In after-times should hold the world in awe,
And to the land and ocean give the law.
How is your doom reversed, which eased my care,
When Troy was ruined in that cruel war ?
Then fates to fates I could oppose; but now,
When Fortune still pursues her former blow,
What can I hope? What worse can still succeed? 330
What end of labours has your will decreed?
Antenor, from the midst of Grecian hosts,
Could pass secure, and pierce the Illyrian coasts:
Where, rolling down the steep, Timavus raves,
And through nine channels disembogues his waves.
At length he founded Padua's happy seat,.
And gave his Trojans a secure retreat:
There fixed their arms, and there renewed their name,
And there in quiet rules, and crowned with fame.
But we, descended from your sacred line,
Entitled to your heaven and rites divine,
Are banished earth, and, for the wrath of one,
Removed from Latium and the promised throne.
Are these our sceptres? these our due rewards?
And is it thus that Jove his plighted faith regards?'
To whom the Father of the immortal race,
Smiling with that serene indulgent face,
With which he drives the clouds and clears the skies,
First gave a holy kiss, then thus replies.
Daughter, dismiss thy fears: to thy desire
The fates of thine are fixed, and stand entire.
Thou shalt behold thy wished Lavinian walls,
And, ripe for heaven, when Fate Æneas calls,
Then thou shalt bear him up, sublime, to me;
No councils have reversed my firm decree.
And lest new fears disturb thy happy state,
Know, I have searched the mystic rolls of Fate:
Thy son (nor is the appointed season far)
In Italy shall wage successful war:
Shall tame fierce nations in the bloody field,
And sovereign laws impose, and cities build.
Till, after every foe subdued, the sun
Thrice through the signs his annual race shall run:
This is his time prefixed. Ascanius then,
Now called lülus, shall begin his reign.
He thirty rolling years the crown shall wear:
Then from Lavinium shall the seat transfer,
And, with hard labour, Alba-longa build;
The throne with his succession shall be filled,
Three hundred circuits more: then shall be seen
Ilia the fair, a priestess and a queen.
Who full of Mars, in time, with kindly throes,
Shall at a birth two goodly boys disclose.
The royal babes a tawny wolf shall drain;
Then Romulus his grandsire's throne shall gain,
Of martial towers the founder shall become,
The people Romans call, the city Rome.
To them no bounds of empire I assign,
Nor term of years to their immortal line.
Even haughty Juno, who, with endless broils,
Earth, seas, and Heaven, and Jove himself turmoils,
At length atoned, her friendly power shall join,
To cherish and advance the Trojan line.
The subject world shall Rome's dominion own,
And, prostrate, shall adore the nation of the gown.
An age is ripening in revolving Fate,
When Troy shall overturn the Grecian state; 1
And sweet revenge her conquering sons shall call,
To crush the people that conspired her fall.
Then Cæsar from the Julian stock shall rise,
Whose empire ocean, and whose fame the skies
Alone shall bound. Whom, fraught with Eastern spoils,
Our heaven, the just reward of human toils,
Securely shall repay with rites divine;
And incense shall ascend before his sacred shrine.
Then dire debate and impious war shall cease,
And the stern age be softened into peace:
Then banished Faith shall once again return,
And Vestal fires in hallowed temples burn;
And Remus with Quirinus shall sustain
The righteous laws, and fraud and force restrain.
Janus himself before his fane shall wait,
And keep the dreadful issues of his gate
With bolts and iron bars: within remains
Imprisoned Fury, bound in brazen chains;
High on a trophy raised, of useless arms,
He sits, and threats the world with vain alarms.'
He said, and sent Cyllenius with command
To free the ports, and ope the Punic land
To Trojan guests; lest, ignorant of Fate,
The queen might force them from her town and state.
Down from the steep of heaven Cyllenius flies,
And cleaves with all his wings the yielding skies.
Soon on the Libyan shore descends the God;
Performs his message, and displays his rod :
The surly murmurs of the people cease,
And, as the Fates required, they give the peace.
The queen herself suspends the rigid laws,
The Trojans pities, and protects their cause.
Mean time, in shades of night Æneas lies;
Care seized his soul, and sleep forsook his eyes.
