Virgil · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
1| After it had pleased the gods above to overthrow the power of Asia and Priam's undeserving people, after proud Ilium fell and all of Neptune's Troy lay smoking on the ground, we are driven by omens from the gods to seek exile far apart and lands left empty. We build a fleet directly beneath Antandros and the mountains of Phrygian Ida, unsure where the Fates will carry us or where we will be allowed to settle, and we gather our men. Summer had scarcely begun, and father Anchises was urging us to give our sails to the Fates, when in tears I leave the shores of my homeland, its harbors, and the plains where Troy once stood. I am carried out to sea, an exile, with my companions, my son, the household gods, and the great gods.
13| Far off lies a land of Mars, cultivated over wide plains — Thracians plough it — once ruled by fierce Lycurgus, an old friend and host to Troy, its household gods allied with ours while fortune lasted. I am carried here, and on the curving shore I lay out my first walls, setting foot there under hostile fates, and from my own name I coin the name Aeneadae for its people. I was offering sacrifice to my mother, Dione's daughter, and to the gods who watch over new undertakings, and on the shore I was slaughtering a gleaming bull to the high king of the heaven-dwellers. Close by, as it happened, there was a mound, on top of which grew cornel bushes and a myrtle bristling with dense shafts. I went up to it and tried to tear the green growth from the ground, to cover the altars with leafy branches, when I see a portent dreadful and wondrous to tell. For from the first tree that is torn from the soil, its roots broken, drops of black blood trickle and stain the earth with gore. A cold shudder shakes my limbs, and my chilled blood curdles with fear. Again I go on to pull up the pliant shoot of a second, and to probe deep for the hidden causes;
33| and black blood flows from the bark of the second too. Turning many things over in my mind, I prayed to the Nymphs of the countryside and to father Gradivus, who presides over the Getic fields, to make the vision favorable as was right and to lighten the omen. But when I attack a third set of shafts with greater effort, struggling with my knees against the sand — should I speak or keep silent? — a piteous groan is heard from deep in the mound, and a voice rises and reaches my ears: "Why do you tear a wretched man, Aeneas? Spare me now that I am buried; spare your dutiful hands from crime. I am no stranger to you; Troy bore me, and this blood does not flow from a mere stem. Ah, flee this cruel land, flee this greedy shore! For I am Polydorus. Here an iron harvest of spears covered my pierced body and grew up into sharp javelins." Then indeed, my mind weighed down by a double fear, I froze; my hair stood on end, and my voice stuck in my throat.
49| This Polydorus unhappy Priam had once secretly sent, with a great weight of gold, to be raised by the Thracian king, when he was already losing faith in the arms of Dardania and saw the city ringed by siege. When the power of the Trojans was broken and Fortune withdrew, the king took the side of Agamemnon and his victorious arms, broke every sacred law, murdered Polydorus, and took possession of the gold by force. To what do you not drive mortal hearts, accursed hunger for gold! When the fear left my bones, I reported the gods' portents to the chosen leaders of the people, and first of all to my father, and asked their opinion. All were of one mind: to leave the criminal land, abandon the polluted guest-friendship, and give the south winds to our fleet. So we perform a funeral for Polydorus afresh; earth is heaped high on the mound; altars to his shade stand mourning with dark-blue ribbons and black cypress, and around them the women of Ilium, their hair loosened as custom requires. We bring bowls foaming with warm milk and dishes of sacrificial blood, lay his spirit to rest in the tomb, and call to him with a loud voice for the last time.
69| Then, as soon as we can trust the sea, and the winds give us calm waters, and the softly rustling south wind calls us to the deep, my companions launch the ships and throng the beach. We sail out of the harbor, and lands and cities fall away behind us. In the middle of the sea lies a sacred land, dearest to the mother of the Nereids and to Aegean Neptune. Once it drifted around coasts and shores, until the dutiful archer god bound it fast to lofty Myconos and Gyaros and granted that it be inhabited unmoving and scorn the winds. Here I am carried; this most peaceful island takes us in, weary, in its safe harbor. We disembark and pay reverence to Apollo's city. King Anius, king of men and priest of Phoebus as well, his temples wreathed with ribbons and sacred laurel, comes to meet us; he recognized Anchises, his old friend. We join right hands in friendship and go under his roof.
