Virgil · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
1| So far the tilling of the fields and the stars of the sky; now I will sing of you, Bacchus, and with you the shrubs of the woods and the offspring of the slow-growing olive. Come here, father of the winepress: here everything is full of your gifts; for you the field blooms, heavy with the autumn of the vine, and the vintage foams in brimming vats. Come here, father of the winepress, pull off your boots and with me dip your bare legs in the new must. To begin with, nature is various in the making of trees. For some come up of their own accord, with no human compelling them, and spread widely over the plains and winding rivers, like the soft osier and the pliant broom, the poplar, and willow beds whitening with gray-green leaves; but some rise from seed that has been sown, like the tall chestnuts, and the oak that spreads its leaves greatest in the groves of Jupiter, and the oaks the Greeks held to be oracles. Others put out a dense forest of suckers from the root, like cherries and elms; the Parnassian laurel too, when small, sets itself under the huge shade of its mother. These are the ways nature first provided; by these the whole race of forest trees, of shrubs, and of sacred groves grows green.
22| There are others that experience itself has found for itself along the way. One man cuts suckers from the tender body of the mother and sets them in trenches; another buries stocks in the field, split stakes cut four ways and poles with sharpened wood. Other forest trees wait for the bent arches of a pressed-down layer, and for nurseries living in their own soil. Others need no root at all, and the pruner does not hesitate to entrust the topmost shoot to the earth, giving it back. Indeed, even when the trunks are cut up — wondrous to tell — an olive root pushes out from the dry wood; and often we see the branches of one tree turn without harm into those of another: the pear, transformed, bear grafted apples, and stony cornels blush red with plums. So come, farmers, learn the cultivation proper to each kind, tame wild fruits by tending them, and do not let your lands lie idle. It is a joy to plant Ismarus with Bacchus' vines and clothe great Taburnus with olives. And you, Maecenas, be with me and run with me through the task I have begun, my glory, rightly the greatest part of my fame, and spread your sails to fly over the open sea.
42| I do not hope to embrace everything in my verses, not if I possessed a hundred mouths, a hundred tongues, and a voice of iron. Be with me and skirt the edge of the near shore; the land is close at hand. I will not hold you here with fabricated song, with digressions and long preambles. Trees that raise themselves of their own accord into the regions of light are unfruitful, it is true, but they spring up glad and strong, for natural vigor lies in the soil. Yet these too, if one grafts them or transplants them into well-worked trenches, will put off their wild spirit, and with constant cultivation will follow without delay into whatever arts you wish. So too will the sucker that grows barren from the bottom of the stock, if it is set out in open fields; as it is, the high leaves and branches of the mother shade it, rob it of fruit as it grows, and scorch it as it bears. Again, the tree that has grown up from scattered seed comes slowly, to make shade for late descendants, and its fruits degenerate, forgetting their former flavor, and the vine bears shabby clusters, plunder for the birds. Clearly, toil must be spent on them all; all must be forced into the trench and tamed at great cost.
63| But olives answer best from truncheons, vines from layers, Paphian myrtles from the solid wood; from suckers come hard hazels, the huge ash, the shady tree of Hercules' crown, and the acorns of the Chaonian father; so too the lofty palm grows, and the fir that will see the perils of the sea. But the rough arbutus is grafted with a walnut shoot, and barren planes have borne healthy apples, chestnuts beeches; the manna ash has whitened with the white blossom of the pear, and swine have crunched acorns beneath elms. Nor is there a single way to graft and to bud. For where buds push out from the middle of the bark and break through its thin coverings, a narrow slit is made in the very knot; here they enclose a bud from another tree and teach it to grow into the moist inner bark. Or again, knotless trunks are cut back, and a way is split deep into the solid wood with wedges; then fruitful slips are put in: before long a huge tree has shot up to the sky with fruitful branches and marvels at its new leaves and fruit not its own.
