Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/104

 last the sea poured in violently between, and with its waters cut off the Hesperian from the Sicilian side, washing between fields and cities, their seaboards now parted, with the waves of its narrow channel. There the right-hand coast is held by Scylla,[o] the left by Charybdis, ever     5 hungering, who, at the bottom of the whirling abyss, thrice a day draws the huge waves down her precipitous throat, and in turn upheaves them to the sky, and lashes the stars with their spray. But Scylla is confined in the deep recesses of a cave, whence she thrusts out her mouths,     10 and drags vessels on to her rocks. At top, a human face, a maiden with beauteous bosom; at bottom an enormous sea-monster—dolphins' tails attached to a belly all of wolves' heads. Better far wearily to round the goal of Trinacrian[o] Pachynus and fetch about a tedious compass,     15 than once to have looked on the monster Scylla in her enormous cave, and the rocks that echo with her sea-coloured dogs. Moreover, if there be any foresight in Helenus, if you give any credence to his prophetic tongue, if his mind be a fountain of Apollo's truth, one thing     20 there is, goddess-born, one thing outweighing all beside which I will foreshow you, reiterating the warning again and again—be Juno, great Juno, the first whose deity you worship—to Juno chant your willing prayers: subdue that mighty empress by suppliant offerings: thus at     25 last victorious you will leave Trinacria behind, and be sped to the borders of Italy. When you are there at length, and have come to the city of Cumæ, and the haunted lake, and the woods that rustle over Avernus, you will have sight of the frenzied prophetess, who, in the     30 cavern under the rock, chants her fateful strain, and commits characters and words to the leaves of trees. All the strains that the maid has written on these leaves she arranges in order, shuts them up in her cave, and leaves them there. They remain as she has left them, their     35 disposition unchanged. But, strange to say, when the hinge is turned, and a breath of air moves the leaves, and the opened door throws their light ranks into con