84| I worshiped the god's temple, built of ancient stone: "Grant us a home of our own, god of Thymbra; grant walls to the weary, and a people and a city that will last. Preserve this second Troy, the remnant left by the Greeks and by pitiless Achilles. Whom are we to follow? Where do you bid us go? Where are we to make our home? Give us an omen, father, and enter our hearts." I had scarcely said this when suddenly everything seemed to tremble, the thresholds and the god's laurel, and the whole mountain around seemed to shake, and the tripod bellowed as the shrine opened. We bowed to the ground, and a voice came to our ears: "Hardy sons of Dardanus, the land that first bore you from the stock of your ancestors will take you back to its fertile breast on your return. Seek out your ancient mother. There the house of Aeneas will rule over every shore, and his children's children and those who will be born from them." So Phoebus spoke. A great joy rose, mixed with commotion, and all asked what these walls were, and where Phoebus was calling the wanderers and ordering them to return. Then my father, turning over the records of men of old, said: "Listen, leaders, and learn what to hope for.
104| In the middle of the sea lies Crete, island of great Jupiter, where Mount Ida stands and where our people's cradle is. They inhabit a hundred great cities, the richest of realms. From there our greatest ancestor, Teucer, if I remember rightly what I heard, first sailed to the Rhoetean shores and chose a place for his kingdom. Ilium and the towers of Pergamum had not yet been built; they lived in the lowest valleys. From there came the Mother who dwells on Mount Cybelus, the bronze cymbals of the Corybantes, the grove of Ida, from there the faithful silence of the rites, and the lions yoked to the chariot of the Lady. So come, let us follow where the commands of the gods lead. Let us appease the winds and make for the kingdom of Cnossos. It is not far by sea: if only Jupiter is with us, the third dawn will set our fleet on the shores of Crete." Having said this, he sacrificed the due offerings on the altars: a bull for Neptune, a bull for you, handsome Apollo, a black sheep for Winter and a white one for the favorable Zephyrs.
121| A rumor flies that the leader Idomeneus has been driven out and has left his father's kingdom, that the shores of Crete are deserted, that the houses are free of the enemy and the abandoned homes stand ready. We leave the harbors of Ortygia and fly over the sea past Naxos, where Bacchic revelers rave on the ridges, green Donusa, Olearos, snowy Paros, and the Cyclades scattered over the water; we sail through straits crowded with many lands. A sailors' shout rises in rivalry of many voices: my comrades urge each other to make for Crete and our forefathers. A wind rises behind the stern and follows us as we go, and at last we glide up to the ancient shores of the Curetes. So I eagerly set about building the walls of the city I had longed for, and I call it Pergamum, and I urge the people, glad of the name, to love their hearths and raise a citadel over their roofs.
135| And now the ships were almost all drawn up onto the dry shore, the young men were busy with marriages and new fields, and I was giving laws and homes, when suddenly there came, from a corrupted tract of sky, a wasting plague on our bodies, a pitiable one, on trees and crops too, and a deadly year. People gave up their sweet lives or dragged their sick bodies along; then Sirius scorched the barren fields, the grass withered and the sickly grain denied us food. My father urges us to go back across the sea to the oracle of Ortygia and to Phoebus, to pray for pardon, to ask what end he will bring to our weary fortunes, where he bids us seek help for our hardships, and where to turn our course.
147| It was night, and sleep held living creatures on the earth. The holy images of the gods, the Phrygian household gods I had brought with me out of Troy from the heart of the burning city, appeared to stand in front of my eyes as I lay asleep, clearly visible in a stream of light where the full moon poured in through the windows set in the wall. Then they spoke to me like this and took away my cares with these words: "What Apollo will tell you when you have been carried to Ortygia, he sings here, and look, he sends us of his own accord to your door. We followed you and your arms after Dardania was burned; we crossed the swelling sea in ships under your command; we will likewise raise your future descendants to the stars and give your city empire. You, prepare great walls for a great people, and do not abandon the long toil of your flight. You must change your home. Not these shores did the Delian Apollo urge on you, nor did he order you to settle in Crete. There is a place the Greeks call Hesperia, an ancient land, strong in arms and in the richness of its soil. Oenotrian men settled it; now the report is that their descendants have called the nation Italy, after the name of a leader.
