Book III

“When Asia’s realm and Priam’s guiltless race
The high gods doomed to overthrow, when fell
Proud Ilium, and all Neptune’s city Troy
In dust lies smoking, we are driven to seek
By auguries from heaven far outland homes
And lands unpeopled, and a fleet we build
Close underneath Antandros and the heights
Of Phrygian Ida, doubtful whither fate
Dooms us to journey, where vouchsafes to stay;
And men we muster. Scarce had summer dawned
When, as my sire Anchises now bade hoist
Sail to the breath of fate, with tears I quit
My native shores, the harbours, and the plains
Where once was Troy. An exile forth I fare
Upon the deep with comrades and with son.
My hearth’s Penates, and the mighty gods.

“There lies a land afar with widespread plains
Dear to the war-god, which the Thracians till.
Once swayed by fierce Lycurgus, from of old
With hospitable hearth-ties knit to Troy,
While yet her fortune stood. Hither I sail,
And, with fate frowning on my first essay.
Upon the winding shore trace city walls.
And, from my own name, name them Aeneadae.

“Unto Dione’s child, my mother, I,
And to the gods, was doing sacrifice,
As prosperers of our toil, to heaven’s high king
Slaughtering a sleek bull on the shore: hard by
A hillock stood with cornel-coppice crowned.
And myrtles bristling thick with spear-shaft wands.
Approaching, by main force I strove to pluck
The greenwood from the ground, that I might deck
With leafy boughs the altar, when a sight
Portentous meets my gaze, and strange to tell.
For from the first tree, torn with severed roots
From out the soil, trickle black gouts of blood.
That stain the earth with gore. My limbs quake chilled
With horror, and cold fear congeals my blood.
A second stubborn wand once more I turn
To pluck me, and probe deep the hidden cause;
And black blood follows from the bark once more.
Much pondering in my heart, I ’gan to pray
The forest-nymphs and sire Gradivus too,
Guardian of Getic land, to prosper well
The vision, and make light the omen; but.
When for the third time, and with mightier heft.
The spear-wands I assail, and tug and strain
With bent knees ’gainst the opposing sand — should I
Speak or be silent? from the mound’s recess
A piteous groan is heard, and to mine ears
An answer borne: ‘Why rendest thou a wretch
Like me, Aeneas? At last within my grave
Spare me, and spare those righteous hands to stain.
Troy-born am I, no alien to thee,
Nor from a mere log flow these blood-drops: ah!
Fly, fly the ruthless land, the shore of greed;
For I am Polydorus, here transfixed
And overwhelmed by crop of iron spears
With pointed pikes upspringing.’ Then, indeed,
Quelled with distracting fear I stood amazed:
My hair rose, and the voice stuck in my throat.

“This Polydorus, with vast weight of gold,
Unhappy Priam erst had secretly
To care of Thracia’s king consigned, when now
Misdoubting of the Dardan arms, he saw
His city girdled by the leaguers’ ring.
But Teucria’s power once crushed, her fortune fled.
The Thracian, following the victorious arms
And star of Agamemnon, snaps all ties
Of honour, and, Polydorus done to death,
Lays his rude gripe upon the gold. To what
Drivest thou not man’s heart, O lust of gold
Accursed? When the trembling left my frame,
To chosen heads of the people I recount —
My sire in chief — the portents of the gods.
Demand their judgment. All are of one mind
To quit the land of crime, fly friendship stained.
And give our fleet the south wind. So we pay
The rites of death to Polydorus, heap
A huge mound o’er him: altars to his shade
Sad with blue fillets and black cypress stand.
And round them, with locks loosed in wonted wise.
The Ilian women: cups of milk a-foam
Yet warm, and bowls of consecrated blood
We offer, and lay the spirit in the tomb,
And with loud voices raise the farewell cry.

“Soon as the deep gave promise fair, and winds
Had lulled the main, and Auster soughing low
Gave seaward summons, to the beach my crews
Haul down the ships, and throng the shore. Then forth
From harbour fare we; lands and cities fade.
In the mid main a sacred home there lies.
Unto the Nereids’ mother dearer none,
Nor to Aegean Neptune: this of old
Around the shores and sea-rims wandering
With filial love the Bearer of the bow
To Myconos high-cragged and Gyarus bound,
And steadfast planting taught to laugh at storms.
Hither I sail; a safe port’s halcyon calm
Here greets the weary crews; to land we leap,
Worship Apollo’s town. King Anius —
King among men, and priest of Phoebus too —
Brow-bound with fillets and the sacred bay.
Speeds towards us; in Anchises an old friend
He knows; so, clasping hospitable hands,
His roof we enter.