83| Moreover, the kinds are not all one: they do not come into being in a single form, neither the sturdy elms, nor the willow and the lotus, nor the cypresses of Ida. Olives do not grow in one shape either: there are the orchades, the radii, and the bitter-berried pausia. The same goes for fruit trees and the orchards of Alcinous, and a cutting from the Crustumian pear is not the same as one from the Syrian pear or the heavy volema. The vintage that hangs on our vines is not the one Lesbos gathers from its Methymnaean shoots. There are Thasian vines and white Mareotic vines; the latter suit rich soils, the former lighter ones. There is the psithian vine, better for raisin wine, and the slender lageos, which will one day trip the feet and tie the tongue. There are the purple grapes and the early ripeners, and the Rhaetic grape, in what song should I name you? Yet do not for that reason compete with the Falernian cellars. There are also the Aminnean vines, which give the soundest wines, before which even Tmolus rises in deference, and the royal Phanaean too, and the smaller argitis, which no other vine could rival in yield or in lasting as many years. Nor would I pass you over, Rhodian grape, welcome to the gods and at the second course of the table, or you, bumastus, with your swollen clusters.
103| But there is no counting how many kinds there are or what their names are; nor is it worth the effort to include them in a number. Anyone who wanted to know it would want to say how many grains of sand are tossed by the west wind on the Libyan sea, or, when the East Wind falls with unusual violence on ships, to learn how many waves come to the shores of the Ionian sea. Nor, indeed, can all lands bear all things. Willows grow along rivers, and alders in thick marshes; barren mountain ash grows on stony hills; shores are happiest with myrtle groves; and finally Bacchus loves open hillsides, while yews love the North Wind and the cold. Look also at the world tamed by its farthest peoples, the eastern homes of the Arabs and the tattooed Geloni: lands are divided up by their trees. India alone bears black ebony, and only the Sabaeans have the incense-bearing twig. Why should I tell you of the balsam that sweats from fragrant wood, or the berries of the ever-leafy acanthus? Why of the groves of the Ethiopians, white with soft wool, or how the Chinese comb fine fleeces from leaves? Or the woods that India, closer to Ocean, bears, at the world's farthest bend, where no arrow shot could clear the top of the highest tree in the air?—and that people is not slow, once they have taken up their quivers.
126| Media bears the bitter juice and lingering taste of the blessed citron, than which no remedy is more immediate, if ever cruel stepmothers have tainted the cups [and mixed in herbs and spells that are not harmless]: it brings help and drives the dark poisons from the limbs. The tree itself is large and very like a laurel in appearance, and if it did not spread another scent far and wide it would be a laurel. Its leaves do not fall in any wind, and its blossom clings tightly. The Medes use it to freshen their breath and sweeten their mouths, and with it they treat the wheezing of old men. But neither the forests of the Medes, richest of lands, nor the lovely Ganges and the Hermus turbid with gold could rival the praises of Italy; nor could Bactra, nor the Indians, nor all of Panchaia, rich in its incense-bearing sands. This land was never plowed by bulls breathing fire from their nostrils to sow the teeth of a monstrous serpent, nor did a crop of men bristle with helmets and thick spears. Instead heavy grain and the Massic juice of Bacchus have filled it; olives and cheerful herds possess it. From here the warhorse proudly enters the plain; from here come white flocks, Clitumnus, and the bull, greatest of victims, which, often bathed in your sacred stream, have led Roman triumphs to the temples of the gods.
149| Here is continual spring, and summer in months not its own: the flocks bear twice, the trees give fruit twice. But raging tigers are absent, and the savage brood of lions; aconite does not deceive wretched gatherers; no scaly snake drags its huge coils over the ground or gathers itself into a spiral of such length. Add so many outstanding cities and the labor of their works, so many towns piled up by hand on sheer cliffs, and rivers gliding beneath ancient walls. Should I mention the sea above, and the sea that washes below? Or the great lakes? You, Larius, greatest of them, and you, Benacus, rising with the roar and waves of the sea? Or should I mention the harbors, and the barrier added to the Lucrine lake, and the sea raging with loud roaring where the Julian water echoes far as the sea is driven back, and the Tyrrhenian tide is let into the Avernian channels? This same land has shown streams of silver and veins of copper in its ores, and has flowed abundantly with gold. It has brought forth a keen race of men, the Marsi and the Sabellian youth, the Ligurian used to hardship and the Volscians armed with javelins; it has produced the Decii, the Marii, and the great Camilli, the Scipios hard in war, and you, greatest Caesar, who now, already victorious on the farthest shores of Asia, are turning the unwarlike Indian away from Roman citadels.