167| This is our own proper home; from here Dardanus came, and father Iasius, from whom our race takes its origin. Come, rise, and joyfully take these words to your aged father, words not to be doubted: let him seek Corythus and the Ausonian lands; Jupiter denies you the fields of Dicte." Stunned by such sights and by the gods' voice (it was not sleep: I seemed to recognize their faces face to face, and their veiled hair, and their living features; then a cold sweat poured down my whole body), I snatch my body from the bed, stretch my hands palm upward to the sky with a prayer, and pour pure offerings on the hearth. The ritual done, I joyfully tell Anchises and set out the matter in order. He recognized our double line and our two ancestral stocks, and that he had been misled by a fresh mistake about the ancient places. Then he says: "My son, worn down by the fates of Ilium, only Cassandra used to prophesy such events to me. Now I recall that she foretold these things as owed to our race, and often named Hesperia, often the Italian kingdoms. But who would have believed that Trojans would come to the shores of Hesperia? Or whom would the prophetess Cassandra have moved then? Let us yield to Phoebus and, warned, follow the better course." So he says, and we all obey his word with rejoicing. We leave this home too, and, with a few left behind, we set sail and run over the vast sea in our hollow ships.
192| After the ships reached the deep and no more land appeared, only sky on every side and sea on every side, then a dark-blue storm cloud stood over my head, bringing night and winter, and the water shivered in the darkness. At once the winds roll the sea over and great waves rise; scattered, we are tossed about on the vast flood. Storm clouds wrapped the day, wet night took the sky away, lightning flashes repeatedly from bursting clouds, we are thrown off our course and wander in the blind waves. Palinurus himself says he cannot tell day from night in the sky, nor remember his way in the midst of the water. For three uncertain days, in blind darkness, we wander on the sea, and as many nights without a star. On the fourth day land at last appeared to rise at first, to show mountains far off and send up smoke. The sails drop, we bend to the oars; without delay the sailors strain and churn the foam and sweep the dark-blue water. Saved from the waves, the shores of the Strophades are the first to receive me. The Strophades are islands called by a Greek name, standing in the great Ionian sea, where dread Celaeno lives, and the other Harpies, since Phineus' house was shut against them and they left their former tables in fear.
214| No monster is more grim than these, and no more savage plague or wrath of the gods ever raised itself from the waters of the Styx. They have maidens' faces on birds' bodies, the foulest discharge from the belly, hooked hands, and faces always pale with hunger. When we were carried here and entered the harbor, look, we see rich herds of cattle scattered over the plains, and a flock of goats on the grass with no keeper. We charge at them with our swords and call on the gods, and on Jupiter himself, to share the spoil. Then on the curving shore we set up couches and feast on a rich banquet. But suddenly the Harpies are on us, swooping horribly down from the mountains, beating their wings with loud clanging; they tear at the feast and defile everything by their filthy touch; and amid a foul stench a dreadful cry goes up. Again, in a far retreat under a hollow rock [shut in all around by trees and bristling shadows], we set up the tables and put fire back on the altars; again from a different part of the sky, from hidden lairs, the shrieking crowd flies around the prey with hooked talons and fouls the feast with their mouths. I then tell my comrades to take up arms, and that war must be waged against the dreadful race.
236| They do just as ordered, and they place their swords hidden in the grass and conceal their shields out of sight. Then when the Harpies swoop down and make a noise along the curving shore, Misenus gives the signal from a high lookout with his hollow bronze trumpet. My comrades charge and try a strange kind of fight, to defile the sea's filthy birds with the sword. But they take no force on their feathers and no wounds on their backs, and in swift flight they glide up under the stars, leaving behind their half-eaten prey and their foul traces. Celaeno alone settled on a towering rock, an ill-omened prophetess, and she bursts out with this speech: "Descendants of Laomedon, are you also preparing to make war for the slaughter of oxen and the killing of bullocks, and to drive the innocent Harpies out of their ancestral realm? Then take this to heart and fix these words of mine in your minds, which the almighty Father foretold to Phoebus, and Phoebus Apollo to me, and I, greatest of the Furies, now reveal to you. You are seeking Italy, and you have called the winds to take you there: you will go to Italy and be allowed to enter its harbors. But you will not ring your promised city with walls before dreadful hunger and the wrong of our slaughter force you to gnaw your tables with your jaws and eat them up."
258| she said, and on her wings she flew back into the wood. But my comrades' blood ran cold and stiff with sudden fear. Their courage fell, and they bid me ask for peace no longer with weapons but with vows and prayers, whether these creatures are goddesses or dreadful, filthy birds. And my father Anchises, with palms held out from the shore, calls on the great divine powers and proclaims the offerings they are due: "Gods, ward off these threats; gods, turn aside such a fate, and in your kindness protect the dutiful." Then he orders us to tear the cable from the shore and shake out and loosen the ropes. The south winds fill the sails; we flee over the foaming waves, where wind and helmsman called our course. Now in the midst of the surge wooded Zacynthos appears, with Dulichium, Same, and Neritos steep with crags. We escape the rocks of Ithaca, the kingdom of Laertes, and curse the land that nursed savage Ulysses. Soon the cloudy peaks of Mount Leucata come into view, and Apollo, feared by sailors. Weary, we make for it and approach the little town. The anchor is thrown from the bow, and the sterns stand along the shore.
