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:—

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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 :-"

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,

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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,

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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, Palæmon the offspring of Ino,
Swiftly careering Tritons, and all of the army of Phorcus;

Thetis is holding the left, and Melite, too, and the mermaid

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Panope, Nesæ, Spio, Cymodoce, Thalia also.

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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?

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,
Just like Phorbas, and pours from his mouth these subtile palavers :

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Scarce had the quiet unnoticed unnerved his joints for the moment,

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.

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Wrenched with the rudder itself, off headlong into the liquid

When he leaning down over him pitched him, with part of the stern-post

Billows, though often and vainly calling aloud on his comrades :
Whilst he, bird-like flitting, upsoared on the ambient breezes.

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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, onwafted, approaching the crags of the Sirens,
Dangerous once, and white with the bones of many a shipwreck ;

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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 waves, 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!

870

AIMBOLIAD

BOOK VI.

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

Minotaur, monuments all of the amours of infamous Venus.
Here is that toil of a house, and its range of impossible exit;
But, in compassion indeed for the passionate love of the princess,
Dædalus' self unraveled the puzzle and maze of the structure,
Piloting Theseus' steps by a thread; and, in such an achievement,
Thou, too, O Icarus, hadst, if his grief had permitted, a large place
Holden: he thrice had attempted to model in gold thy disaster;

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Thrice too, had fallen thy father's hands. They would doubtless have all things
Thoroughly scanned with their eyes had Achates, sent forward beforehand,
Not now arrived, and the priestess of Phoebus and Trivia with him,
Daughter of Glaucus, Deïphobé, who thus addresses the monarch:
"Sights like these for itself the present occasion demands not;
Now from the unyoked herd it were better to sacrifice seven
Bulls, and as many of yearling ewes punctiliously chosen."

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Having thus spoke to Æneas-nor linger the men in the service Ordered the priestess the Teucrans invites to her towering temples, One vast side of Euboïcan rock hewn out in a cavern,

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Whither a hundred spacious approaches converge, and a hundred
Mouths, whence issue as numerous voices, the Sibyl's responses.

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They to the threshold have come, when the maiden: "Tis time to be seeking 45
Fates," she exclaims, "the god, lo! the god!" And as thus she is speaking
Fronting the doors, of a sudden her visage and color have altered;
Staid not her tresses in trim, but her bosom is heaved, and her wild heart
Swells with a frenzied excitement, and grander becomes her appearance :
Not as a mortal's her tones, inasmuch as she now, by a nearer
Awe of her god was inspired: "Art thou ceasing thy vows and entreaties,
Trojan Æneas?" she said, "art ceasing? for yawn not the spell-bound
Mansion's ponderous portals till then." And she having thus spoken
Hushed into silence! A shivering shudder has run through the Teucrans'
Stiffening bones, and their king pours prayers from his innermost bosom:
"Phoebus, who always hast pitied the grievous afflictions of Troja,
And hast directed the hands and Dardanian weapons of Paris
Once to Alcides' body, I under thy guidance have traversed
Many a sea that encompasses mighty lands, and have distant
Tribes of Massylians seen, and the meadows that border the Syrtes,
Now are we grasping at length the retreating Italia's confines:
Thus far only may Troja's disastrous fortune have chased us.
You, too, now have permission to spare the Pergamean nation,
All ye gods and goddesses also, to whom were obnoxious
Ilium once, and Dardania's mighty glory, and thou most

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