“I was worshipping
The antique Stone-built temple of the god:
Give us a home that shall be ours, O lord
Of Thymbra; ramparts to the way-worn give,
A breed of sons, a lasting city: keep
Unscathed Troy’s second bulwark, what remains
’Scaped from the Danai and Achilles fell.
Whom must we follow? whither bid’st us go?
Where fix our habitation? Father, grant
A sign from heaven, and sink into our souls.’
“Scarce had I spoke when suddenly meseemed
All things ’gan tremble, doors and sacred bay;
And the whole mountain moves; the shrine flies ope,
The caldron rumbles. Prone to earth we fall,
While to our ears is borne a voice: ‘O sons
Of Dardanus long-suffering, that same land,
Which bare you first from your ancestral stem.
Shall to her fertile bosom welcome back:
Seek out your ancient mother; there shall reign
The house of Aeneas o’er the world’s wide shores,
And her sons’ sons, and all their seed to be.’
So Phoebus: and a mighty joy arose
Confused, tumultuous; with one voice they cry,
What is this city whither Phoebus now
Summons the wanderers, bids them to return? ‘
Then, pondering records of the men of old,
Thus spake my sire: ‘Hearken, ye lords of Troy,
And learn what hopes are yours: amidst the main
Lies Crete, of mighty Jove the island, where
Mount Ida, and where the cradle of our race;
A hundred mighty towns folk dwell in there,
A realm most fertile whence our earliest sire
Teucer, if rightly I recall the tale,
Was wafted first to the Rhoetean shore.
And chose a site for sovereignty; as yet
Nor Ilium nor the towers of Pergamus
Had stood: men dwelt in the low valleys; hence
The mother, haunter of Mount Cybele,
The Corybantian cymbals, Ida’s grove;
Hence the close secret of her rites, and those
Yoked lions harnessed to her queenly car.
Up therefore! hie we where Heaven’s bidding leads.
Appease the winds, and seek the Gnosian realm:
Nor is ’t a long run thither; Jove to aid,
The third dawn lands us on the Cretan shore.’
So saying, due offerings at the shrine he slays,
A bull for Neptune, a bull too for thee,
O fair Apollo, a lamb black for storm.
White for the favouring Zephyrs.

“Rumour flies
That Prince Idomeneus, a banished man.
Hath quit his father’s realm, the shores of Crete
Abandoned, that her hearths are void of foes,
Homes empty for our advent. Straight we leave
Ortygia’s harbour, and o’er ocean fly.
Past Naxos with her Bacchant-haunted heights.
And green Donysa, past Olearos,
And snowy Paros, and the Cyclades
Sprent o’er the main, and we thrid seas that race
By crowded islands: high the seamen’s shout
Rises amid their changeful toil: the crews
Bid make for Crete and for our sires: a breeze
Springing astern convoys us, and at length
To the Curetes’ ancient shores we glide.
So eagerly my chosen city’s walls
I ’gin to build, Pergamea calling it,
And bid my people glorying in the name
Cleave to their hearths, and rear a roofed hold.
Scarce were the ships hauled dry ashore, the youth
Busied with marriage and new fields to till —
I laws and homes assigning — when there fell
Upon men’s limbs from heaven’s infected arch
A sudden wasting, and on trees and crops
Piteous contagion — a year fraught with death.
They left their pleasant lives, or dragged about
Sick bodies; Sirius too baked bare the fields;
Grass withered; the sick crop denied her food.
Back to Ortygia’s oracle my sire
Bids us retraverse Ocean, and implore
The grace of Phoebus; to our weary plight
What end vouchsafes he, whence would have us seek
Aid for our trouble, whither steer our course?

“’Twas night: sleep held all creatures upon earth,
When lo! the sacred emblems of the gods
The Phrygian Penates, out of Troy
Borne with me from amidst the blazing town
Seemed, as I lay in slumber, to stand forth
Before mine eyes, clear in a flood of light.
Where streamed the full moon through the casement-shaft.
Then thus to address me, and allay my pain
With words like these: ‘What yonder thou shouldst learn
Arrived Ortygia, from Apollo’s lips,
Lo! here he utters, unsolicited
Sending us to thy very threshold. We,
Who from Dardania’s burning have thyself
And thine arms followed, in the fleet thou led’st
Crossing the swollen deep — even we no less
Will lift to heaven thy sons that shall be born,
Grant empire to thy city. But do thou
Found mighty ramparts for the mighty, nor
Shirk the long toil of flight. Shift hence thy home:
Not these the shores portended, nor in Crete
Doth Delian Apollo bid thee dwell.
There is a spot by Greeks Hesperia named,
A land of old, mighty in arms, in soil
Prolific, which the Oenotrian heroes tilled.
Now by a later race called Italy,
If rumour lie not, from their leader’s name.
There is our sure home; hence sprang Dardanus,
And sire Iasius, founder of our race.
Arise, be glad, and to thy father old
Bear this no doubtful mandate, that he seek
Corythus and Ausonia’s land; the fields
Of Dicte Jove denies thee! ‘Sore amazed
By such a vision and the voice of gods —
Nor was that slumber: face to face I seemed
Their mien, their wreathed locks to recognise,
And their divine regard, while a chill sweat
Over my whole frame ran — from bed I leap,
And raising voice and upturned hands to heaven.
Pour unpolluted offerings on the hearth.
That homage paid, exulting I make known
All to Anchises, point by point revealed.
The twofold line, the double stock, himself
Fooled by a new confusion of old lands.
He owns, then cries aloud, ‘Son, long the sport
Of Ilium’s fate, Cassandra erst alone
Chanted this hap to me: I now recall
She thus foretold our destiny, and oft
Invoked Hesperia,’ oft the Italian realm.
But that the Teucrians to Hesperia’s shore
Should come indeed, who could have thought it? whom
Then would Cassandra’s prophecies have swayed?
Yield we to Phoebus’ warning, and pursue
The wiser course.’ He spake, and all with joy
His word obey; this second home we quit,
Leaving some few behind, and with sails set
Scour the waste ocean in our hollow bark.

