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BOOK I

Arms and the man I sing,[o] who at the first from Troy's[o] shores the exile of destiny, won his way to Italy and her Latian[o] coast—a man much buffeted on land and on the deep by violence from above, to sate the unforgetting wrath of Juno[o] the cruel—much[o] scourged too in war, as he     5 struggled to build him a city, and find his gods a home in Latium—himself the father of the Latian people, and the chiefs of Alba's[o] houses, and the walls of high towering Rome.

Bring to my mind, O Muse,[o] the causes—for what     10 treason against her godhead, or what pain received, the queen of heaven drove a man of piety so signal to turn the wheel of so many calamities, to bear the brunt of so many hardships! Can heavenly natures hate[o] so fiercely and so long? 15

Of old there was a city, its people emigrants from Tyre,[o] Carthage, over against Italy and Tiber's mouths, yet far removed—rich and mighty, and formed to all roughness by war's[o] iron trade—a spot where Juno, it was said, loved to dwell more than in all the world beside,     20 Samos[o] holding but the second place. Here was her armour, here her chariot—here to fix by her royal act the empire of the nations, could Fate be brought to assent, was even then her aim, her cherished scheme. But she had heard that the blood of Troy was sowing the seed of a     25 race to overturn one day those Tyrian towers—from that seed a nation, monarch of broad realms and glorious in war, was to bring ruin on Libya[o]—such the turning of