Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/154

 should still have those many waters to pass, and that vast breadth of sea! Such the one cry of every heart. Oh for a city! the toils of the main are a weariness to bear! So, then, in the midst of them, she suddenly alights—no novice in the ways of doing hurt—and lays by her heavenly     5 form and heavenly raiment. She takes the shape of Beroe, the aged wife of Doryclus of Tinaros, a dame who once had had race and name and children, and in this guise stands in the midst of the Dardan matrons. "Wretched women," cries she, "not to have been dragged to the death     10 of battle by the force of Achaia under our country's walls! Hapless nation! What worse than death has Fortune in store for you? Here is the seventh summer rolling on since Troy's overthrow, and all the while we are being driven, land and ocean over, among all the rocks of an      15 unfriendly sea, under all the stars of heaven, as through the great deep we follow after retreating Italy, and are tossed from wave to wave. Here is the brother-land of Eryx; here is Acestes, our ancient friend. Who shall gainsay digging a foundation, and giving a people the city      20 they crave? O my country! O gods of our homes, snatched in vain from the foe! Shall there never be walls named with the name of Troy? Shall I never on earth see the streams that Hector loved—his Xanthus and his Simois? Come, join me in burning up these accursed      25 ships. For in my sleep methought the likeness of Cassandra the seer put blazing torches into my hands. 'Here,' she said, 'and here only, look for Troy: here, and here only, is your home.' The hour for action is come. Heaven's wonders brook not man's delay. See here! four     30 altars to Neptune. The god himself gives us the fire and the will."

So saying, she is the first to snatch the baleful brand—swinging back her hand on high; with strong effort she whirls and flings it. The dames of Ilion gaze with straining     35 mind and wildered brain. Then one of the crowd, the eldest of all, Pyrgo, the royal nurse of Priam's many sons: "No Beroe have you here, matrons—this is not Dory