173| Hail, Saturnian land, great mother of crops, great mother of men: for you I take up a subject of ancient renown and its craft, daring to open the sacred springs, and I sing an Ascraean song through Roman towns. Now for the character of the fields: what strength each has, what color, and what nature for bearing crops. First, difficult land and unkind hills, where the clay is thin and there are pebbles in the brushy fields, delight in a grove of long-lived Palladian olive; the evidence is the wild olive rising in great numbers over the same ground, and the fields strewn with its wild berries. But the soil that is rich and cheerful with sweet moisture, and the plain thick with grass and fertile in its richness, such as we often look down on in the hollow of a mountain valley (streams flow down here from the highest crags, carrying fertile silt), and the ground that rises to face the south wind and nourishes the fern that hates the curved plow: this will one day supply you with strong vines and plenty of wine, this is fertile in grapes, this in the liquor we pour from bowls and golden cups when the fat Etruscan has blown his ivory pipe at the altars, and in curved dishes we offer up the smoking entrails.
195| But if your concern is rather to look after cattle and calves, or the lambs of sheep, or goats that scorch the crops, make for the glades and rich pastures of far-off Tarentum, and for the sort of plain that unlucky Mantua lost, which fed snow-white swans on a grassy river. There the flocks will not lack clear springs or grass, and whatever the herds crop in the long days, the cool dew will restore in a short night. Soil that is generally black and rich beneath the pressed plowshare, and whose ground is crumbly (for that is what we imitate by plowing), is best for grain: from no other field will you see more wagons drawn home by slow oxen. Or there is land from which an angry plowman has carried off a forest and overturned groves that had stood idle for many years, and torn up the ancient homes of birds with the very roots; the birds leave their nests and fly high, while the rough plain gleams under the driven plowshare. For the meager gravel of hilly land hardly supplies low-growing cassia and rosemary to the bees; and rough tufa and chalk eaten away by black water snakes show that no other fields give serpents such sweet food or such winding hiding places.
217| Soil that breathes out a thin mist and flying vapors, drinks in moisture and gives it back whenever it likes, that always clothes itself in its own green grass and does not harm iron with scab or salty rust: that soil will entwine your elms with abundant vines, that soil is rich in oil, and you will find by working it that it is easy for livestock and patient under the curved plow. Such is the land that wealthy Capua plows, and the shore beside the ridge of Vesuvius, and the Clanius, which was unkind to deserted Acerrae. Now I will tell you how you can recognize each kind. If you want to know whether the soil is loose or unusually dense (since the one favors grain and the other Bacchus; dense soil suits Ceres better, and the loosest suits Lyaeus), first you will pick out the spot with your eyes, and have a pit sunk deep into the solid ground, then put all the earth back and level the top of the sand with your feet. If it falls short, the land is loose, and will be richer and better for cattle and nourishing vines; but if the earth cannot go back into its own place and is left over when the holes are filled, the ground is dense: expect sluggish clods and thick ridges, and break the soil with strong oxen.
238| Salty soil, and what is called bitter (unproductive for crops, not made tame by plowing, and keeping neither the character of its wine nor the names of its fruits) will give you this proof. Take woven baskets of tightly twisted twigs and the strainers of wine presses from the smoky rafters; into these let that bad ground and sweet water from springs be trampled until full. All the water will, of course, force its way out, and big drops will run through the twigs; but the taste will give clear evidence, and will twist the faces of those who try it with its bitter sensation. In the same way, we learn finally whether soil is rich by this method: when tossed in the hands it never crumbles, but clings like pitch to the fingers as it is held. Moist soil feeds taller plants, and is itself more luxuriant than it should be. Ah, may that land not be too fertile for me, nor show itself overly vigorous in its first ears of grain! The soil that is heavy betrays itself silently by its weight, and so does the light. It is easy to learn beforehand by sight which is black, and what the color is of each. But to find out a harmful cold is difficult: only pitch pines and baleful yews, and sometimes black ivy, reveal its traces.