“Soon as our galleys gained the open deep,
And now no longer land appeared, but lo!
Ocean on all sides, and on all sides sky,
Then stood a dark-blue storm-cloud o’er my head
Laden with night and tempest, and the wave
Shuddered beneath the gloom. At once the winds
Roll up the sea, and mighty billows rise:
Scattered, we toss upon the weltering waste:
Clouds wrapped the daylight, dank night stole the sky.
And fire burst through the welkin, flash on flash.
We are hurled from out our course, and wander on
O’er the blind waters. Palinurus even
Vows he discerns not day from night in heaven,
Nor in mid-wave can mind him of the track.
For three full days dim with blind mist we drift
Upon the deep, as many starless nights.
On the fourth day at length land first was seen
To crown the horizon, opening out afar
Mountains and wreathed smoke. Down drop the sails.
We rise upon our oars; with eager strain
The seamen churn the foam, and sweep the blue.

“Saved from the waves, me first the Strophad shores
Receive; the Strophades — their Grecian name —
Lie in the great Ionian, island-haunts
Of fell Celaeno and her Harpy crew,
Since Phineus’ door closed on them, and they fled
Scared from their former board. More foul than they
No portent, and no fiercer plague or wrath
Of heaven e’er rose from out the Stygian wave,
Birds maiden-faced, their belly’s excrement
Most noisome, and with hooked hands and cheeks
Blanched with eternal famine.

