Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/169

 streaming from the bowl. After that the ashes were fallen in and the blaze was lulled, they drenched with wine the relics and the thirsty embers on the pyre, and Corynæus gathered up the bones, and stored them in a brazen urn. He, too, carried round pure water, and sprinkled thrice         5 the comrades of the dead, scattering the thin drops with a branch of fruitful olive—so he expiated the company, and spoke the last solemn words. But good Æneas raises over the dead a monument of massive size, setting up for the hero his own proper arms, the oar and the trumpet,          10 under a skyey mountain, which is now from him called Misenus, and retains from age to age the everlasting name.

This done, he hastens to execute the Sibyl's bidding. A deep cave there was, yawning wide with giant throat, rough and shingly, shadowed by the black pool and the           15 gloom of the forest—a cave, over whose mouth no winged thing could fly unharmed, so poisonous the breath that exhaling from its pitchy jaws steamed up to the sky—whence Greece has given the spot the name Aornos.[o] Here first the priestess places in sacrificial station four     20 black-skinned bullocks, and empties wine over their brows, and plucking from between their horns the hairs of the crown, throws them into the hallowed flame, as the firstfruits of worship, with loud cries on Hecate, queen in heaven and Erebus both. Others put the knife to the             25 throat, and catch in chargers the steaming blood. With his own sword Æneas strikes down a lamb of sable fleece, for the Furies'[o] mother and her mighty sister, and a barren heifer for thee, dread Proserpine. Then to the Stygian monarch he rears altars, blazing through the            30 darkness, and piles on the flame the bulls' carcases entire, pouring fat oil on the entrails all aglow. When, hark! as the sun began to glimmer and dawn, the ground is bellowing under their feet, and the wood-crowned heights are nodding, and the baying of dogs sounds through the          35 gloom, for the goddess is at hand. "Hence, hence with your unhallowed feet!" clamours the prophetess, "and rid the whole grove of your presence. And you—strike into