Skirting the shoals Lilybeän, bestrewn with invisible ledges;
Hence, then, welcome me, Drepanum's harbor and saddening seaboard:
Here I, alas! who have been by so many a tempest of ocean
Driven, my sire, my reliance in every care and disaster,
Lose, Anchises! Thou here didst, noblest father, desert me
Wearied, alas! unavailingly snatched from such imminent dangers!
Nor did the prophet Helenus, though he forewarned me of many
Horrors, predict me these sorrows, nor yet did the direful Celano.
This was my last task; this was the bound of my tedious journeys:
Parting from thence hath a deity guided me here to your confines.

Thus did the father Æneas alone, while they all were attentive,
Pass in rehearsal the fates of the gods, and relate his adventures:
Ceased he at length, and, hereupon, ending his narrative, rested.

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BOOK IV.

Love is a snare to the queen, and, by plotting of Juno and Venus, Issues at length in the tragical death of the beautiful Dido.

MEANWHILE the queen, for a long time smitten with harrowing heartache, Nurses the wound in her veins, and is racked with invisible wild-fire. Much to her soul does the hero's valor recur, and as much his Nation's honor: infixed in her bosom his words and his features Cling, and her heart-ache yields her no placid repose to her members. Now was Aurora the following day, with the candle of Phœbus, Lighting the lands, and had chased from the zenith the dampening shadows, When she addressès, though ill at ease, her affectionate sister: "Anna, my sister, what sleeplessness holds in suspense and affrights me! Who is this wonderful guest that has newly arrived at our homesteads? Mark how superb in appearance! how dauntless in spirit and armor! Surely I guess nor is guessing unfounded—his race is of heaven : Cowardice argues degenerate souls! But, alas! by what strange fates Has he been tossed; of what wars, as if drained to the dregs, he was singing! If in my soul it had not been fixed, and immovably settled,

That I to no one again would ally me in conjugal fetters,

After my first love, cheating by death, disappointingly foiled me;
Were I not utterly sick of the marital chamber and torch-lights,
I might perhaps succumb to this single infirmity only.
Anna, for I will confess since the fate of Sychæus, my hapless
Spouse, and our home-gods stained by the murderous act of a brother,
This one alone hath my feelings swayed, and my soul to inconstance
Urged in this thrill I acknowledge the trace of my early emotion:
But I could wish that either the deep earth open before me,

Or that the father omnipotent hurl me with bolt to the shadows

Shadows of Erebus dismal-and doom me to gloomiest midnight,
Ere I, O chastity, violate thee, or annul thy enactments!

He who the first to himself hath wed me, hath borne my affections;
Hence, may he hold them with him, and still in the sepulchre keep them !"
Thus did she speak, and with tears upwelling, she flooded her bosom.
Anna responds: "O dearer by far than the light to thy sister,
Wilt thou thus fritter thy youth in perpetual, lonely repining,
Knowing no longer the sweetness of children and pleasures of Venus?
Thinkest thou ashes and sepulchred ghosts in the slightest regard this?
Be it, that no other suitors have hitherto moved thee a mourner,
Either of Libya, or prior at Tyrus, Iärbus discarded,

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Yea, and the various chieftains whom Africa, rich in her triumphs,

Nurtures; and wilt thou then fight the attachment that hath thine approval?
Does it not come to thy mind on whose meadows it is thou hast settled?
Here the Gætulian cities, a nation resistless in warfare;

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Here the unbridled Numidians gird thee and barbarous Syrtes;
There a domain made desert by drought, and the people of Barcé
Ranging at large: Why need I refer to the wars that from Tyrus
Loom, and the threats of our kinsman ?—

Sure, I believe that, through omens divine, and with Juno propitious,
Hither have held on their course by the winds these Ilian vessels.
What shalt thou, sister, this city, and what these dominions arising,
See by such marriage! With Teucran arms in alliance of friendship,
How shall the Punic glory be lifted by mighty achievements?
Do thou but favor entreat of the gods, and,acceptable service
Rendered, indulge in thy welcome, and weave him excuses for staying
Long as the winter, or stormy Orion hath sway on the ocean;
Long as are shattered his ships, and the weather too squally to venture."
Thus by her words she inflamed her enkindled soul with a yearning,
Hope, too, infused in her hesitant mind and stifled her scruples.