“Hither then
Borne safe, and entering harbour, lo! we spy
Rich herds of oxen scattered o’er the plain.
And flocks too of the goat-tribe on the grass
Untended; we rush on them with the sword,
And call upon the gods and Jove himself
To share and spoil, then on the winding shore
Pile couches up, and feast on the rich fare.
But sudden from the hills with fearful swoop
The Harpies are upon us, and clap loud
Their hurtling wings, and snatch the food away.
Polluting all things with their filthy touch;
Fearful at once their cry, and foul their smell.
In deep recess beneath a hollow rock.
Curtained with trees and bristling shade, once more
We lay the board, renew the altar-fires:
When from a diverse point of heaven once more
Out of some hidden lair the clamorous rout
Come winging round the prey with hooked feet.
And taint the food with tasting. Then I charge
My comrades seize their weapons and make war
On the fell brood. As bidden, they do, range swords
In the grass-covert, and hide shields from sight.
So when along the winding shore their swoop
Sounded, Misenus from his lofty watch
With hollow brass gives warning: to the assault
My comrades rush, and a strange warfare try —
To harry with the sword these ominous birds
Of ocean. But their feathers take no hurt.
Their flesh no wound, and, soaring swift on high,
They leave behind them the half-eaten prey
And their foul traces. One, Celaeno, perched
On a tall crag, ill-boding prophetess,
Breaks into heart-wrung utterance: ‘Is it war
For our kine slaughtered and our bullocks felled,
Sons of Laomedon — war, ye would wage
Against us, and the blameless Harpies drive
Forth from their father’s realm? Take then to heart
My words, and write them there: what prophecies
The Sire Omnipotent taught Phoebus once,
Phoebus Apollo me, I, mightiest
Of Furies, now make known to you: the goal
Ye seek is Italy; to Italy,
The winds invoking, shall ye come, be free
Her ports to enter: but your destined town
With walls ye shall not gird, till famine dire
And your outrageous onslaught upon us
Drive you to gnaw your tables and devour.’
She spake, and to the forest winged her way.
As for my comrades, a quick chill of fear
Curdled the blood within them; their hearts fell;
No more with arms, but vows and prayers they now
Bid sue for grace, or be they goddesses,
Or dread ill-omened birds: ay, and my sire
Anchises from the shore with outspread hands
Calls on the mighty ones of heaven, proclaims
Due sacrifice: ‘Ye gods, avert their threats.
Such evil hap forfend, and with your peace
Preserve the good.’ Then bids he rend away
The rope from shore, uncoil and ease the sheets.
The south winds stretch our canvas: fast we fly
Over the foaming waters, borne along
As wind and helmsman summoned. Now appears
In the sea’s midst Zacynthus and her woods,
Dulichium, Same, and the towering cliffs
Of Neritos; we hurry by the rocks
Of Ithaca, Laertes’ realm, and curse
The land that gave to fell Ulysses birth.
Soon too Leucate’s stormy peaks, and lo!
Apollo, feared of seamen, heaves in sight:
Weary, for him we make, and enter so
The little town: our anchor from the prow
Is cast, the sterns stand ranged along the shore.
So beyond hope at length achieving land,
To Jove we purify us, with our vows
Kindling the altar, and crowd Actium’s shore
With Ilian games: my comrades strip, and ply,
All smooth with oil, their native wrestling-bouts,
Glad to have ’scaped so many Argive towns,
And through the midst of foes our flight pursued.
Meanwhile the sun rolls round the mighty year.
And winter’s icy north winds fret the sea.
A shield of hollow brass, great Abas erst
Had wielded, on the portals’ front I fix,
And with this line commemorate the deed: —
Aeneas’ spoil, from Danaan conquerors won,’
Then bid them quit the harbour, man the thwarts.
With eager zeal my comrades lash the sea,
And sweep the watery floor. Anon we let
Phaeacia’s airy summits drop from view,
And skirt Epirus’ shore, till entering
The harbour of Chaonia, we draw nigh
Buthrotum’s high-built city. Here a tale
Of things incredible assails our ears,
That Helenus, Priam’s son, was reigning now
O’er Grecian cities, master of the bride
And crown of Pyrrhus, son of Aeacus.
And that Andromache had thus once more
Passed to a lord of her own race. Amazed
I stood, and my heart burned with strange desire
To accost the hero, from his lips to learn
Fortunes so strange. On from the port I fare,
Leave fleet and shore behind me, when it chanced
That nigh the city, in a grove, where flowed
A mimic Simois, Andromache
Her yearly feast was offering, gifts of grief,
Unto the ashes, summoning the shade
To Hector’s tomb, which with green turf, though void,
She had hallowed, and twin altars, where to weep.
Soon as her wildered eyes my coming saw.
With Trojan arms about me, scared at such
A portent, her limbs stiffen in mid gaze.
Warmth left her frame, she swoons, and scarce at length
Breaks the long silence: ‘Is ’t thy very face?
Com’st thou indeed with tidings, goddess-born,
A living man? or if the genial light
Hath faded from thee, where is Hector? ‘So
With showersof tears she spake, and all the place
Filled with her shrieking. To that passionate cry
Scarce can I frame brief answer, and, much moved.
Gasp out in faltering accents: ‘I indeed
Live, and my life through all extremes drag on:
Doubt not, thine eyes see truly: ah! what chance
Hurled from that height of wedded love receives, ‘
What fortune worthy of her past hath found.
Hector’s Andromache? art still the wife
Of Pyrrhus? ‘With downcast eyes and bated breath
She spake: ‘O blest beyond all women else
The maiden child of Priam, bidden to die
’Neath Troy’s tall ramparts, at the foeman’s tomb.
She who ne’er brooked the casting of the lot.
Nor, captive, touched a conquering master’s bed!
We, our home burnt, o’er distant oceans borne,
Have from Achilles’ heir endured the pride
Of youthful insolence, borne him a son
In slavery: he, wooing afterward
Leda’s Hermione, and nuptial ties
With Lacedaemon, me to Helenus,
Bondmaid to bondsman did consign. But him
Orestes, with fierce love for his stolen bride
Fired, and still goaded by the fiends of crime,
At his ancestral altars unaware.
Waylaid and slaughtered. Neoptolemus
Thus dying, a portion of the realm he swayed
Passed o’er to Helenus, who called the fields
Chaonian, and Chaonia all the land,
From Trojan Chaon, and topped the heights with this
New Pergamus and Ilian citadel.
But thou — what winds, what fates have shaped thy course?
Or what god driven unwitting to our shores?
How fares the boy Ascanius? lives he yet
And drinks the air of heaven? — whom while in Troy —
But still to his lost mother doth he yearn
With boyish love? Aeneas for his sire.
Hector his uncle — do these kindle him
To antique prowess, and mettle of a man? ‘
So poured she forth her sorrow, and long she wept
Idly, when lo! advancing from the walls.
The hero-son of Priam, Helenus,
