BOOK III.

THE ARGUMENT.

Eneas proceeds in his relation. He gives an account of the fleet with which he sailed, and the success of his first voyage to Thrace; from thence he directs his course to Delos, and asks the Oracle what place the gods had appointed for his habitation. By a mistake of the Oracle's answer, he settles in Crete. His household gods give him the true sense of the Oracle in a dream. He follows their advice, and makes the best of his way for Italy. He is cast on several shores, and meets with very surprising adven tures, till at length he lands on Sicily, where his father Anchises dies. This is the place which he was sailing from when the tempest rose and threw him upon the Carthaginian coast.

"WHEN heaven had overturned the Trojan state,
And Priam's throne, by too severe a fate;
When ruined Troy became the Grecian's prey,
And Ilium's lofty towers in ashes lay;
Warned by celestial omens, we retreat,
To seek in foreign lands a happier seat.
Near old Antandros, and at Ida's foot,
The timber of the sacred groves we cut,
And build our fleet; uncertain yet to find
What place the gods for our repose assigned.
Friends daily flock; and scarce the kindly spring
Began to clothe the ground, and birds to sing:
When old Anchises summoned all to sea;
The crew, my father, and the fates obey.
With sighs and tears I leave my native shore,
And empty fields, where Ilium stood before.
My sire, my son, our less and greater gods,
All sail at once, and cleave the briny floods.

Against our coast appears a spacious land,
Which once the fierce Lycurgus did command;
Thracia the name; the people bold in war;
Vast are their fields, and tillage is their care.
A hospitable realm, while fate was kind;
With Troy in friendship and religion joined.
I land with luckless oniens, then adore
Their gods, and draw a line along the shore ;

I lay the deep foundations of a wall,
And Enos, named from me, the city call.
To Dionoan Venus vows are paid,

And all the powers that rising labours aid;
A bull on Jove's imperial altar laid.
Not far, a rising hillock stood in view;
Sharp myrtles on the sides and cornels grew.
There, while I went to crop the sylvan scenes,
And shade our altar with their leafy greens;
I pulled a plant (with horror I relate
A prodigy so strange, and full of fate).
The rooted fibres rose, and from the wound,
Black bloody drops distilled upon the ground.
Mute and amazed, my hair with terror stood;
Fear shrunk my sinews and congealed my blood.
Manned once again, another plant I try,
That other gushed with the same sanguine dye.
Then, fearing guilt, for some offence unknown,
With prayers and vows the Dryads I atone;
With all the sisters of the woods, and most
The god of arms, who rules the Thracian coast;
That they, or he, these omens would avert,
Release our fears, and better signs impart.
Cleared, as I thought, and fully fixed at length
To learn the cause, I tugged with all my strength;
I bent my knees against the ground; once more
The violated myrtle ran with gore.

Scarce dare I tell the sequel; from the womb
Of wounded earth, and caverns of the tomb,
A groan, as of a troubled ghost, renewed

My fright, and then these dreadful words ensued:
Why dost thou thus my buried body rend?
O spare the corpse of thy unhappy friend;
Spare to pollute thy pious hands with blood;
The tears distil not from the wounded wood,
But every drop this living tree contains
Is kindred blood, and ran in Trojan veins.
O fly from this unhospitable shore,
Warned by my fate, for I am Polydore.
Here loads of lances, in my blood imbrued,
Again shoot upward, by my blood renewed.

My faltering tongue and shivering limbs declare

My horror, and in bristles rose my hair.

When Troy with Grecian arms was closely pent,
Old Priam, fearful of the war's event,

This hapless Polydore to Thracia sent.

Loaded with gold he sent his darling far
From noise and tumults and destructive war-
Committed to the faithless tyrant's care;
Who, when he saw the power of Troy decline,
Forsook the weaker with the strong to join.
Broke every bond of nature and of truth,
And murdered, for his wealth, the royal youth.
O sacred hunger of pernicious gold,
What bands of faith can impious lucre hold?
Now when my soul had shaken off her fears,
I call my father and the Trojan peers;
Relate the prodigies of Heaven, require
What he commands, and their advice desire.
All vote to leave that execrable shore,
Polluted with the blood of Polydore.
But e'er we sail, his funeral rites prepare,
Then to his ghost a tomb and altars rear.
In mournful pomp the matrons walk the round,
With baleful cypress and blue fillets crowned;
With eyes dejected and with hair unbound.
Then bowls of tepid milk and blood we pour,
And thrice invoke the soul of Polydore.

"Now when the raging storms no longer reign,
But southern gales invite us to the main,
We launch our vessels with a prosperous wind,
And leave the cities and the shores behind.