But, when the sun restored the cheerful day,
He rose, the coast and country to survey,
Anxious and eager to discover more:
It looked a wild uncultivated shore:
But whether human kind, or beasts alone
Possessed the new-found region, was unknown.
Beneath a ledge of rocks his fleet he hides;
Tall trees surround the mountain's shady sides:
The bending brow above a safe retreat provides.)
Armed with two pointed darts, he leaves his friends,
And true Achates on his steps attends.
Lo, in the deep recesses of the wood,
Before his eyes his Goddess mother stood,
A huntress in her habit and her mien;
Her dress a maid, her air confessed a queen.
Bare were her knees, and knots her garments bind ;)
Loose was her hair, and wantoned in the wind;
Her hand sustained a bow, her quiver hung behind.)
She seemed a virgin of the Spartan blood:
With such array Harpalyce bestrode
Her Thracian courser, and outstripped the rapid
flood.
'Ho! strangers! have you lately seen,' she said,)
'One of my sisters, like myself arrayed,
Who crossed the lawn, or in the forest strayed?
A painted quiver at her back she bore;
Varied with spots, a lynx's hide she wore;
And at full cry pursued the tusky boar?'
Thus Venus: thus her son replied again;
None of your sisters have we heard or seen,
O virgin! or what other name you bear
Above that style; O more than mortal fair!
Your voice and mien celestial birth betray!
If, as you seem, the sister of the day,
Or one at least of chaste Diana's train,
Let not an humble suppliant sue in vain :
But tell a stranger, long in tempests tossed,
What earth we tread, and who commands the coast?
Then on your name shall wretched mortals call;
And offered victims at your altars fall.'
'I dare not,' she replied, 'assume the name
Of Goddess, or celestial honours claim:
For Tyrian virgins bows and quivers bear,
And purple buskins o'er their ankles wear.
Know, gentle youth, in Libyan lands you are:
A people rude in peace, and rough in war.
The rising city, which from far you see,
Is Carthage, and a Tyrian colony.
Phoenician Dido rules the growing state,
Who fled from Tyre, to shun her brother's hate:
Great were her wrongs, her story full of fate;
Which I will sum in short. Sichæus, known
For wealth, and brother to the Punic throne,
Possessed fair Dido's bed: and either heart
At once was wounded with an equal dart.
Her father gave her, yet a spotless maid:
Pygmalion then the Tyrian sceptre swayed:
One who contemned divine and human laws:
Then strife ensued, and cursed gold the cause.
The monarch, blinded with desire of wealth,
With steel invades his brother's life by stealth;
Before the sacred altar made him bleed,
And long from her concealed the cruel deed.
Some tale, some new pretence, he daily coined,
To soothe his sister, and delude her mind.
At length, in dead of night, the ghost appears
Of her unhappy lord: the spectre stares,
And with erected eyes his bloody bosom bares.)
The cruel altars and his fate he tells,
And the dire secret of his house reveals.
Then warns the widow, with her household gods,
To seek a refuge in remote abodes.
Last, to support her in so long a way,
He shows her where his hidden treasure lay.
Admonished thus, and seized with mortal fright,
The queen provides companions of her flight:
They meet, and all combine to leave the state,
Who hate the tyrant, or who fear his hate.
They seize a fleet, which ready rigged they find:
Nor is Pygmalion's treasure left behind.
The vessels, heavy laden, put to sea
With prosperous winds: a woman leads the way.
I know not, if by stress of weather driven,
Or was their fatal course disposed by Heaven;
At last they landed, where from far your eyes
May view the turrets of new Carthage rise:
There bought a space of ground, which, Byrsa called
From the bull's hide, they first inclosed, and walled.
But whence are you, what country claims your birth?
What seek you, strangers, on our Libyan earth?' 510
To whom, with sorrow streaming from his eyes,
And deeply sighing, thus her son replies:
'Could you with patience hear, or I relate,
O nymph! the tedious annals of our fate!
Through such a train of woes if I should run,
The day would sooner than the tale be done!
From ancient Troy, by force expelled, we came,
If you by chance have heard the Trojan name.
On various seas by various tempests tossed,
At length we landed on your Libyan coast.
The good Æneas am I called, a name,
While Fortune favoured, not unknown to fame.
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