259| Once you have observed these things, remember to bake the ground long beforehand and cut great mountains of earth into trenches, turning the clods up to the North Wind, before you plant the fertile kind of vine. Fields with crumbly soil are best: the winds and the cold frosts see to that, and the strong digger who stirs up the loosened acres. But men who miss no point of care first seek out a site like the one where the young trees' first nursery is prepared and where they will soon be transplanted in rows, so that the seedlings do not suddenly fail to recognize a changed mother. They even mark the quarter of the sky on the bark, so that each tree can be set back as it stood, with the side that bore the southern heat and the back it turned to the pole; so much does habit matter in tender plants. Ask first whether it is better to set the vine on hills or on the plain. If you are laying out the rich soil of a plain, plant thickly (Bacchus is no less productive in a crowded planting); but if the ground is sloping hillocks and tilted hills, be generous with the spacing between rows; and all the same, once the trees are set, let every path cut between them line up exactly:
279| as often in a great war, when a legion has deployed its long cohorts and the army stands in an open field, and the battle lines are drawn straight, and the whole earth far and wide ripples with gleaming bronze, and they have not yet joined the dreadful fighting, but Mars wavers uncertainly among the armed ranks. Let everything be measured out with equal intervals between the rows, not only so that the view may feed an idle mind, but because the earth will not otherwise give equal strength to all the vines, and the branches will not be able to spread out into open space. Perhaps you would also ask how deep the trenches should be. I would dare to entrust a vine even to a shallow furrow; a tree is planted deeper, far down in the earth, the oak above all, which stretches as far down with its root toward Tartarus as it reaches with its crown toward the heavens. So no winter storms, no gusts or rains uproot it: it stays unmoved, and by lasting outlives many descendants and many generations of men as they roll by; then far and wide it stretches its strong branches and arms, and itself, in the middle, supports an enormous shade. And do not let your vineyards face the setting sun, or plant a hazel among the vines, or look for shoots at the top, or break off cuttings from the top of the tree (so great is their love of the earth), or hurt the young plants with a blunt blade, or graft stumps of wild olive onto them.
303| For fire often slips from careless shepherds; first it hides secretly under the oily bark and takes hold of the timber, then escapes into the high leaves and sends up a huge roar to the sky; then it follows along the branches and reigns as victor over the tall treetops, and wraps the whole grove in flames and sends a black cloud of pitchy smoke billowing up to the sky, especially if a storm has settled on the woods from above and the wind drives and gathers the blaze. When this has happened, the vines have no strength from the root, and when cut down they cannot come back and grow green again from the base; the unlucky wild olive with its bitter leaves is what survives. And let no adviser, however wise, persuade you to work the earth when the North Wind is blowing and it is stiff. Then winter shuts the fields with frost, and does not let the root fix itself in the hardened earth when seed is thrown. The best planting for vineyards is when in the reddening spring the white bird, hated by long snakes, arrives, or else just as the first cold of autumn comes on, when the swift Sun has not yet reached winter with his horses, but summer is already past.
323| Spring, in fact, is for the foliage of the groves, spring is useful for the woods; in spring the earth swells and calls for the seeds of generation. Then Father Aether, the all-powerful, descends in fertilizing rain into the lap of his joyful wife, and, great himself and mingled with her great body, nourishes every offspring. Then the pathless thickets resound with singing birds, and herds seek Venus on fixed days; the kindly field gives birth, and the fields open their bosoms to the mild breezes of the west wind; a tender moisture is everywhere abundant, and the grasses dare to trust themselves safely to the new suns, and the vine does not fear the rising south winds or the rain driven from the sky by the great north winds, but pushes out its buds and unfolds all its leaves. I would believe that no other days shone, or had any other course, at the first origin of the growing world: it was spring, the great world was passing through spring, and the east winds held back their wintry blasts, when the first animals drank in the light, and the race of men sprung from the earth lifted its head from the hard fields, and wild beasts were let loose in the woods and stars in the sky.
343| Nor could tender things endure this hardship if so great a rest did not come between the cold and the heat, and if the mildness of the sky did not welcome the earth. As for the rest: whatever cuttings you bury in the fields, scatter them with rich dung, and, remembering, cover them with plenty of earth, or bury porous stone or rough shells with them; for water will seep between and a fine vapor will pass in, and the plants will lift their spirits. And some have already been found who pressed down on top with a stone and a huge weight of tile: this is a defense against pouring rain, and when the Dog Star brings the heat and the gaping fields split with thirst. Once the cuttings are set, it remains to draw the earth away from the stems rather often and to swing the hard two-pronged hoes, or to work the soil under a pressed plowshare and to turn the straining oxen among the vines themselves; then to fit smooth reeds and shafts of peeled rod and ash stakes and strong forked props, with whose strength they may learn to struggle up, to scorn the winds, and to climb to the topmost branches of the elms by stages. And while their first age grows up with new leaves, the tender things must be spared, and while the cheerful shoot sends itself up to the air, let loose through the clear sky with slack reins, it must not yet be tried with the very edge of the pruning knife, but the leaves should be picked and plucked here and there with hooked hands.
