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 fling out the ropes anywhither, and stretch their sails to the winds that would catch them. On the other hand, Helenus' warning bids them not to hold on their way between Scylla and Charybdis, a passage on either side removed but a hair's breadth from death; so our purpose     5 stands to spread our sails backward. When lo! the north wind is upon us, sped from Pelorus' narrow strait. On I fly past Pantagia's mouth of living rock, and the bay of Megara, and low-lying Thapsus. Such were the coasts named to us by Achemenides, as he retraced his former     10 wanderings—Achemenides, comrade of the ill-starred Ulysses.

"Stretched before the Sicanian bay lies an island, over against Plemyrium the billowy—former ages named it Ortygia. Hither, the legend is, Alpheus, the river of     15 Elis, made himself a secret passage under the sea; and he now, through thy mouth, Arethusa,[o] blends with the waters of Sicily. Obedient to command, we worship the mighty gods of the place; and from thence I pass the over-rich soil of Helorus the marshy. Hence we skirt the      20 tall crags and jutting rocks of Pachynus, and Camarina is seen in the distance,—Camarina, which the oracle gave no man leave to disturb, and the plains of Gela, and Gela itself, mighty city, called from the stream that laves it. Next Acragas the craggy displays from afar its lofty      25 walls, one day the breeder of generous steeds. Thee, too, I leave, by favour of the winds, palmy Selinus, and pick my way through the sunk rocks that make Lilybæum's waters perilous. Hence Drepanum receives me, with its haven and its joyless coast. Here, after so many     30 storms on the sea had done their worst, woe is me! I lose him that had made every care and danger light, my father, Anchises. Here, best of sires, you leave your son, lone and weary, you, who had been snatched from those fearful dangers, alas! in vain. Helenus, the seer, among     35 the thousand horrors he foretold, warned me not of this agony; no, nor dread Celæno. This was my last suffering, this the goal of my long journeyings. It