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Thence at a distance we tremblingly hasten our flight, and the so well
Meriting suppliant taking, we, silently cutting our cables,

Sweep o'er the waters, and bend right forward in rivalrous rowing.
Hears he, and quick to the sound of the voice, he directed his footsteps:
But when no power was allowed to lay hold of a ship with his right hand,
He, unable to cope with Ionian billows in chasing,

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Lifts an unearthly yell, and the ocean and all of its surges
Trembled together thereat, and throughout was Italia's mainland
Startled, and Ætna rebellowed anon in its caverned abysses.

Forthwith the race of the Cyclops, aroused from the forests and hill-tops,
Hurry a-down to the harbor, and crowd to repletion the sea-beach.
See we them standing in waiting, with eye unavailingly scowling;
Ætnean brothers, extending their tall heads upward to heaven;
Horrid assembly, precisely as oak-trees, often with tall tops
Towering aloft in the air, or coniferous cypresses thickly
Stand, or the lofty forests of Jove, or the groves of Diana.
Keen is the terror that headlong drives us to shake out the reef-bands
Somehow, and stretch to the utmost our sails to the favoring breezes:
But the injunctions of Helenus warn of Charybdis and Scylla-
Either with little distinction between them a way of destruction—
Not to hold onward our course: 'tis decided to tack to the windward;
But lo! the north-wind, sent from the narrow abode of Pelorus,
Comes to our aid. I am borne by Pantagia's mouths with their native
Granite, by Megara's bay, and along by the low-lying Thapsus.

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Coasting, showed Achemenides, comrade of luckless Ulysses.

Such were the shores, which backward along by the scenes of his roaming

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Stretched out over against the Sicanian gulf lies an island

Fronting the surfy Plemyrium, ancients Ortygia called it.
Hither, as rumor reports it, Alpheüs, a river of Elis,

Forced 'neath the sea its mysterious channels, but now it is mingled,
O Arethusa, from thine own mouth with Sicilian surges.

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We, as enjoined, the locality's mighty divinities worship;
Then pass on by the too rich soil of the stagnant Helorus;
Thence we the beetling cliffs and projecting rocks of Pachynus
Graze, and the never by fates allowed to be drained Camarina
Looms into view, and far in the distance the Geloän moorlands—
Gela itself the atrocious, so called from the name of its river.
Toweringly Acragas, thence far away, displays its majestic
Battlements, famous of old as the breeder of spirited horses.
Thee, too, as winds are allowed us, I leave, O palmy Salinus,

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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 Phoebus, Lighting the lands, and had chased from the zenith the dampening shadows, When she addresses, 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-
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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 Phoebus, 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.

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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

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

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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!

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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 contest? Why not rather a permanent truce and connubial compacts

Sanction? Thou hast the result that with all thy mind thou wast seeking :

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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,

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