Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/42

 Fate's[o] wheel. With these fears Saturn's[o] daughter, and with a lively memory of that old war which at first she had waged at Troy for her loved Argos'[o] sake—nor indeed had the causes of that feud and the bitter pangs they roused yet vanished from her mind—no, stored up            5 in her soul's depths remains the judgment of Paris,[o] and the wrong done to her slighted beauty, and the race abhorred from the womb, and the state enjoyed by the ravished Ganymede.[o] With this fuel added to the fire, the Trojans, poor remnants of Danaan[o] havoc and               10 Achilles'[o] ruthless spear, she was tossing from sea to sea, and keeping far away from Latium; and for many long years they were wandering, with destiny still driving them, the whole ocean round. So vast the effort it cost to build up the Roman nation! 15

Scarce out of sight of the land of Sicily were they spreading their sails merrily to the deep, and scattering with their brazen prows the briny spray, when Juno, the everlasting wound still rankling in her heart's core, thus communed with herself: "And am I to give up what I have                  20 taken in hand, baffled, nor have power to prevent the king of the Teucrians[o] from reaching Italy—because, forsooth, the Fates forbid me? What! was Pallas[o] strong enough to burn up utterly the Grecian fleet, and whelm the crews in the sea, for the offence of a single man, the frenzy of       25 Ajax,[o] Oileus' son? Aye, she with her own hand launched from the clouds Jove's[o] winged fire, dashed the ships apart, and turned up the sea-floor with the wind—him, gasping out the flame which pierced his bosom, she caught in the blast, and impaled on a rock's[o] point—while I, who walk       30 the sky as its queen, Jove's sister and consort both, am battling with a single nation these many years. And are there any found to pray to Juno's deity after this, or lay on her altar a suppliant's gift?"

With such thoughts sweeping through the solitude of             35 her enkindled breast, the goddess comes to the storm-cloud's birthplace, the teeming womb of fierce southern blasts, Æolia.[o] Here, in a vast cavern,[o] King Æolus[o]