hands implore the skies,
And offer at the household shrine
Full cups of unadulterate wine.
My worship ended, glad of soul,
I seek my sire, and tell the whole.
At once he owns the ambiguous race,
The rival sires to whom we trace,
And smiles that ancient lands have wrought
Such new confusion in his thought:
Then cries: 'My son, the slave too long
Of Ilian destiny,
One voice aforetime sang that song,
Cassandra, none but she:
Such fate, she said, I mind it all,
Was for our race in store,
And oft on Italy would call,
Oft on the Hesperian shore.
But who could think that Trojans born
Hesperia e'er would reach,
Or who that heard that maid forlorn
Gave credence to her speech?
Yield we to Ph bus, and pursue,
Admonished thus, a course more true.'
He ceased, and our applauding crew
Obeys him, all and each.
So now, this second home resigned
To the scant few we leave behind,
We set our sails once more, and sweep
Along the illimitable deep.
The fleet had passed into the main,
And land no longer met the eye,
On every side the watery plain,
On every side the expanse of sky;
When o'er my head a cloud there stood,
With night and tempest in its womb,
And all the surface of the flood
Was ruffled by the incumbent gloom.
At once the winds huge billows roll;
The gathering waters climb the pole:
We scatter, tossing o'er the deep:
The thunder-clouds involve the day;
Dark night has snatched the heaven away:
Through rents of sky the lightnings leap:
Thus erring from our track designed,
We grope among the waters blind.
E'en Palinurus cannot trace
The boundary-line of day and night,
Or recollect his course aright
Amid the undistinguished space.
Three starless nights, three sunless days
We welter in the blinding haze.
The fourth at last the prospect clears,
And smoke from distant hills appears.
Drop sails, ply oars! the labouring crew
Toss wide the foam, and brush the blue.
Scaped from the fury of the seas,
We land upon the Strophades
(Such name in Greece they bear),
Isles in the vast Ionian main
Where fell Cel‘no and her train
Of Harpies hold their lair,
Since, driven from Phineus' door, they fled
The tables where of old they fed.
So foul a plague for human crime
Ne'er issued from the Stygian slime.
A maid above, a bird below:
Noisome and foul the belly's flow:
The hands are taloned: Famine bleak
Sits ever ghastly on the cheek.
Soon as we gain the port, we see
Sleek herds of oxen pasturing free,
And goats, without a swain to guard,
Dispersed along the grassy sward.
We seize our weapons, lay them dead,
And call on Jove the spoil to share;
Then on the winding beach we spread
Our couches, and enjoy the fare;
When sudden from the mountains swoop,
Fierce charging down, the Harpy troop,
Devour, contaminate, befoul,
With sickening stench and hideous howl.
A second time we take our seat,
Deep in a hollowed rock's retreat,
Protected by a leafy screen
Of forestry and quivering green,
There spread the tables, skin the flesh,
And light our altar-fires afresh.
A second time the assailants fly
From other regions of the sky,
With crooked claws the banquet waste,
And poison whatsoe'er they taste.
I charge my crews to draw the sword
And battle with the fiendish horde.
They act as bidden, and conceal
Along the grass the glittering steel.
So when the rush of wings once more
Is heard along the bending shore,
Misenus sounds his loud alarms
From the hill's top, and calls to arms:
And on we rush in novel war,
These foul sea-birds to maim and mar.
In vain: no weapon's stroke may cleave
The texture of their feathery mail:
They soar into the air, and leave
On food half-gnawn their loathsome trail:
All but Cel‘no: she, curst seer,
Speaks from a rock these words of fear:
"What! would ye fight, false perjured race?
Fight for the beeves your greed has slain,
And unoffending Harpies chase
From their hereditary reign?
Now listen, and attentive lay
Deep in your hearts the things I say.
The fate by Jove to Ph bus shown,
By Ph bus' self to me made known 
Ay, tremble, for in me ye view
The Furies' queen I tell to you.
To Italy in haste ye drive,
With winds at your command:
Go then, in Italy arrive,
And draw your ships to land:
But ere your town with walls ye fence,
Fierce famine, retribution dread
For this your murderous violence,
Shall make you eat your boards for bread.
She spoke, and vanished 'mid the wood:
Chill horror froze my comrades' blood:
No more of arms: the prayer, the vow
They fain would make their weapons now,
Whate'er the monsters, powers divine,
Or birds ill-omened and malign.
With outstretched hands my father prays
The God above, and offerings pays:
'Heaven, bar these threatenings: Heaven, avert
Such horror, and protect desert!'
Then bids the crews their ships unbind
And stretch the mainsheet to the wind.
The south wind freshens in the sail:
We hurry o'er the tide,
Where'er the helmsman and the gale
Conspire our course to guide:
Now rises o'er the foamy flood
Zacynthos with its crown of wood,
Dulichium, Same, Neritos,
Whose rocky sides the waves emboss:
The crags of Ithaca we flee,
Laertes' rugged sovereignty,
Nor in our flight forget to curse
The land that was Ulysses' nurse.
Soon Leucas rears its cloud-capped head,
And Ph bus, whom the seamen dread.
