Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/194

 wreathes his brow with the leafy spray, and offers prayer to the genius of the spot; to Earth the eldest of the gods; to the nymphs and the streams yet unknown by name: after that, to Night and Night's new-born stars and Ida's Jove, and Phrygia's mighty mother, invoking each       5 in turn, and his own two parents in the upper and the nether world. Just then the Almighty Father thundered thrice aloft in a clear sky, and with his own right hand flashed in open view from on high a cloud ablaze with rays of golden light. At once the news spreads among the Trojan      10 ranks that the day has arrived when they are to build their promised city. With emulous haste they celebrate the banquet, and in the power of the august presage set on the bowls exultingly, and wreathe the wine.

Soon as on the morrow the risen day began to illumine          15 the earth with the first sparkle of her torch, some here, some there, they set about exploring the city, the frontiers, the seaboard of the country. This, they learn, is the spring of Numicius, this the river Tiber, this the home of the brave Latian race. Thereupon Anchises' son commands an                 20 embassy of a hundred, chosen from all classes alike, to go to the monarch's royal city, all of them with wreathed boughs from Pallas' tree, to carry presents for his honoured hand, and entreat his friendship for the Teucrians. They delay not, but hasten at his bidding, moving with rapid pace,         25 while he is marking out the city with a shallow trench, preparing the ground, and surrounding this their first settlement on the coast, camp-fashion, with battlements and earthworks. Meanwhile the missioned band had performed their journey, and were in sight of the towers and              30 stately homes of Latium, and passing under the city wall. In a space before the town, boys and youths in their prime are exercising on horseback, and breaking in their harnessed cars among clouds of dust, or bending the sharp-springing bow, or hurling from the arm the quivering javelin,            35 or vying on foot or with the gloves, when galloping up, a messenger announces, in the aged monarch's ears, that mighty men have arrived in strange attire. The king bids