Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/267

 now of the stars, the road-marks of the shadowy night, and now of all that he has borne by land and by sea.

Now, ye goddesses, open wide your Helicon,[o] and stir up the powers of song, to tell us what the army now following Æneas from the Tuscan shores, equipping its ships for                5 adventure, and sailing over the sea.

First comes Massicus, cleaving the waters in his brass-sheathed Tiger: in his train a band of a thousand warriors, who have left the walls of Clusium and the city Cosæ; their weapons a sheaf of arrows, light quivers for the               10 shoulder, and a bow of deadly aim. With him grim Abas: his whole band ablaze with gleaming armour, his vessel shining with a gilded Apollo. Populonia had sent him six hundred of her sons, all versed in war: Ilva three hundred, an island rich in the Chalybes' unexhausted           15 mines. Third comes Asilas, the great interpreter 'tween gods and men, at whose bidding are the victims' entrails, the stars of the sky, the tongues of augurial birds, and the flame of the prophetic lightning. With him hurry a thousand in close array, bristling with spears—subjected     20 to his command by the town of Pisa, which, sprung from Alphëus, took root on Etruscan soil. After these is Astur, fairest of form, Astur, proud of his steed and his glancing armour. Three hundred follow him, all with one loyal soul, from those who dwell in Cære and in          25 the plains of Minio, in ancient Pyrgi, and Gravisca's tainted air.

I would not leave thee unsung, bravest chief of the Ligurians, Cinyras, or Cupavo with scanty retinue, whose helmet is surmounted by plumage of the swan: love was your                  30 joint crime; for love you wear the cognizance of your father's form. For legend tells that Cycnus, all for grief over his darling Phaethon, while in the poplar shade and the leafage of the brotherless sisters he keeps singing and consoling his sad passion by the Muses' aid, drew over his           35 form the soft plumage of downy eld, mounting up from earth and sending his voice before him to the stars. His son, with a band of martial peers sailing at his side,