Comes with a mighty train, and his old friends
He knows, and leads them to his home with joy.
But all his utterance broke with bursting tears.
At every forward step I recognise
Troy, but in little, here a Pergamus
The model of the mighty, there, though parched,
A river that from Xanthus takes its name,
And clasp the portals of a Scaean gate.
Along with me the Teucrians too enjoy
The friendly city; the king welcomed them
In spacious cloisters; midmost of the court
They poured out cups of Bacchus, the meats set
On golden platters, goblets in their hand.
’” And now a day and yet another day
Has come and gone; the breeze invites our sails;
The south wind swells, and puffs the canvas out,
When, with these words approaching, I thus seek
An answer from the seer: ‘Thou son of Troy,
Interpreter of heaven, who dost the will
Of Phoebus know, the tripods, and the bays
Dear to the Clarian god, the stars, and tongues
Of birds, and omens of the flying wing,
Come tell me — for the favouring voice of heaven
Hath my whole course declared, and one and all
The gods with power divine urged me to make
For Italy, and distant lands explore;
Only Celaeno with her Harpy voice
Chants a strange portent horrible to tell,
Boding fierce wrath and hideous famine — ‘Say
What perils first am I to shun, or by
What clue surmount such heights of suffering? ‘
Then with due sacrifice of slaughtered steers
First Helenus implores the grace of heaven.
Unbinds the fillets from his sacred brow,
And with his own hand to thy temple-gates,
Phoebus, leads me wildered with excess
Of godhead, then at last with priestly lips
Chants this prophetic utterance: ‘Goddess-born —
For that thou journeyest over sea, led on
By mightier omens, plain the proof, so draws
The king of gods thy destinies, and rolls
The shifting changes; such their circling course —
Few things of many, that thou may’st safelier track
Strange seas, and settle in Ausonia’s port,
I will unfold thee: what remains to know
The sister-fates from Helenus withhold,
Saturnian Juno to his tongue denies.
First, Italy, which e’en now thou deemest near,
Fain blindly to attempt the neighbouring ports,
Long tracts of country, a long pathless way,
Divide from thee: ay, in Trinacrian waves
First must thine oar be bent, and thy ships pass
The salt Ausonian main, the infernal lakes,
Aeaean Circe’s isle, ere thou may’st found
Upon safe shore thy city. And tokens I
Will give thee; do thou keep them stored in mind.
When by the wave of a sequestered stream
Thine anxious eye lights on a monstrous sow.
Under the holm-oaks on the margin laid.
With thirty head of swine new-littered, white.
Stretched out along the ground, white too the young
About her udders, know that there shall be
Thy city’s site, here a sure rest from toil.
And shudder not, though ye be doomed to gnaw
Your tables; for the Fates will find a way,
Apollo hear and aid you; but these shores.
This border of the Italian coast, that lies
Nearest, by waves of our own ocean washed.
Fly, for in all their towns dwell evil Greeks.
Here have the Locri from Narycia built
Cities, and Lyctian Idomeneus
Filled the Sallentine fields with soldiery.
Here stands Petelia, propped upon its wall.
The tiny town of Philoctetes, lord
Of Meliboea. Nay, when o’er the main
Wafted, thy fleet hath anchored, and ashore
On new-built altars thou shalt pay thy vows.
First with a purple robe veil-o’er thy locks.
Lest in mid worship, while the sacred fires
Yet burn, a foeman’s face meet thine, and mar
The omens. And this ceremonial rite
So let thy comrades, as thyself, observe,
And in its holy use thy sons abide
Blameless. But when, departing thence, the wind
Shall waft thee nigh Sicilia’s coast, and when
Pelorum’s narrow bars asunder draw.
Cleave to the leftward land, the leftward sea,
Though long the circuit; shun the right, both shore
And water. For this region once, ’tis said,
By violence and huge convulsion torn —
Such power of change is in long lapse of time —
Leapt into twain, that were one land before.
Continuous; and amidst them broke the sea,
And with its waves cut off Hesperia’s side
From Sicily’s, and flowed, a narrow firth,
’Twixt fields and cities sundered, shore from shore.
The right side Scylla doth beset, the left
Implacable Charybdis, ay and thrice
In the deep whirl of her abyss sheer down
She sucks huge billows, and anon to heaven
Rears them in turn, and whips the stars with spray.
But Scylla, penned in a blind cave’s recess,
Thrusts forth her mouth, drags vessels on the rocks,
Upward, of human visage, and a maid
Fair-breasted to the waist, beneath, a fish
Of bulk portentous, and with dolphin’s tail
Joined to wolf’s belly. Better to lag round
Trinacrian Pachynus as your goal.
The long slow circuit fetch, than once have seen
Deformed Scylla in her cavern vast,
And rocks that to her dark blue sea-dogs ring.
Ay, and if Helenus foreknoweth aught.
And as a seer win credence, if his soul
Brim with Apollo’s truth, one prescient word
Ay, one for all, I’ll give thee, goddess-born,
And urge the admonition o’er and o’er;
Great Juno’s godhead honour first with prayer;
To Juno chant thy willing vows, and quell
With suppliant gifts the mighty queen: for so
Victor at last, Trinacria left behind,
Shalt thou to Italy’s far bourne be sped.
Here landed, when to Cumae’s town thou comest.
The holy lakes, Avernus’ echoing groves.
Thou shalt the frenzied prophetess behold,
Who in a rock’s deep hollow chants the Fates,
To leaves committing characters and names.
All prophecies upon the leaves impressed
The maid in order ranges, left to lie
Shut up within the cavern: they remain
Unmoved in place, nor from their order stir.
But none the less, when with the turning hinge
A draught of air strikes, and the open door
Unsettles the light leaves, ne’er heeds she then
To catch them, as they flutter round the cave,
Restore their places, or fit line to line:
Men go their ways uncounselled, and detest
The Sibyl’s seat. There count no loss of time
Too dear, though comrades chide thee, though the voyage
Press and provoke thy sails to sea, and thou
Might’st fill their favouring hollows, but approach
The prophetess, and with thy prayers implore
Herself to chant the oracles, and unlock
Her willing lips in speech. She will unfold
The tribes of Italy, and wars to be.
And how to shun or suffer every toil.
And to thy prayer vouchsafe a prosperous voyage.
Thus far my voice may warn thee: up, away!
And by thy deeds lift Troy in might to heaven.’
“So spake the seer with kindly word, then gifts
Heavy with gold and carven ivory
Bids to the ships be brought, stows massive silver
And Dodonean caldrons in our keels,
A ring-wrought hauberk triple-twilled with gold,
And superb helmet, cone and flowing crest,
The arms of Neoptolemus. My sire
Has gifts too of his own: horses beside
And guides he sends with us, fills up the tale
Of oarsmen, and equips the crews with arms.

