Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/115

 may yawn for me from her foundations, or the all-powerful sire hurl me thunder-stricken to the shades, to the wan shades of Erebus[o] and abysmal night, ere I violate thee, my woman's honour, or unknit the bonds thou tiest. He who first wedded me, he has carried off my heart—let     5 him keep it all his own, and retain it in his grave." Thus having said, she deluged her bosom with a burst of tears.

Anna replies:—"Sweet love, dearer than the light to your sister's eye, are you to pine and grieve in loneliness     10 through life's long spring, nor know aught of a mother's joy in her children, nor of the prizes Venus gives? Think you that dead ashes and ghosts low in the grave take this to heart? Grant that no husbands have touched your bleeding heart in times gone by, none now in Libya, none      15 before in Tyre; yes, Iarbas has been slighted, and the other chieftains whom Afric, rich in triumphs, rears as its own—will you fight against a welcome, no less than an unwelcome passion? Nor does it cross your mind in whose territories you are settled? On one side the cities     20 of the Gætulians, a race invincible in war, and the Numidians environ you, unbridled as their steeds, and the inhospitable Syrtis; on another, a region unpeopled by drought, and the widespread barbarism of the nation of Barce. What need to talk of the war-cloud threatening     25 from Tyre, and the menaces of our brother? It is under Heaven's auspices, I deem, and by Juno's blessing, that the vessels of Ilion have made this voyage hither. What a city, my sister, will ours become before your eyes! what an empire will grow out of a marriage like this! 30 With the arms of the Teucrians at its back, to what a height will the glory of Carthage soar! Only be it yours to implore the favour of Heaven, and having won its acceptance, give free course to hospitality and weave a chain of pleas for delay, while the tempest is raging its     35 full on the sea, and Orion, the star of rain, while his ships are still battered, and the rigour of the sky still unyielding." By these words she added fresh fuel to the fire of