367| Then, when they have climbed out with strong stems, embracing the elms, trim their foliage then, cut back the arms then (before that they dread the iron), and only then exercise hard control and curb the straggling branches. Hedges also must be woven and all livestock kept out, especially while the leaf is tender and unaware of hardship; besides undeserved winters and the strong sun, wild aurochs and pursuing goats constantly torment it, and sheep and greedy heifers graze it. Neither cold stiffened by white frost nor summer heat pressing heavily on parched rocks has hurt it as much as the herds have, and the poison of their hard tooth, and the scar marked on the stock by the bite. For no other fault a goat is slaughtered to Bacchus at every altar, and the old plays enter the stage; and the descendants of Theseus set prizes for talent through the villages and crossroads, and merry among their cups they leapt on oiled wineskins in soft meadows. The Ausonian settlers too, a people sent from Troy, play with rough verses and loose laughter, and put on frightful faces of hollow bark, and call on you, Bacchus, in joyful songs, and hang soft masks for you from a tall pine.
390| From this every vineyard swells with abundant produce, and the hollow valleys fill, and the deep glades, and wherever the god has turned his beautiful head. So we shall duly pay Bacchus his honor in ancestral songs, and bring dishes and cakes, and the sacred goat, led by the horn, will stand at the altar, and we shall roast the rich entrails on hazel spits. There is also another labor in tending vines, which can never be finished enough: for all the ground must be cut open every year three or four times, and the clods broken without end by turning the hoes, and every grove relieved of its leaves. The farmers' toil returns, driven in a circle, and the year turns back on itself along its own tracks. And as soon as the vineyard has shed its last leaves, and the cold North Wind has shaken the glory from the woods, even then the keen countryman stretches his cares into the coming year, and goes after the vine left behind with Saturn's curved blade, trimming it and shaping it by pruning. Be first to dig the soil, first to burn the cut-off branches, and first to carry the stakes under cover;
410| be last to harvest. Twice shade falls heavily on the vines, twice weeds cover the crop with thick brambles; each is hard work: praise large estates, but farm a small one. Also the rough stems of butcher's broom are cut in the woods, and river reeds on the banks, and the care of an untended willow bed keeps one busy. Now the vines are tied up, now the orchards put down the knife, now the last vinedresser sings of the finished rows; yet the earth must still be stirred, the dust turned over, and Jupiter feared for the already ripe grapes. Olives, on the other hand, need no cultivation, and they do not wait for the bent pruning hook and the clinging rakes, once they have taken hold in the fields and endured the breezes; the earth itself, when opened by the hooked tooth, supplies enough moisture, and with the plowshare, heavy crops. So rear the rich olive, dear to Peace. Fruit trees too, as soon as they have felt their trunks grow strong and have gained their own strength, rush upward to the stars by their own force and do not need our help. And meanwhile every grove grows heavy with fruit, and the wild bird haunts redden with blood-colored berries.
431| Cytisus is cut for fodder, the deep forest supplies pine torches, and night fires feed on them and pour out light. And do people hesitate to plant and spend their care? Why should I go on to greater trees? Willows and low broom give either leaves for the flock or shade for the shepherds, and they supply a hedge for the crops and pasturage for honey. And it is a joy to see Cytorus rippling with boxwood and the groves of Narycian pitch, a joy to see fields that owe nothing to rakes or to any human care. Even the barren woods on the peak of the Caucasus, which the fierce East Winds constantly break and carry off, yield different crops, each its own; the pine gives timber useful for ships, and cedar and cypress for houses; from these farmers have turned spokes for wheels and solid disks for wagons, and have laid curved keels for boats. Willows are rich in withies, elms in leaves, while myrtle gives strong spear shafts and cornel is good for war; yews are bent into Ituraean bows. Nor do smooth limes and boxwood, shaved by the lathe, fail to take shape and be hollowed out with sharp iron; and the light alder, launched on the Po, floats on the rushing water; and bees too store their swarms in hollow bark and in the cavity of a decayed holm oak.