“Meanwhile Anchises bids rig out the fleet
Nor longer dally with the wafting wind.
Him the interpreter of Phoebus then
With high regard addressed: ‘Anchises, deemed
Meet for the holy hand of Venus, loved
Of heaven, twice rescued from Troy’s falling towers,
There lies Ausonia’s land: make sail and seize it;
Yet hold the deep, pass by the nearer coast.
Needs must thou; of Ausonia, see, the tract
Apollo doth reveal lies yonder far.
Go forth,’ said he, ‘in thy son’s goodness blest!
Why lengthen words, delaying while I speak
The rising gales? ‘Nor less Andromache,
Sad at the final parting, brings forth robes
With gold woof broidered for Ascanius,
And Phrygian scarf, nor scants the guerdon due.
But loads him with her loom-gifts, and thus speaks:
These too, as tokens of my hand, receive,
Dear boy, in witness of the lasting love
Of Hector’s wife Andromache; ay, take
The last gifts of thy kin, sole likeness thou
Still left me of my own Astyanax!
Such eyes, such hands, such looks he wore; his youth
Had now been ripening to like years with thine.’
I, as I left them, spake with rising tears:
Live, and be happy, ye, whose destined course
Is now accomplished; we from fate to fate
Must still be summoned, but your rest is won;
No plain of ocean need ye plough, pursue
No still retreating far Ausonian fields.
A copy here of Xanthus, and a Troy
Do ye behold which your own hands have made,
I trust with happier omen, and less apt
For Grecian inroad. But if ever I
To Tiber come, and Tiber’s bordering fields,
And see the ramparts to my race assigned.
Our sister cities and their kindred folk,
Here in Epirus, in Hesperia there.
Who boast the self-same founder, Dardanus,
The self-same fortunes, we will yet some day
Take, and of twain create one Troy in heart:
That task be left to our posterity.’
“On through the deep we speed, and skirt the near
Ceraunians, whence the way to Italy,
And shortest passage o’er the waves. Meanwhile,
The sun drops, and the hills are veiled in gloom.
On the earth’s welcome bosom, meting out
The oars by lot, we stretch us by the wave,
And, on the dry beach scattered, court repose;
Slumber bedews our weary limbs. Nor yet.
Driven by the Hours, was Night to her mid course
Attaining, when, no sluggard, from his couch
Springs Palinurus, every wind explores,
Catching the breeze with listening ears: he marks
All stars that swim the silent sky, surveys
Arcturus, and the showery Hyades,
The Twin Bears, and Orion armed in gold.
Seeing a set calm in a cloudless heaven.
Loudly he signals from the stern; our camp
Is broken up; we venture on the voyage,
Spreading our sail-wings. And Aurora now
Was reddening, and the stars were put to flight,
When in the distance we descry dim hills,
And Italy’s low coast-line. ‘Italy ‘
First cries Achates; Italy our crews
Hail with a shout of triumph. Then my sire
Anchises wreathed a mighty bowl with flowers.
And filled with wine, and called upon the gods,
Standing upon the lofty stern. ‘Ye gods,
Lords both of land and ocean with their storms,
Waft us a fair course, and breathe favouring gales.’
The wished-for breezes freshen, and the port
Widens with narrowing distance, and clear seen
The temple of Minerva tops the height.
My comrades furl the sails, and shoreward steer.
The harbour there by eastern waves is bent
Bow-wise; with salt spray foam the barrier cliffs;
The port itself lies hidden; the towered rocks
Lower their arms, on either side a wall;
The temple from the shore retires. Four steeds
Here on the grass, first omen, I beheld,
Grazing the plain at large, and white as snow.
Then Sire Anchises; ‘War it is thou bringest,
O stranger-country! Steeds are armed for war.
And war these herds portend us. Yet at times
The same beasts use to bow them to the car.
And, yoked together, bear the friendly rein;
Yea, there is hope of peace too.’ Then we pray
To sacred Pallas, queen of clanging arms.
Who first with joy received us, and with heads
Before the altar veiled in Phrygian robe,
As Helenus had so straitly charged us, pay
To Argive Juno the full rites prescribed.
Then without stay, each solemn vow performed,
Shifting the sail-yard horns, we quit the homes
Of Greek-born folk, and their suspected fields.
Next, known to Hercules, if true the tale,
Tarentum’s gulf is sighted, while in front
Rises Lacinium’s goddess, Caulon’s heights,
Ship-wrecking Scylaceum. Then, far off
Out of the deep comes looming into sight
Trinacrian Aetna, and a mighty moan
Of ocean hear we, and rocks buffeted
Afar, and broken sounds upon the beach;
The shoals leap up, and sand and surges mix.
Then Sire Anchises: ‘Doubtless this is that
Charybdis, these the crags and fearful rocks
That Helenus foretold. Rescue, my friends!
Rise on your oars together.’ Nought they fail
To do his bidding, and Palinurus first
To the waves leftward turns her groaning prow;
Leftward the whole fleet strain with oar and breeze.
On the arched billow we mount up to heaven.
And once more, as the floods fail under us.
Sink to the shades below. Thrice roared the rocks
Amid their craggy hollows, thrice we saw
The foam dashed up, and the stars raining spray.
Meanwhile, outwearied, wind and sun alike
Failed us, and, all unwitting of the track,
To the Cyclopes’ shores we drift.

