Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/116

 love, gave confidence to her wavering mind, and loosed the ties of woman's honour.

First they approach the temples and inquire for pardon from altar to altar; duly they slaughter chosen sheep to Ceres the lawgiver, to Phœbus, and to father Lysæus[o]—above    5 all to Juno, who makes marriage bonds her care. Dido herself, in all her beauty, takes a goblet in her hand, and pours it out full between the horns of a heifer of gleaming white, or moves majestic in the presence of the gods towards the richly-laden altars, and solemnizes     10 the day with offerings, and gazing greedily on the victims' opened breasts, consults the entrails yet quivering with life. Alas! how blind are the eyes of seers! What can vows, what can temples do for the madness of love? All the while a flame is preying on the very marrow of her       15 bones, and deep in her breast a wound keeps noiselessly alive. She is on fire, the ill-fated Dido, and in her madness ranges the whole city through, like a doe from an arrow-shot, whom, unguarded in the thick of the Cretan woods, a shepherd, chasing her with his darts, has pierced         20 from a distance, and left the flying steel in the wound, unknowing of his prize; she at full speed scours the forests and lawns of Dicte; the deadly reed still sticks in her side. Now she leads Æneas with her through the heart of the town, and displays the wealth of Sidon, and         25 the city built to dwell in. She begins to speak, and stops midway in the utterance. Now, as the day fades, she seeks again the banquet of yesterday, and once more in frenzy asks to hear of the agonies of Troy, and hangs once more on his lips as he tells the tale. Afterwards,           30 when the guests are gone, and the dim moon in turn is hiding her light, and the setting stars invite to slumber, alone she mourns in the empty hall, and presses the couch he has just left; him far away she sees and hears, herself far away; or holds Ascanius long in her lap, spellbound      35 by his father's image, to cheat, if she can, her ungovernable passion. The towers that were rising rise no longer; the youth ceases to practise arms, or to make