Hither we turn our barks at last,
And near his city land;
The anchors from the prows are cast,
The keels are on the strand.
So, given a while on land to stay,
Our lustral rites to Jove we pay,
And light the votive flames,
And make the shores of Actium gay
With Ilium's festal games.
With pride my merry comrades strip
And oil them for the wrestler's grip,
True to the wont of Troy:
So many Argive towns o'erpast,
And flight 'mid circling foes held fast,
O, but the thought was joy!
Meantime the sun rolls round the year,
And winter makes the waters drear.
The brazen circle of a shield
Which mighty Abas wont to wield
I fasten to the temple-gate,
And thus my deed commemorate,
'’neas fixes on these doors
Arms won from Danaan conquerors:
Then give my crews the word to quit
The port, and on their benches sit.
With emulous zeal they smite the deep,
And o'er the wavy level sweep.
Ph‘acia's heights from view we hide,
And coast along Epirot lands:
Then in Chaonia's harbour ride
Nigh where Buthrotum's city stands.
Arrived, I hear a wondrous thing,
A Grecian crown on Trojan brows:
They tell me Helenus is king
Of Pyrrhus' realm with Pyrrhus' spouse,
And sad Andromache restored
Once more to a compatriot lord.
At once I burn with strong desire
To greet them, and the tale enquire;
So from the port I take my way,
And leave my vessels in the bay.
Andromache, it chanced to fall,
There in a grove without the wall
Beside a mimic Simois' wave
Was making funeral festival
At Hector's counterfeited grave,
Raised by her hands, a grassy heap,
With altars twain, whereat to weep.
When as she saw my near advance
And marked our Trojan cognizance,
A while distracted and amazed
She stood, and stiffened as she gazed:
The life-blood leaves her cheeks:
She faints: at last from earth upraised,
In faltering tones she speaks:
'Real, is it real, the face I view,
A harbinger of tidings true?
Say, are you living? or if dead,
Then where is Hector?' so she said,
And tears in copious torrents shed,
And filled the air with cries:
Thus, as her tide of passion flows,
Few broken words I interpose:
'Ay, I am living, living still
Through all extremity of ill:
No dream your sense belies.
But say, alas! what new estate
Receives you, fallen from such a mate?
What fortune matches the degree
Of Hector's own Andromache?
Still wear you Pyrrhus' nuptial yoke?'
She dropped her voice, and softly spoke
With lowly downcast eyes:
'O happy more than all beside,
The Priameian maid,
Who for her dead foe's pleasure died
Beneath her city's shade,
Not drawn for servitude, nor led
A captive to a conqueror's bed,
While we, our country laid in dust,
To exile dragged o'er many a wave,
Have stooped to Pyrrhus' haughty lust,
His infant's mother and his slave!
A Spartan marriage tempts the youth:
He plights Hermione his truth;
Cast off, to Helenus I fall,
So wills our master, thrall to thrall.
But soon Orestes, mad with crime,
And wroth to lose his promised bride,
Smote Pyrrhus in unguarded time,
And at the altar-fire he died.
On Helenus, the tyrant slain,
Devolves a portion of his reign:
Who calls the realm beneath his hand
From Chaon's name Chaonian land,
And crowns the hill, in sign of power,
With Pergamus, our Dardan tower.
But you what destiny from heaven,
What stress of wind your bark has driven
Unknowing on our coast?
And lives he yet, whom once at Troy 
Ascanius? dwells there in the boy
Grief for his mother lost?
Feels he the hereditary flame
His growing spirit fire
At Hector's and ’neas' name,
His uncle and his sire?'
So poured she her impassioned wail,
Still weeping on without avail,
When girt with royal retinue,
King Helenus appears in view,
Acknowledges his friends of Troy,
And leads us to his home with joy,
And as our fainting hearts he cheers,
With words of welcome mixes tears.
I see a mimic Trojan state,
A Pergamus that apes the great,
A dried-up Xanthus' channel trace,
And other Sc‘an gates embrace.
Nor less my Trojan comrades share
The monarch's hospitable care:
In spacious cloisters entertained
'Neath the hall's roof the wine they drained,
And goblets for libation hold,
While the rich banquet gleams in gold.
Two days had passed: the favouring gale
Invites the fleet and swells the sail:
Bent on departure, I accost
With words like these our sacred host:
'True son of Troy, whose heaven-taught skill
Perceives the signs of Ph bus' will,
The tripods, and the Clarian bays,
The secret of night's starry maze,
And birds, their voices and their ways,
Speak for the accordant sense of Heaven
Fair presage for my course has given;
Each God has charged me to explore
In far-off seas Italia's shore;
Cel‘no's harpy voice alone
Makes prodigies and vengeance known
And famine's foulest horror say,
What perils first beset my way?
What counsel following may I cope
With toils so great in manful hope?'
Then Helenus with slaughtered kine
Appeases first the powers divine,
The fillets from his head
Unbinds, and to Apollo's fane
Conducts me, while in every vein
I feel the presence dread:
And thus from his prophetic tongue
The message of the future rung:
'O Goddess-born! for broad and clear
The augury of your proud career,
So lie the lots in Jove's dark urn:
So the dread Three their spindles turn 
Now listen, while, to give you ease
In wandering o'er yon stranger seas
And help you to the port you seek,
A fragment of your fate I speak:
Unknown to Helenus the rest,
Or Juno locks it in his breast.