“There lies
A harbour sheltered from the wind’s approach.
Spacious itself; but Aetna hard at hand
With hideous ruin thunders, and anon
Shoots a dark cloud to heaven of whirling smoke
Pitch-black, with glowing ashes, and aloft
Heaves balls of fire, and licks the stars, anon
Rocks and the uptorn entrails of the hill
Spews forth, and heaps the molten stones in air
Booming, and from his lowest depth upboils.
’Tis said the huge frame of Enceladus
Half-burnt by lightning, ’neath this mountain mass
Lies buried, while giant Aetna, piled above.
Bursts into channels, and breathes forth the fire:
Oft as he shifts his side for weariness,
Trinacria’s whole bulk with the rumbling quakes,
And curtains heaven with smoke. Screened by the woods.
That night the monstrous portent we endure,
Yet cause of sound discern not: for no stars
Were burning, nor the vault was bright above
With constellations, but a dark pall hid
The heavens, and dead night held the moon in cloud.

“And now the next dawn in the utmost east
Was breaking, and Aurora had dispelled
Dank shadows from the sky, when suddenly
Out of the woods, by extreme hunger worn,
Stalks the strange figure of an unknown man.
In piteous plight, and stretching suppliant hands
Toward the shore. We turn to gaze on him.
Ghastly his squalor, with a beard grown wild,
A garb thorn-fastened: in all else a Greek,
And in his country’s arms once sent to Troy.
He when our Dardan guise, our Trojan arms.
Far off he saw, a little at the sight
Hung back afeared, and stayed his steps, but soon
With tears and prayers ran headlong to the shore:
Now, by the stars, and by the gods above.
Ay, and this light of heaven we breathe, take me.
Ye Teucrians, I conjure you; bear me hence
To whatso land ye will; it shall suffice.
One of the Danaan fleet am I, I know it.
Own I assailed your Ilian hearths with war:
Wherefore, so heinous if my crime’s offence,
Fling me piecemeal into the waves, or drown
In the vast ocean. If I die, ’twill be
Joy to have died by human hands.’ So saying.
He clasped our knees, to our knees, writhing, clung.
We urge him say what, and from whence, he is,
Next, how by fortune bandied, to confess.
My sire Anchises, with no long delay,
Himself extends his right hand to the youth,
And with the ready pledge assures him; he.
Fear banished, speaks at length: ‘An Ithacan
By birth am I, and comrade of ill-starred
Ulysses; Achaemenides my name;
Since poor my father Adamastus — would
That fortune still were mine!— I came to Troy.
Here in their haste these cruel doors to quit,
My friends forgot, and in the monstrous cave
Of Cyclops left me. ’Tis a house of gore
And bloody banquetings, huge, dim within;
Himself, uptowering, strikes the stars on high —
Ye gods, rid earth of such a plague — by none
To be eyed lightly, or in speech addressed.
On wretches’ flesh and their dark blood he feeds.
I myself saw of our own number twain,
In the cave’s midst as he lay backward, clutched
By his huge hand, and dashed against the rock.
And the floor drenched and swimming with their blood:
Saw, when their limbs, all dripping with black gore.
He munched, the warm joints quivering ’twixt his teeth;
But not, I trow, unpunished: nor such things
Ulysses brooked, nor was the Ithacan
In that sore strait forgetful of himself.
For when, with feasting gorged, and drowned in wine.
The monster dropped his lolling neck, and lay
Along the cave, disgorging as he slept,
Man’s blood, and morsels mixed with gory wine.
We, the lots drawn, and the great powers implored.
Pour round him in one flood on every side,
And with a whetted brand bore out his eye,
Monstrous, hid sole beneath the scowling brow.
Like Argive shield or lamp of Phoebus, glad
Thus to avenge at length our comrades’ shades.
But fly, ye hapless, fly, rend rope from shore:
For such, so vast, as Polyphemus here
Penning in hollow cave his fleecy flocks,
Or wringing dry their udders, a hundred more
House them at large along this winding coast,
Fell Cyclops-crew, and roam the mountain-tops.
Thrice hath the moon now filled her horns with light,
While with the beasts, in the lone forest-lairs
They haunt, I drag my life on, from the rock
Peering the vast Cyclopes to behold,
Or trembling at their voices and their tread.
Berries and stony cornels from the boughs.
And uptorn herb-roots yield me sorry fare.
All quarters scanning I at last beheld
This fleet of yours stand shoreward, and to this,
Prove what it might, consigned me; ’tis enough
To have escaped the monster-brood: do ye
Rather, by any death, cut short my days.’
“Scarce had he spoke, when on the mountain-top
Himself, in mighty bulk among his flocks
Moving, and making for the well-known shore.
The shepherd Polyphemus we descry —
Monster fell, shapeless, vast, of eyesight reft.
Lopped by his hand a pine tree guides his steps
And steadies; his woolly sheep beside him stray.
Sole pleasure, these, and solace of his ill.
Soon as he touched the deep waves, reached the main.
He laves therewith the flow of gore from out
His eyeless socket, and gnashing with his teeth
Groans, and through ocean now at midmost wades;
Nor wetted yet the flood his towering sides.
Trembling we speed our flight afar, take up —
Meed well deserved — our suppliant, silently
Cut loose the rope, and bending forward sweep
With emulous oars the ocean. He perceived,
And turned his steps toward the sound: but when
No power is his to reach us with his hand,
Nor skill to match the Ionian waves in chase,
A boundless roar he raises, that the sea
And all its billows trembled, and, far in.
Affrighted was the land of Italy,
And Aetna bellowed through his winding caves.
Thereat the race of Cyclops, from the woods
And lofty mountains startled, to the port
Rushes, and throngs the shore. We see them stand.
Each with vain-lowering eye, that brotherhood
Of Aetna, and with heads upborne to heaven,
Grim conclave: as on some tall mountain-top
When skyey oaks, or cone-hung cypresses —
Jove’s lofty forest, or Diana’s grove —
Stand clustering: us keen terror headlong goads.
Whithersoever to slack out the sheets.
And spread our canvas to the following breeze.
But Helenus’ late warning bids them not
’Twixt Scylla and Charybdis hold their course —
On this or that side but a step from death:
Backward to steer the purpose holds; when lo!
The north wind from Pelorum’s narrow home
Is launched upon us: I am wafted by
Pantagia’s mouth of living rock, the bay
Of Megara, and low-lying Thapsus. Such
The shores he showed, unthridding all the track
Of his past wanderings — Achaemenides,
Ill-starred Ulysses’ comrade.

