Or, in less compass, Troy’s epitome.A riv’let by the name of Xanthus ran,
And I embrace the Scaean gate again.
My friends in porticoes were entertain’d,
And feasts and pleasures thro’ the city reign’d.
The tables fill’d the spacious hall around,
And golden bowls with sparkling wine were crown’d.
Two days we pass’d in mirth, till friendly gales,
Blown from the south supplied our swelling sails.
Then to the royal seer I thus began:
‘O thou, who know’st, beyond the reach of man,
The laws of heav’n, and what the stars decree;
Whom Phoebus taught unerring prophecy,
From his own tripod, and his holy tree;
Skill’d in the wing’d inhabitants of air,
What auspices their notes and flights declare:
O say; for all religious rites portend
A happy voyage, and a prosp’rous end;
And ev’ry power and omen of the sky
Direct my course for destin’d Italy;
But only dire Celaeno, from the gods,
A dismal famine fatally forebodes:
O say what dangers I am first to shun,
What toils vanquish, and what course to run.’
“The prophet first with sacrifice adores
The greater gods; their pardon then implores;
Unbinds the fillet from his holy head;
To Phoebus, next, my trembling steps he led,
Full of religious doubts and awful dread.
Then, with his god possess’d, before the shrine,
These words proceeded from his mouth divine:
‘O goddess-born, (for Heav’n’s appointed will,
With greater auspices of good than ill,
Foreshows thy voyage, and thy course directs;
Thy fates conspire, and Jove himself protects,)
Of many things some few I shall explain,
Teach thee to shun the dangers of the main,
And how at length the promis’d shore to gain.
The rest the fates from Helenus conceal,
And Juno’s angry pow’r forbids to tell.
First, then, that happy shore, that seems so nigh,
Will far from your deluded wishes fly;
Long tracts of seas divide your hopes from Italy:
For you must cruise along Sicilian shores,
And stem the currents with your struggling oars;
Then round th’ Italian coast your navy steer;
And, after this, to Circe’s island veer;
And, last, before your new foundations rise,
Must pass the Stygian lake, and view the nether skies.
Now mark the signs of future ease and rest,
And bear them safely treasur’d in thy breast.
When, in the shady shelter of a wood,
And near the margin of a gentle flood,
Thou shalt behold a sow upon the ground,
With thirty sucking young encompass’d round;
The dam and offspring white as falling snow:
These on thy city shall their name bestow,
And there shall end thy labours and thy woe.
Nor let the threaten’d famine fright thy mind,
For Phoebus will assist, and Fate the way will find.
Let not thy course to that ill coast be bent,
Which fronts from far th’ Epirian continent:
Those parts are all by Grecian foes possess’d;
The salvage Locrians here the shores infest;
There fierce Idomeneus his city builds,
And guards with arms the Salentinian fields;
And on the mountain’s brow Petilia stands,
Which Philoctetes with his troops commands.
Ev’n when thy fleet is landed on the shore,
And priests with holy vows the gods adore,
Then with a purple veil involve your eyes,
Lest hostile faces blast the sacrifice.
These rites and customs to the rest commend,
That to your pious race they may descend.
‘When, parted hence, the wind, that ready waits
For Sicily, shall bear you to the straits
Where proud Pelorus opes a wider way,
Tack to the larboard, and stand off to sea:
Veer starboard sea and land. Th’ Italian shore
And fair Sicilia’s coast were one, before
An earthquake caus’d the flaw: the roaring tides
The passage broke that land from land divides;
And where the lands retir’d, the rushing ocean rides.
Distinguish’d by the straits, on either hand,
Now rising cities in long order stand,
And fruitful fields: so much can time invade
The mould’ring work that beauteous Nature made.
Far on the right, her dogs foul Scylla hides:
Charybdis roaring on the left presides,
