Straightway he summons his comrades, and specially aged Acestes;
Tells them the mandate of Jove, and the charges direct of his cherished
Parent, and what now deep in his soul is the sentiment settled:
Pause there is none in their plans, nor refuses Acestes the orders.
They for a city the matrons enroll, and the people who wish it
Set they apart, and the souls in no need of distinguishing glory.
Thwarts they in person repair, and replace in the shipping the oaken
Timbers consumed by the flames, and rig out the oars and the halyards:
Scanty in number, but theirs is a valor alive for a warfare.
Meanwhile Æneas marks out with a plow his associates' city,
Portions out homes by lot, and the wards this Iluim, that Troja,
Bid he be localized. Trojan Acestes is pleased with his kingdom,
Forms he a forum, and senators summoned, he gives them his statutes.
Then on the summit of Eryx, and nigh to the stars is a temple
Planned to Idalian Venus, and priest for the tomb, and a grove-plot
Sacred far and wide to the name of Anchises is added.
Now has the whole clan nine-days festival kept, and the service Done at the altars; the halcyon breezes have leveled the waters: Freshly the South-wind breathing invites them again on the ocean. Loud is the wailing that rises along the out-widening sea-beach; Linger they night and day in reciprocal parting embraces:
Now do the self-same matrons and men, to whom lately the sea's face
Seemed so repulsive and unendurable even to mention,
Long to depart and encounter all the distress of the voyage.
Whom now the noble Æneas is cheering with friendly expressions,
Whilst he in weeping commends them in trust to his kinsman, Acestes.
Bids he them then three heifers to Eryx, a lamb to the Tempests
Slaughter, and orders the hawsers one after another unfastened.
Then he, enwreathing his head with a neat-trimmed garland of olive,
Standing out far on the prow, upraises a bowl and the entrails
Casts in the briny billows, and pours out a flowing libation.
Rising astern there pursues them a breeze as they go from the harbor:
Eager his comrades lather the sea as they sweep o'er the waters.
But in the meantime Venus, oppressed by her troubles, addresses Neptune, and pours from her bosom complaint in language of this sort: "Juno's annoying resentment and ever insatiate bosom
Force me, O Neptune, to stoop unto even the humblest entreaties;
Neither does length of days, nor piety any appease her,
Nor does she rest, though worsted by fates and by Jupiter's mandate:
In her fell hate to have wasted the Phrygians' medial nation's
City, and dragged it through every punishment, is not sufficient;
She must the remnants, and ashes, and bones of annihilate Troja
Persecute: she the causes may know for such rancorous fury.
Thou art my witness thyself what a turmoil she late of a sudden
Roused in the Libyan billows, and all the seas with the heavens
Mingled in vain in reliance on Æolus' stormy tornadoes—
Dared to do this in thy realms, too:—
Lo! she maliciously, even by goading the matrons of Troja,
Basely hath burned their vessels, and thus, by the loss of their squadron,
Forced them to leave in an unknown land a part of their comrades.
What yet remains, I beseech thee, allow them to spread on the billows
Safely their sails, and permit them to reach the Laurentian Thybris;
If what I seek is conceded, if destinies grant them those ramparts."
Then the Saturnian lord of the deep sea uttered this answer:
"It is entirely right, Cythereän, to trust my dominions,
Whence thou derivest thy birth: I desire it, moreover, for often
Have I restrained their rage and such madness of heaven and ocean,
Nor has the less on the land-let Xanthus and Simoïs witness—
Been thine Æneas my charge. When Achilles in battle pursuing
Pressed to the walls of the city the frightened battalions of Troja,
Many a thousand consigned he to death, and the rivers repleted
Groaned, and the Xanthus could open no passage, nor onward itself roll
Into the sea; then Æneas, encountering dauntless Pelides,
Neither with gods nor his energy equal, I snatched in a hollow
Cloud, although I intended to raze to their very foundations,
Laid though they were by mine own hands, perjured Troja's defences.
Now, too, my purpose continues persistent: dispel thy misgiving;
Safe shall he reach, as thou wishest, at length the port of Avernus.
There shall be only one, whom lost thou shalt seek in the surges :
One head thus shall be given for many :-"
When by these words he hath soothed the elated breast of the goddess,
Couples the father his coursers in harness of gold, and the frothy
Bridles applies to the beasts, and all the reins from his hands flings.
Light o'er the crest of the waters he flies in cerulean state-car :
Billows subside, and under his thundering axle the surface,
Thetis is holding the left, and Melite, too, and the mermaid
Heaved by the waters, is laid, and from limitless æther the clouds scud.