278| So, having gained land at last, beyond our hopes, we purify ourselves to Jupiter, kindle the altars with our vows, and celebrate the Actian shores with Trojan games. My comrades, stripped, exercise in their ancestral wrestling with slippery oil: it is a joy to have slipped past so many Greek cities and to have held our flight through the midst of enemies. Meanwhile the sun rolls around the great year, and icy winter roughens the waves with north winds. I fix to the facing doorposts a shield of hollow bronze, the weapon once carried by great Abas, and mark the deed with a verse: "AENEAS FROM THE VICTORIOUS GREEKS, THESE ARMS." Then I order the men to leave the harbors and sit at the rowing benches. My comrades strike the sea in rivalry and sweep the water. Soon we have hidden the airy citadels of the Phaeacians, skirted the shores of Epirus, entered the Chaonian harbor and approached the high city of Buthrotum.
294| Here an incredible report of events reaches our ears: that Helenus, son of Priam, rules over Greek cities, having come into possession of the wife and the scepter of Pyrrhus, grandson of Aeacus, and that Andromache has once more been given to a husband from her own people. I was amazed. My heart burned with a strange longing to speak to the man and learn of such great events. I leave the harbor and the fleet and the shore and go forward, just when Andromache happened to be offering, before the city in a grove beside the water of a false Simois, the solemn funeral meal and sad gifts to the ashes, and calling up the spirits at the tomb of Hector, an empty tomb, which she had consecrated with green turf and two altars, a cause for tears. When she saw me coming and in a daze saw Trojan arms around me, terrified by the great portent, she froze in the middle of her gaze, the warmth left her bones, she faints, and only after a long time does she speak: "Is it a true shape that you bring me, a true messenger, son of a goddess? Are you alive? Or, if the kindly light has gone, where is Hector?" She spoke, shed tears, and filled the whole place with her cry. As she raged, I could scarcely say a few words in reply, and, shaken, gasped out broken words:
315| "I am alive, truly, and I drag out my life through every extremity. Do not doubt, for what you see is real. Ah! What fortune receives you, cast down from so great a husband, or what fortune worthy enough has come to you again, Andromache, wife of Hector? Do you keep marriage with Pyrrhus?" She lowered her face and spoke in a low voice: "O happy beyond all others was the maiden daughter of Priam, ordered to die at an enemy's tomb beneath the high walls of Troy, who endured no casting of lots and did not, as a captive, touch the bed of a victorious master! We were carried over strange seas after our homeland was burned, and I endured the arrogance of Achilles' line and a proud youth, bearing a child in slavery. Then he went after Hermione, Leda's granddaughter, and a Spartan marriage, and passed me, a slave, to be held as a slave by Helenus, another slave. But Orestes, inflamed with great love for the wife who had been taken from him and driven by the furies of his crimes, catches Pyrrhus off guard and kills him at his ancestral altars. With the death of Neoptolemus a part of the kingdom passed to Helenus, who named the plains Chaonian and the whole land Chaonia after the Trojan Chaon, and built on the ridges a Pergamum and this Trojan citadel.
337| But what winds, what fates gave you your course? Or what god brought you to our shores, unknowing? What of the boy Ascanius? Does he survive and breathe the air? Whom Troy now to you... But does the boy have any care for his lost mother? Do his father Aeneas and his uncle Hector stir him at all to the old valor and manly spirit?" She poured out such words in tears and kept up her long weeping in vain, when the hero Helenus, son of Priam, comes from the walls with many companions, recognizes his own people, and gladly leads them to his threshold, shedding many tears between each word. I walk on and recognize a little Troy, a Pergamum made to look like the great one, and a dry stream with the name of Xanthus, and I embrace the threshold of the Scaean gate. The Trojans too enjoy the allied city together with me. The king welcomed them in broad colonnades: in the middle of the hall they poured libations of wine, with food served on gold, and held out the cups.
