Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/224

 on those dreadful eyes, those grim features, the shaggy breast of the half bestial monster, and the extinguished furnace of his throat. Since then grateful acknowledgments have been paid, and the men of younger time have joyfully observed the day: foremost among them Potitius,     5 founder of the ceremony, and the Pinarian house, custodian of the worship of Hercules. He himself set up in the grove this altar, which shall ever be named by us the greatest, and shall ever be the greatest in truth. Come then, warriors, and in honour of worth so glorious     10 wreathe your locks with leaves, and present in your hands brimming cups, and invoke our common deity, and pour libations with gladness of heart." As he ended, the white-green poplar cast its Herculean shade over his locks and hung down with a festoon of leaves, and the sacred goblet     15 charged his hand. At once all with glad hearts pour libations on the board and make prayers to heaven.

Meantime evening is approaching nearer the slope of heaven, and already the priests and their chief Potitius were in procession, clad in skins in ritual sort, and bearing     20 fire in their hands. They renew the solemn feast, and bring delicious offerings for a fresh repast, and pile the altars with loaded chargers. Then come the Salii to sing round about the blazing altars, their temples wreathed with boughs of poplar, a company of youths and another     25 of old men; and these extol in song the glories and deeds of Hercules: how in his cradle, by the pressure of his young hand he strangled his stepmother's monstrous messengers, the two serpents; how in war that same hand dashed to pieces mighty cities, Troy and Œchalia;     30 how he endured those thousand heavy labours, a slave to king Eurystheus, by ungentle Juno's fateful will. "Yes, thou, unconquered hero, thou slayest the two-formed children of the cloud, Hylæus and Pholus, thou slayest the portent of Crete, and the enormous lion that dwelt     35 'neath Nemea's rock. Thou never quailedst at aught in bodily shape, no, nor at Typhoeus himself, towering high, weapons in hand; thy reason failed thee not when Lerna's