454| What gifts of Bacchus have brought anything as worth recalling? Bacchus has also given causes for wrongdoing: he subdued the raging Centaurs to death, Rhoecus and Pholus and Hylaeus, who threatened the Lapiths with a great mixing bowl. Oh, farmers, too fortunate if they knew their own blessings! For them the most just earth, far from clashing weapons, pours easy sustenance from the soil. If a tall house does not from its proud doors disgorge in the morning a vast wave of callers from all its rooms, if they do not gape at doorposts inlaid with beautiful tortoiseshell, at garments embroidered with gold, at Ephyrean bronzes, if white wool is not dyed with Assyrian drug, and the use of clear olive oil is not spoiled by cassia; yet there is untroubled rest and a life that knows no deceit, rich in various goods; there is leisure on broad estates, caves, natural lakes, cool valleys, the lowing of cattle, and soft sleep under a tree. There are woodland pastures and the lairs of wild animals, young men who endure work and are used to little, sacred rites of the gods and revered fathers; among them Justice, as she left the earth, left her last footprints.
475| As for me, may the sweet Muses above all things take me first, whose sacred rites I carry, struck with great love, and may they show me the paths of the sky and the stars, the varied eclipses of the sun and the moon's labors; where the earthquake comes from, by what force the deep seas swell up with their barriers broken and then sink back into themselves, why the winter suns hurry so to dip into Ocean, or what delay holds back the slow nights. But if the chill blood around my heart stands in the way, so that I cannot approach these parts of nature, then may the countryside and the streams that water the valleys please me; may I love rivers and woods, without glory. Oh, where are the plains and the Spercheios and Taygetus, where Spartan maidens celebrate the rites of Bacchus! Oh, who will set me in the cool valleys of Haemus and shield me with the vast shade of branches! Blessed is he who succeeded in discovering the causes of things and has set beneath his feet all fears and inexorable fate and the roar of greedy Acheron. Fortunate too is he who knows the country gods, Pan and old Silvanus and the sister Nymphs.
495| The rods of office of the people did not sway him, nor the purple of kings, nor discord stirring faithless brothers, nor the Dacian coming down from the conspiring Danube, nor Roman affairs and doomed kingdoms; he neither grieved in pity for the poor nor envied the man who had wealth. The fruits that the branches and the willing fields themselves bore of their own accord, he gathered, and he has not seen the iron laws, the maddened forum, or the people's archives. Others trouble the blind seas with oars, and rush into the sword, and push into palaces and the thresholds of kings; one man seeks a city and its wretched household gods for destruction, so that he may drink from a gem and sleep on Tyrian purple; another hoards wealth and broods over buried gold; one stands dazed at the speakers' platform, another, gaping, is carried away by the applause, redoubled through the benches of the common people and the senators; they rejoice, spattered with their brothers' blood, and exchange their homes and sweet thresholds for exile, and look for a fatherland lying under another sun. The farmer has broken the earth with his curved plow: this is the work of his year, from this he supports his country and little grandchildren, from this his herds of cattle and his deserving oxen.
516| There is no rest: the year overflows either with fruit, or with young of the flocks, or with sheaves of Ceres' stalks, and loads the furrows with its yield and overflows the barns. Winter comes: the Sicyonian berry is crushed in the olive presses, the pigs come home happy with acorns, the woods give arbutus berries; autumn lays down its varied fruits, and high up on the sunny rocks the vintage ripens mellow. Meanwhile his sweet children hang on his kisses, his chaste house keeps its purity, the cows let down their milky udders, and on the glad grass fat kids wrestle with each other, horn against horn. He himself keeps holidays, and stretched out on the grass, where a fire is in the middle and his companions wreathe the mixing bowl, he pours a libation and calls on you, god of the winepress, and sets up contests with the swift javelin on an elm for the herdsmen, and they strip their hardy bodies for country wrestling. This was the life the ancient Sabines once lived, this Remus and his brother; so, surely, Etruria grew strong, and Rome became the most beautiful thing in the world and enclosed her seven hills with a single wall.
536| Before the scepter of the Dictaean king, too, and before an impious race feasted on slaughtered bullocks, golden Saturn lived this life on earth; men had not yet heard war trumpets blown, nor yet swords ringing as they were laid on hard anvils. But we have covered an immense distance on our course, and now it is time to unyoke the steaming necks of our horses.
Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/vergil/014-georgics-book-ii#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.