356| And now one day and a second day had passed, and the breezes call the sails and the canvas swells with the rising south wind. I approach the prophet with these words and ask him this: "Trojan-born, interpreter of the gods, you who understand the divine will of Phoebus, the tripods and laurels of Clarus, the stars, the tongues of birds and the omens of the flying wing, speak, I beg you (for every religious sign has foretold a favorable voyage for me, and all the gods by their divine will have urged me to head for Italy and try the lands set far away; only the Harpy Celaeno sings of a strange portent, terrible to tell, and announces grim wrath and a foul hunger): what dangers should I avoid first? Or by following what course could I overcome such great hardships?" Here Helenus first sacrifices bullocks according to custom, begs for the peace of the gods, and unties the ribbons from his consecrated head. Then he himself leads me by the hand to your threshold, Phoebus, shaken by the strength of the divine presence, and then the priest sings these words from his inspired mouth:
374| "Son of a goddess (for there is clear proof that you travel the deep under higher auspices; thus the king of the gods allots the fates and turns their changes; this is the order they follow), I will set out for you a few things out of many, so that you may cross the foreign seas more safely and be able to settle in an Ausonian harbor. The Fates forbid Helenus to know the rest, and Juno, daughter of Saturn, forbids me to speak. First, Italy, which you already think is near, and whose neighboring harbors you, unknowing, are preparing to enter: a long road, trackless over long stretches of land, divides it far from you. First the oar must be bent in Sicilian water, the sea of Ausonian salt must be crossed by your ships, as well as the lakes of the underworld and the island of Aeaean Circe, before you can found a city on safe ground. I will tell you the signs; keep them stored in your mind. When, in your anxiety, beside the water of a secluded river, under the holm oaks on the shore, you find a huge sow lying, which has given birth to a litter of thirty young, white, lying on the ground, and white offspring around her udders, that will be the place of your city, that the sure rest from your toils.
394| Nor should you shrink from the gnawing of your tables that is to come: the Fates will open a path, and Apollo will be present when called. But these lands, and this nearest stretch of Italy's coast, which is washed by the tide of our own sea, avoid: all its walls are inhabited by hostile Greeks. Here the Locrians of Narycia have set up walls, and Idomeneus of Lyctus has occupied the Sallentine plains with his soldiers; here is Petelia, that small town of the leader Philoctetes of Meliboea, propped up by its wall. Moreover, when your fleets have crossed the water and stand at anchor, and you are setting up altars and paying your vows on the shore, cover your hair with a purple mantle drawn over it, so that no hostile face may meet you among the holy fires in honor of the gods and disturb the omens. Let your comrades keep this custom of the rites, and keep it yourself; in this form of worship may your descendants stay pure. But when, after you have departed, the wind brings you close to the Sicilian shore, and the narrows of the strait of Pelorus begin to open up, seek the land on your left and the waters on your left in a long circuit; avoid the shore and waves on the right.
414| These places, they say, were once torn apart by force and by a vast cataclysm (so great is the power of the long passage of time to change things) and broke apart, when each land was joined as one: the sea came in between with violence and with its waves cut the Hesperian side from the Sicilian, and with a narrow tide it flows between fields and cities pulled apart on the shore. Scylla occupies the right side, and implacable Charybdis the left; three times Charybdis sucks the vast waves down into the sheer depth of her whirlpool's lowest gulf, and three times throws them back up in turn into the air, lashing the stars with the water. But a cave holds Scylla in its hidden recesses, as she thrusts out her mouths and drags ships onto the rocks. Her upper part has a human face, and a lovely maiden's breast down to the waist; the lower part is a monstrous sea beast with a huge body, with dolphin tails joined to a belly of wolves. It is better to go around the turning-post of Sicilian Pachynus, slowly, and to make a long loop in your course, than to see once, in her vast cave, misshapen Scylla and the rocks echoing with her dark-blue dogs. Furthermore, if Helenus the prophet has any wisdom, any credibility, if Apollo fills his mind with truth, I will tell you this one thing, son of a goddess, this one thing in place of all the rest, and I will warn you again and again: first of all worship the power of great Juno with prayer, gladly sing vows to Juno, and overcome the mighty queen with suppliant gifts. In this way, in the end, you will leave Sicily behind and be sent victorious to the borders of Italy.