Then troop manifold forms of his retinue, monsters enormous
Elderly chorus of Glaucus, Palemon the offspring of Ino,
Swiftly careering Tritons, and all of the army of Phorcus;
Panope, Nesæ, Spio, Cymodoce, Thalia also.
Here are enrapturing pleasures alternately thrilling the anxious
Mind of the father Æneas, and quickly he orders the mainmasts
All to be raised, and the mainyards stretched with sails to the utmost.
All have together the main sheet set, and united the port tacks
Loosed, and the starboard now; they together are shifting the tall yards,
To and fro their own gales onward are wafting the squadron.
There in the van of them all Palinurus was leading the dense-packed
Line, and to him were the others commanded to steady their courses.
Now had the dew-damp night attained almost to the midway
Limit of heaven, and weary the mariners, stretched on the benches,
Under their oars, were relaxing their limbs in a peaceful quiescence,
When light gliding adown from the planets ætherial Slumber
Clave through the tenebrous air and disparted the shadows before him,
Aiming for thee, Palinurus, to thee inoffensive conveying
Ominous slumbers: the god sits down on the tip of the stern-post,
Scarce had the quiet unnoticed unnerved his joints for the moment,
Just like Phorbas, and pours from his mouth these subtile palavers:
"Palinure, son of Iäsius, the sea's self carries the vessels;
Steady the breezes are blowing, the hour is devoted to quiet;
Pillow thy head, and from labor inveigle thy wearying eye-balls:
I for a little myself will discharge thy duties by proxy."
Scarcely uplifting his eyes, Palinurus responsive bespeaks him:
"Dost thou the look of the placid brine, and the quieted billows
Bid me ignore, and commit myself to that terrible monster?
How can I trust Æneus in sooth to the treacherous breezes?
I, who so oft have been tricked by the freaks of the halcyon heavens?"
Such were the words he was lisping, and firmly and fast to the tiller
Never was loosing his hold, and was keeping his eyes on the planets.
Lo! the god then a bough, all dripping with Letheän dew-drops,
Made soporific by Stygian spell, over both of his temples
Waves, and relaxes his nictating eyes as he strives to resist it.
When he leaning down over him pitched him, with part of the stern-post
Wrenched with the rudder itself, off headlong into the liquid
Billows, though often and vainly calling aloud on his comrades:
Whilst he, bird-like flitting, upsoared on the ambient breezes.
Safe none the less on its voyage does the fleet speed over the waters,
Borne by the promise of father Neptune unterrified onward.
So it was now, onwasted, approaching the crags of the Sirens,
Dangerous once, and white with the bones of many a shipwreck ;
Then with the ceaseless surf from afar were resounding the hoarse rocks,
When the father Æneas perceives that is roving the drifting
Bark, with her helmsman lost; and he steers her himself on the night wave
Frequently sighing, and shocked in his soul by the fate of his comrade.
"O too confidingly trusting the sky and the halcyon ocean,
Thou on an unknown strand, Palinurus, art lying unburied!"
Landing at Cuma. Eneas repairs to the shrine of Apollo:
Thence, by the Sibyl conducted, he visits his father in Hades:
THUS he in weeping speaks, and, resigning the reins to his squadron,
Glides on safely at length to the borders of Eubæan Cumæ.
Turn they seaward the prows; then anchor with grapple tenacious
Firmly was mooring the ships, and in line are their curvated stern-posts
Fringing the shores. Outleaps on Hesperia's beach the exultant
Band of the warriors; part of them seeds of flame in the flint's veins
Hidden are seeking; and others are scouring the forests, the wild beasts'
Clustering lairs, and are noting the rivers already discovered.
But in the meantime, the pious Æneas repairs to the castles,
Over which lofty Apollo presides, and afar to the cloisters-
Cavern immense-of the awful Sibyl, whose mind and whose spirit
Mighty the Delian prophet inspires, and discloses the future:
Now are they entering Trivia's groves, and her aureate mansions.
Dædalus--such is the legend-in fleeing the kingdom of Minos,
Daring to venture himself on impetuous pinions to heaven,
Floated along his unwonted way to the icy Arcturus,
Until he gently alighted at length at the castle of Chalcis.
Soon as restored to these lands, he to thee, O Phoebus, devoted
Duly his oarage of wings, and established magnificent temples,
Carving Androgeos' death on the doors: then the people of Cecrops
Ordered as penalty yearly-a pity!-to offer their children's
Bodies by sevens as victims: the urn, too, it set for allotments;
Opposite, raised o'er the sea, corresponding are Gnosian highlands:
Here Pasiphaë's barbarous love for a bull and its make-shift
Carved, and her hybrid offspring, double in body, the mongrel
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