Learn first that Italy, which seems
So near, you grasp it in your dreams,
And think to anchor in its bay,
As though within your ken it lay,
A pathless path o'er leagues of foam
Divides from this our distant home.
First in Trinacrian water plied,
Your oar must tug against the tide,
First must your weary galleys keep
Long vigils on the Ausonian deep,
Must pass the lurid lake of ghosts
And skirt ’‘an Circe's coasts,
Ere, free from danger, you may found
Your city on the destined ground.
Now hear the tokens I impart,
And store them up within your heart.
When, as you roam in anxious mood
Beside a still sequestered flood,
'Neath fringing holms before your eye
A thirty-farrowed sow shall lie,
Her white length stretching o'er the ground,
Her young, as white, her teats around:
That spot shall see the promised town,
Shall see Troy's heavy load laid down.
Nor shudder at the doom of dread
That tells of eating boards for bread:
Fate in her time shall find a way,
And Ph bus waits on souls that pray.
But, for Italia's neighbour shore,
On whose near beach our billows roar,
Avoid it: there in every place
Has settled Argos' hated race.
Here Locrian tribes, from Naryx come,
Have found them an Italian home:
Here o'er Salentum's conquered plains
Idomeneus the Cretan reigns:
While here Petilia's tiny tower
Is manned by Philoctetes' power.
Nay, when upon Italian land,
Transported o'er the main, you stand
And pay your offerings on the strand,
Ere yet you light your altars, spread
A purple covering o'er your head,
Lest sudden bursting on your sight
Some hostile presence mar the rite.
Thus worship you, and thus your train,
And sons unborn the rite retain.
But when Sicilia's shore you near,
And dim Pelorus' strait grows clear,
Seek the south coast, though long the run
To make its round: the northern shun.
These lands, they say, by rupture strange
(So much can time's dark process change)
Were cleft in sunder long agone,
When erst the twain had been but one:
Between them rushed the deep, and rent
The island from the continent,
And now with interfusing tides
'Twixt severed lands and cities glides.
There Scylla guards the right-hand coast:
The left is fell Charybdis' post;
Thrice from the lowest gulf she draws
The water down her giant jaws,
Thrice sends it foaming back to day,
And deluges the heaven with spray.
But Scylla crouches in the gloom
Deep in a cavern's monstrous womb;
Thence darts her ravening mouth, and drags
The helpless vessels on the crags.
Above she shows a human face
And breasts resembling maiden grace:
Below, 'tis all a hideous whale,
Wolf's belly linked to fish's tail.
Far better past Pachynus' cape
Your journey's tedious circuit shape,
Than catch one glimpse of Scylla's cell
And hear those grisly hellhounds yell.
And now, if Helenus speak sooth,
If Ph bus fill his soul with truth,
One charge, one sovereign charge I press,
And stamp it with reiterate stress
Deep in your memory: first of all
On Juno, mighty Juno, call:
Pay vows to Juno: overbear
Her queenly soul with gift and prayer:
So wafted o'er Trinacria's main,
Italia you at length shall gain.
There when you land at Cum‘'s town,
Where forests o'er Avernus frown,
Your eyes shall see the frenzied maid
Who spells the future in the shade
Of her deep cavern, and consigns
To scattered leaves her mystic lines.
These, when the words of fate are traced,
She leaves within her cavern placed;
Awhile they rest in order ranged,
The sequence and the place unchanged.
But should the breeze through chance-oped door
Whirl them in air 'twixt roof and floor,
She lets them flutter, nor takes pain
To set them in their rank again:
The pilgrims unresolved return,
And her prophetic threshold spurn.
So do not you: nor count too dear
The hours you lavish on the seer,
But, though your comrades chide your stay
And breezes whisper 'hence away,'
Approach her humbly, and entreat
Herself the presage to repeat,
And open of her own free choice
The prisoned flow of tongue and voice.
The martial tribes of Italy,
The story of your wars to be,
And how to face, or how to fly
Each cloud that darkens on your sky,
Her lips shall tell, and with success
The remnant of your journey bless.
Thus far may run these words of mine.
Go on, and make our Troy divine.'
So spoke the seer, and as he ends
Rich presents to my vessel sends:
Carved ivory and massy gold
And silver stores he in the hold,
And caldrons of Dodona's mould,
A hauberk twined of golden chain,
A helm adorned with flowing mane,
Which Pyrrhus wore: nor lacks my sire
Due bounty, matching his desire.
He finds us horses, finds us guides,
And oars and equipage provides.
Meantime Anchises bids to sail,
Nor longer cheat the expectant gale:
And thus Apollo's seer addressed
In courteous phrase his ancient guest:
'Great chief, fair Venus' honoured mate,
Twice saved by heaven from Ilium's fate,
See there Ausonia's coast at hand!
Before your fleet it lies.
Approach, but think not there to rest:
No, skirt it, and pursue your quest:
Far distant