441| When you are carried to this place and come to the city of Cumae, the sacred lakes and Avernus with its rustling woods, you will see the inspired prophetess, who beneath a deep rock sings the fates and entrusts signs and names to leaves. Whatever verses the maiden has written on the leaves, she arranges in order and leaves shut away in her cave; they stay where they are, unmoved, and do not leave their order. But when the hinge turns and a light wind stirs them, and the door disturbs the delicate leaves, she never afterward bothers to catch them as they flit around the hollow rock, or to restore their positions or join the verses together: people leave without an answer and hate the Sibyl's seat. Here, so that you do not count the cost of delay as anything too great, although your comrades complain and the course forcefully calls your sails to the deep, and you could fill the favoring sails, go to the prophetess and with prayers ask her to give the oracles herself, and willingly loosen her voice and lips. She will unfold to you the peoples of Italy, the wars to come, and how you may avoid or bear each hardship, and, if you honor her, she will grant you a favorable voyage. This is what I am permitted to warn you of with my own voice. Go now, and by your deeds raise Troy to the heavens."
463| After the prophet had spoken these words in a friendly voice, he then orders gifts heavy with gold and cut ivory to be carried to the ships, and stows in the hulls a great quantity of silver and Dodonaean cauldrons, a corslet of interlocked hooks and triple gold, and the cone of a splendid helmet with its flowing crests, the arms of Neoptolemus. There are gifts for my father too. He adds horses, adds guides, makes up the oarsmen, and at the same time equips the comrades with arms.
472| Meanwhile Anchises was ordering the fleet to be fitted with sails, so that there would be no delay when the wind was fair. The interpreter of Phoebus addresses him with great honor: "Anchises, thought worthy of Venus' proud marriage, the care of the gods, twice rescued from the ruins of Pergamum, look, Ausonia's land lies before you: seize it with your sails. And yet you must glide past it by sea: that part of Ausonia which Apollo opens up is far away. Go," he says, "fortunate in your son's devotion. Why do I go further and hold back the rising south winds with talk?" No less, Andromache, sad at the last parting, brings robes embroidered with golden thread, and a Phrygian cloak for Ascanius (she does not fall short in honor), and loads him with woven gifts, and says: "Take these too, as reminders of my handiwork, boy, and let them bear witness to the lasting love of Andromache, Hector's wife. Receive these final gifts from your family, you who are the only image left to me of my Astyanax. He had your eyes, your hands, your face; and now he would be coming of age with you, the same age."
492| As I left, with tears welling up, I said to them: "Live happily, you whose fortune is already completed: we are called from one fate to another. You have won rest: no stretch of sea to plow, no fields of Ausonia, always retreating, to seek. You see an image of the Xanthus and a Troy that your own hands made, I hope under better auspices, and one that will be less exposed to the Greeks. If ever I enter the Tiber and the fields near the Tiber and see the walls granted to my people, we will make the two peoples, related cities and neighboring nations, Epirus and Hesperia, who have the same founder in Dardanus and the same misfortunes, one Troy in spirit: let that be a care for our descendants."
506| We sail out over the sea, past the nearby Ceraunian mountains, from where is the route to Italy and the shortest passage across the waves. Meanwhile the sun sets and the mountains are shadowed in darkness. Having drawn lots for the oars, we stretch out in the lap of the longed-for land beside the water, and here and there on the dry shore we refresh our bodies, and sleep floods our weary limbs. Night, driven on by the Hours, had not yet reached the middle of her circuit, when Palinurus, not idle, rises from his bed and tests all the winds and catches the air with his ears. He notes all the stars gliding in the silent sky, Arcturus, the rainy Hyades, the two Bears, and looks around at Orion armed with gold. When he sees everything steady in the clear sky, from the stern he sounds a clear signal; we break camp, test our course and spread our sails like wings.
521| And now Dawn was reddening as the stars fled, when far off we see dim hills and low-lying Italy. Achates is the first to shout "Italy!"; my comrades greet Italy with a joyful cry. Then my father Anchises wreathed a great mixing bowl, filled it with wine, and, standing on the high stern, called on the gods: "Gods of sea and land and power over storms, give us an easy passage with the wind and blow in our favor." The longed-for breezes strengthen, and a harbor opens up, now nearer, and a temple of Minerva appears on the citadel. My comrades furl the sails and turn the prows toward the shore. The harbor is curved into an arch by the eastern surge; rocks thrown out before it foam with salt spray, and the harbor itself is hidden: turreted cliffs let down their arms in a double wall, and the temple lies back from the shore. Here I saw four horses, a first omen, grazing the plain far and wide on the grass, snow-white. And my father Anchises said: "O hospitable land, you bring war: horses are armed for war, these herds threaten war. And yet these same four-footed creatures are sometimes used to pull a chariot and to bear the reins in harmony under the yoke: there is hope of peace too." Then we pray to the holy power of Pallas of the clashing arms, who first welcomed us in our joy, and before the altars we cover our heads with a Phrygian mantle, and, following Helenus' instructions, the most important he had given, we duly burn the ordered offerings to Argive Juno.
