Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/43

 is bowing to his sway struggling winds and howling tempests, and bridling them with bond[o] and prison. They, in their passion, are raving at the closed doors, while the huge rock roars responsive: Æolus is sitting aloft in his fortress, his sceptre in his hand, soothing their moods         5 and allaying their rage; were he to fail in this, why sea and land, and the deep of heaven, would all be forced along by their blast, and swept through the air. But the almighty sire has buried them in caverns dark and deep, with this fear before his eyes, and placed over them     10 giant bulk and tall mountains, and given them a king who, by the terms of his compact, should know how to tighten or slacken the reins at his patron's will. To him it was that Juno then, in these words, made her humble request:—                                                     15

"Æolus—for it is to thee that the sire of gods and king of men has given it with the winds now to calm, now to rouse the billows—there is a race which I love not now sailing the Tyrrhene[o] sea, carrying Ilion[o] into Italy and Ilion's vanquished gods; do thou lash the winds to fury,       20 sink and whelm their ships, or scatter them apart, and strew the ocean with their corpses. Twice seven nymphs are of my train, all of surpassing beauty; of these her whose form is fairest, Deiopea, I will unite to thee in lasting wedlock, and consecrate her thy own, that all her days, for a            25 service so great, she may pass with thee, and make thee father of a goodly progeny."

Æolus returns: "Thine, great Queen, is the task to search out on what thou mayest fix thy heart; for me to do thy bidding[o] is but right. Thou makest this poor realm       30 mine, mine the sceptre and Jove's smile; thou givest me a couch at the banquets of the gods, and makest me lord of the storm-cloud and of the tempest."

So soon as this was said, he turned his spear, and pushed the hollow mountain on its side; and the winds, as though      35 in column formed, rush forth[o] where they see any outlet, and sweep over the earth in hurricane. Heavily they fall[o] on the sea, and from its very bottom crash down the