“An isle lies
Stretched full in front of the Sicanian bay.
Wave-washed Plemmyrium, called by men of old
Ortygia. Hither, the tale runs, Alpheus
River of Elis, worked his hidden way
Beneath the sea, now, issuing at thy mouth
Blends, Arethusa, with Sicilian waves.
The mighty guardians of the spot, as bidden,
We worship; then the o’er-fertile soil I pass
Of marshy-banked Helorus. Hence we skirt
Pachynum’s lofty cliffs and jutting crags;
Far off shows Camarina, fate-ordained
To be molested never, and Gela’s fields,
And Gela, from its furious river named;
Thence towering Acragas displays afar
Her mighty walls, once breeder of brave steeds:
Thee too I leave behind me, with sails spread,
Palmy Selinus, and I thrid the shoals
Of Lilybaeum, with blind rocks beset.
Anon the harbour and the joyless shore
Of Drepanum receives me. Here alas!
So many ocean-storms o’er-blown, I lose —
Lightener of every chance and every care —
My sire Anchises. Best of fathers, here
Thou leav’st me to my weariness, alas!
Snatched from those mighty perils all in vain.
Nor did the prophet Helenus, ’mid all
His fearful bodings, of this grief foretell,
Nor dire Celaeno. My last trouble this,
And this the goal of my long voyaging.
Departing hence, heaven drave me to your shores.”
Thus sire Aeneas, mid the hush of all,
Alone rehearsed the destinies of heaven.
And taught them of his wanderings, then at length
Ceased, made an end of speaking, and was still.