548| Without delay, when our vows had been fulfilled in order, we turn the veiled ends of our sail-yards and leave the dwellings of the Greek-born and the fields we distrust. From there the gulf of Tarentum, Hercules' city (if the story is true), comes into view, with the goddess of Lacinium rising opposite, and the citadels of Caulon and ship-wrecking Scylaceum. Then, far off across the waves, Sicilian Etna is seen, and from a distance we hear the vast groaning of the sea, the pounding of the rocks, and voices broken on the shores, and the shallows leap, and sand is mixed with the surge. And my father Anchises said: "Surely this is the famous Charybdis: these are the cliffs, these the dreadful rocks Helenus spoke of. Snatch us away, comrades, and rise together to the oars." They do just as they are ordered, and first Palinurus swung the creaking prow to the waves on the left; the whole company made for the left with oars and winds. We are lifted to the sky on the curved wave, and, as the water draws away, sink down again to the lowest shades. Three times the cliffs gave a cry among their hollow rocks; three times we saw the spray thrown up and the stars dripping. Meanwhile the wind left us, weary, along with the sun, and, ignorant of the way, we glide to the shores of the Cyclopes.
570| The harbor itself is vast and undisturbed by the approach of the winds; but nearby Etna thunders with horrifying collapses, and at times sends a black cloud up into the sky, smoking with pitchy whirlwind and white-hot ash, and lifts balls of flame and licks the stars; at times it throws up cliffs and the torn-out entrails of the mountain, belching them out, and with a groan heaps molten rocks into the air and boils over from its lowest depth. The story is that the body of Enceladus, half burned by lightning, is pinned down by this mass, and that huge Etna, set on top of him, breathes out flame from its burst furnaces, and that whenever he shifts his weary side, all Sicily trembles with a rumble and covers the sky with smoke. That night, sheltered in the woods, we endure the monstrous sounds and do not see what cause gives the noise. For there were no fires of stars, nor was the heaven bright with starry sky, but there were clouds in a dark sky, and the dead of night held the moon in a storm cloud.
588| And now the next day was rising with the first light of the east, and Dawn had swept the damp shadow from the heavens, when suddenly there comes forward from the woods the strange figure of an unknown man, worn to the last degree of thinness and pitiable in his appearance, and he stretches out suppliant hands to the shore. We look back. A dreadful squalor, a long beard, a garment fastened with thorns; but in all else a Greek, and once sent to Troy in his country's arms. And when he saw the Dardanian dress and Trojan arms from far off, terrified by the sight he stopped for a moment and held back his step; then he threw himself headlong toward the shore, with weeping and prayers: "I call the stars to witness, the gods above and this breathable light of heaven: take me, Trojans. Carry me away to any land: that will be enough. I know that I am one of the Greek fleet, and I admit that I attacked the Trojan household gods in war. For this, if the wrong of my crime is so great, scatter me on the waves and plunge me into the vast sea; if I die, it will be a comfort to have died at the hands of men." He had spoken, and clasping our knees and rolling at our feet, he clung to them. We urge him to say who he is, from what blood he was born, and then to confess what fortune is hounding him.
610| Father Anchises himself, after only a brief hesitation, gave the young man his right hand and steadied his spirit with that pledge. Putting aside his fear at last, the man said: "I am from Ithaca, my homeland, a companion of unlucky Ulysses, and my name is Achaemenides. I set out for Troy because my father Adamastus was poor (I wish that fortune had held!). Here my comrades, forgetful of me, abandoned me in the Cyclops' vast cave as they fled in panic from that cruel threshold. The house is huge and dark inside, filthy with gore and bloody feasts. The Cyclops himself is tall and strikes the high stars (gods, keep such a plague away from the earth!); he is not easy to look at, and no one can speak to him. He feeds on the flesh and black blood of wretched men. I saw it myself, when he lay on his back in the middle of the cave, seized two of our men in his huge hand and smashed them against a rock, so that the threshold swam, spattered with gore. I saw him chew limbs dripping with dark blood, and the warm flesh quivering under his teeth. But he did not get away unpunished, for Ulysses did not endure such things, nor did the man of Ithaca forget himself in so great a crisis.