"An island in the Egean main appears;
Neptune and watery Doris claim it theirs.
It floated once, tiil Phoebus fixed the sides
To rooted earth, and now it braves the tides.
Here, borne by friendly winds, we come ashore,
With needful ease our weary limbs restore,
And the sun's temple, and his town adore.

"Anius the priest, and king, with laurel crowned, His hoary locks with purple fillets bound, Who saw my sire the Delian shore ascend,

Came forth with cager haste to meet his friend :
Invites him to his palace, and in sign

Of ancient love, their plighted hands they join.
Then to the temple of the god I went,

And thus before the shrine my vows present:
'Give, O Thymbræus, give a resting-place

To the sad relics of the Trojan race:

A seat secure, a region of their own,

A lasting empire and a happier town.

Where shall we fix, where shall our labours end?

Whom shall we follow, and what fate attend?
Let not my prayers a doubtful answer tind,
But in clear auguries unveil thy mind.'
Scarce had I said, he shook the holy ground,
The laurels, and the lotty hills around,
And from the tripos rushed a bellowing sound.
Prostrate we fell, confess the present god,
Who gave this answer from his dark abode :
Undaunted youths, go seek that mother earth
From which your ancestors derive their birth;
The soil that sent you forth, her ancient race,
In her old bosom shall again embrace;

Through the wide world the Enian house shall reign,
And children's children shall the crown sustain.'
Thus Phoebus did our future fates disclose :
A mighty tumult, mixed with joy, arose.
All are concerned to know what place the god
Assigned, and where determined our abode.
My father, long revolving in his mind
The race and lineage of the Trojan kind,
Thus answered their demands:
Your pleasing fortune, and dispel your fear.
The fruitful Isle of Crete, well known to fame,
Sacred of old to Jove's imperial name,
In the mid ocean lies with large command,
And on its plains a hundred cities stand.
Another Ida rises there, and we

Ye princes, hear

From thence derive our Trojan ancestry.
From thence, as his divulged by certain fame,
To the Rhatean shores old Teucer came;
There fixed, and there the seat of empire chose,
Eer Hlium and the Trojan towers arose ;
In humble vales they built their soft abodes,
Till Cybele, the mother of the gods,

With tinkling cymbals charmed the Idean woods.
She secret rites and ceremonies taught,
And to the yoke the salvage lions brought.
Let us the land which heaven appoints explore,
Appease the winds, and seek the Gnossian shore;
If Jove assists the passage of our fleet.

The third propitious dawn discovers Crete.'
Thus having said, the sacrifices laid
On smoking altars, to the gods he paid.
A bull, to Neptune an oblation due ;'
Another bull to bright Apollo slew;

A milk white ewe the western winds to please;

And one coal black to calm the stormy seas.
E'er this, a flying rumour had been spread,
That fierce Idomeneus from Crete was fled;
Expelled and exiled, that the coast was free
From foreign or domestic enemy;

We leave the Delian ports, and put to sea.
By Naxos, famed for vintage, make our way;
Then green Donysa pass, and sail in sight
Of Paros isle, with marble quarries white.
We pass the scattered isles of Cyclades,

That, scarce distinguished, seem to stud the seas.
The shouts of sailors double near the shores;
They stretch their canvas, and they ply their oars.
All hands aloft, For Crete, for Crete,' they cry,
And swiftly through the foamy billows fly.
Full on the promised land at length we bore,
With joy descending on the Cretan shore.
With eager haste a rising town I frame,
Which from the Trojan Pergamus I name;
The name itself was grateful, I exhort
To found their houses and erect a fort.
Our ships are hauled upon the yellow strand.
The youth begin to till the laboured land.
And I myself new marriages promote,
Give laws; and dwellings I divide by lot.
When rising vapours choke the wholesome air,
And blasts of noisome winds corrupt the year;
The trees devouring caterpillars burn;

Parched was the grass, and blighted was the corn.
Nor 'scape the beasts, for Sirius from on high,
With pestilential heat infects the sky;
My men, some fall, the rest in fevers fry.
Again my father bids me seek the shore
Of sacred Delos, and the god implore,
To learn what end of woes we might expect,
And to what clime our weary course direct.

'Twas night, when every creature, void of cares,
The common gift of balmy slumber shares;
The statues of my gods (for such they seemed),
Those gods whom I from flaming Troy redeemed,
Before me stood, majestically bright,

Full in the beams of Phobe's entering light.

Then thus they spoke, and eased my troubled mind:
"What from the Delian god thou goest to find,
He tells thee here, and sends us to relate;
Those powers are we, companions of thy fate,