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First to the shrines they repair, and devoutly a truce at the altars
Sue; they the yearling ewes, selected according to custom,
Offer to lawgiver Ceres, to Phœbus, and father Lyæüs;
Chiefly of all, though, to Juno, whose charge is the fetters of wedlock.
Holding a bowl in her right hand, beautiful Dido her own self
Pours it between the horns of a snow-white heifer, or slowly
Paces before the eyes of the gods by the side of the well-filled
Altars, and crowns with oblations the day, and inspecting the unveiled
Breasts of the victims, consults for herself the yet quivering entrails.
Ah! how unthinking the minds of interpreters! What can her votives,

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What can the shrines avail her? A subtile flame is the meanwhile
Eating her marrow, and secretly festers the wound in her bosom.
Scorching forlornly is Dido, and roaming all over the city
Frantically; just as a doe that is fatally struck by an arrow,
Whom unawares, in the Cresian groves at a distance, a shepherd
Chasing with weapons hath wounded, and left the insidious iron
Ruthlessly; she in her flight through Dictæän forests and jungles
Courses, while fast in her flank is adhering the deadly projectile.
Oft by her side she Æneas conducts through the midst of the ramparts,
Shows him her hoarded Sidonian wealth and the city in waiting;
Starts she to speak, and anon stops short in the sentence.
Now as the day glides by she demands a return of the self-same
Banquets, and coaxes to listen again to the Ilian hardships,

Whilst she again as absorbingly hangs on the lips of the speaker.

Then, when the guests have retired, and in turn at its waning the dim moon Buries its light, and the setting stars are persuading to slumbers,

Lonely she pines in her vacant home, and reclines on the couches

There as he left them: absent she hears, or beholds him though absent;
Or on her lap she caresses Ascanius, charmed with his father's
Image, if haply she thus may beguile her ineffable yearning.

Rise no longer her outlined towers, no longer her stalwarts

Practice in arms; nor make they the ports and impregnable breastworks
Ready for war; the works interrupted, the frowning stupendous
Walls, and the enginery reaching to heaven, alike are suspended.

Quickly as Jove's dear consort perceives her by spell so enchanting
Bound, that her fame can no longer withstand her impetuous frenzy,
Pertly to Venus Saturnia broaches in language of this sort:
"Splendid indeed the renown, and ample the spoils thou acquirest,
Thou and thy boy-a grand and remarkable potency truly,

If but a single woman is won by the cunning of two gods!

So then it does not escape me that thou hast, in dread of our ramparts,
Jealously held as suspected the homes of imperial Carthage.

Prithee, and what shall the end be? And what now the gain of such contes
Why not rather a permanent truce and connubial compacts

Sanction? Thou hast the result that with all thy mind thou wast seeking:
Dido is hotly in love, and hath caught in her bones the excitement:
Hence let us rule this people in common and under united
Auspices; let her surrender herself to a Phrygian husband:
And to thy right hand pass the Tyrians over as dower."

To her then-for she perceived that she spake with dissimulate purpose,

Plotting Italia's empire to shift to Libya's confines

Thus broached Venus in turn: "Who such a proposal would rashly
Spurn, or with thee would rather prefer to contend in a warfare?
Splendid! if fortune would only favor the project thou statest.
But I am kept in suspense by the fates, whether Jupiter wants one
City to serve for the Tyrians, and the wayfarers from Troja;
Whether he favors the mixing of nations and forming of compacts:
Thou art his spouse, it is thine to discover his mind by entreaty ;
Lead and I follow." Then thus the imperial Juno proceeded:
“Mine be that task. And now by what method the object before us
Yet may be nicely accomplished, attend, I will briefly instruct thee.
Out in the forests, Eneas and love-lorn Dido together
Purpose a-hunting to go on the morrow, as soon as hath Titan
Hoisted his earliest streamers, and ushered the world to the sunbeams.

I will upon them a lurid storm-cloud mingled with hail-stones,

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Just as the beaters are bustling and girding the coverts with spring-nets,
Down from above out-pour, and will rouse all heaven with thunder.
Escorts shall scatter away, and be shrouded in shadowy midnight;
Dido the while, and the Trojan chief, shall resort to the self-same
Cavern; I will be there, and, if sure of thy hearty concurrence,
I will in durable wed-lock join them and call her his own spouse;
There shall the nuptials be!" So, Cythereä, in no wise objecting,
Yielded assent to the suitor and smiled at her palpable intrigues.

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Meanwhile Aurora arising has left the expanse of the ocean: Forth from the portals at day-break issue the liveried huntsmen, Bearing the wide-meshed nets, and the snares, and the skirmishing chase-spears: Rush the Massylian knights, and a keen-scented kennel of grey-hounds; Whilst on the queen, in her chamber delaying, the nobles of Carthage Wait at the thresholds: her prancer, bedizen with purple and gold-work Stands, there mettled and chafingly champing his lathery curb-bit. Then she at length steps forth, by a retinue mighty attended. Round her is thrown her Sidonian cloak, with its border embroidered; Wrought is her quiver of gold, and in gold are her tresses enknotted, Golden the buckle that binds at the waist her apparel of purple. Likewise Phrygian escorts, and with them the merry Iülus, March in the train; while Æneas himself, the superbest among them, Enters the list as her special companion, and couples the columns, Just as Apollo, when Lycia, his winter resort, and the Xanthus' Streamlets forsaking, and visiting Delos the isle of his mother, Marshals the dancers; and round the altars commingling together

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