630| For as soon as the Cyclops, gorged with food and buried in wine, laid down his drooping neck and lay stretched out huge across the cave, belching out gore and scraps of flesh mixed with bloody wine in his sleep, we prayed to the great gods, cast lots for our turns, and all together poured around him from every side. With a sharpened stake we bored out the one enormous eye that lay hidden under his grim brow, like an Argive shield or the lamp of Phoebus, and so at last we gladly avenged our comrades' shades. But flee, you wretched men, flee, and cut the cable from the shore! For as huge and as great as Polyphemus is, shutting his woolly flocks in his hollow cave and pressing their udders, a hundred other Cyclopes, monstrous creatures, live all along these curving shores and roam the high mountains. The moon's horns have now filled with light for the third time since I began dragging out my life in the woods, among the wild beasts' deserted lairs and dens, and since I began watching the huge Cyclopes from a cliff and trembling at the sound of their feet and their voices. The branches give me wretched food, berries and stony cornel cherries, and the plants feed me with their uprooted roots. Looking all around, I first caught sight of this fleet coming to the shore. I gave myself over to it, whatever it might be: it is enough to have escaped that accursed race. You may rather take this life of mine by whatever death you choose."
655| He had hardly finished speaking when we saw on the mountaintop the shepherd Polyphemus himself, moving his vast bulk among his flocks and heading for the familiar shore, a dreadful monster, shapeless and huge, whose eye had been taken from him. A trimmed pine guides his hand and steadies his steps; his woolly sheep go with him, his only pleasure and the comfort of his misery. After he reached the deep water and came to the sea, he washed there the blood flowing from his gouged eye, grinding his teeth and groaning, and he strode on through the sea until it was already deep, and the waves had not yet wet his towering flanks. In panic we hurried to flee from the spot, having taken on board the suppliant who so deserved it, and silently cut the cable, and bent forward to sweep the sea with competing oars. He sensed us and turned his steps toward the sound of our voices. But when he had no power to lay his hand on us, and could not match the Ionian waves in pursuit, he let out an immense roar, at which the sea and all the waters trembled, and the land of Italy, shaken to its depths, and Etna with her winding caverns bellowed back.
675| But the race of the Cyclopes, roused from the woods and high mountains, rushes to the harbor and fills the shore. We see them standing there in vain, with fierce eyes, the brothers of Etna, their tall heads lifted to the sky, a dreadful assembly: like tall oaks or cone-bearing cypresses that have taken their stand on a lofty summit, Jupiter's high forest or Diana's grove. Sharp fear drives us headlong to shake out the ropes wherever we can and to spread our sails to the favoring winds. On the other hand, Helenus's instructions warn us that the way between Scylla and Charybdis lies close to death on either side, with only a narrow margin, unless I hold my course: I am determined to give the sails back to the wind and turn around. But look, Boreas comes from the narrow seat of Pelorus, sent to us. I sail past the mouth of the Pantagias with its living rock, the Megarian bay, and low-lying Thapsus. Achaemenides, the companion of unlucky Ulysses, pointed out such places as he retraced in reverse the shores he had wandered.
692| Stretched across the mouth of a Sicilian bay, facing wave-washed Plemyrium, lies an island; those who came before called it Ortygia. The story is that Alpheus, the river of Elis, forced secret passages here beneath the sea, and now, Arethusa, mingles with the Sicilian waters at your spring. As instructed, we pay reverence to the great gods of the place, and from there I pass the rich soil of the marshy Helorus. Next we skim past the high cliffs and jutting rocks of Pachynus, and Camerina, which the Fates never allowed to be moved, appears in the distance, and the Geloan plains, and huge Gela, named after its river. Then steep Acragas, once the breeder of high-spirited horses, displays its mighty walls far off; and with the winds granted me I leave you behind, palm-rich Selinus, and thread the shallows of Lilybaeum, treacherous with hidden rocks. Next the harbor of Drepanum and its joyless shore receive me. Here, after being driven by so many storms at sea, I lose — alas — my father, the comfort of every care and misfortune: Anchises. Here, best of fathers, you abandon me in my weariness, you who were snatched in vain, alas, from such great dangers! Not even the seer Helenus, though he warned of many horrors, foretold this grief to me, nor dread Celaeno. This was my last hardship, this the goal of my long journeys. It was on leaving there that a god drove me to your shores."
716| So father Aeneas, alone, with all of them intent on him, retold the fates decreed by the gods and recounted his voyages. At last he fell silent, made an end here, and rested.
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