Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/196

 race the true people of Saturn, kept in righteousness by no band of law, but by our own instinct and the rule of our parent-god. And now I remember, though years have dulled the freshness of the tale, that aged Auruncans used to tell how in this land Dardanus saw the light, and hence     5 he won his way to the towns of Phrygian Ida and Thracian Samos, which men now call Samothrace. Ay, it was from the house of Tuscan Corythus he went, and now the golden palace of starry heaven seats him on a throne, and among the altars of the gods makes room for him."     10

He ended; and Ilioneus followed thus: "Great king, illustrious son of Faunus, no stress of gloomy storm has made us the sport of the waves and driven us on your coast, no sky or land misread has beguiled us of our track: of set purpose, with full intent, we are arrived one     15 and all at your city, driven from a realm once the greatest which the sun surveyed in his course from end to end of heaven. From Jove is the origin of our race; in Jove, as their ancestor, the sons of Dardanus glory; our monarch himself, sprung of Jove's own pure blood, Æneas of Troy,      20 has sent us to your doors. How dire a hurricane, launched from fell Mycenæ, swept over Ida's plains—how the two worlds of Europe and Asia, fate driving each, met and crashed together—has reached the ears of the man, if such there be, whom earth's last corner withdraws from      25 the wash of ocean, and his too who is parted from his fellows by the zone that lies midmost among the four, the zone of the tyrannous sun. From the jaws of that deluge flying over many and mighty waters, we ask of you for our country's gods a narrow resting-place—the harmless     30 privilege of the coast, and the common liberty of water and air. We shall be no disgrace to your kingdom, nor light shall be the fame that men will blaze of you, nor shall gratitude for your great bounty grow old, nor shall Ausonia mourn the day when she welcomed Troy to her     35 heart. I swear by Æneas' star, by his strong right hand, known as such by all who have proved it in friendship or in war, many have been the peoples, many the nations—*