Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/58

 vouchsafe a nearer view to our affairs. We are not come to carry the havoc of the sword into the homes of Libya—to snatch booty and hurry it to the shore; such violence is not in our nature; such insolence were not for the vanquished. There is a place—the Greeks call it     5 Hesperia—a land old in story, strong in arms and in the fruitfulness of its soil; the Œnotrians were its settlers; now report says that later generations have called the nation Italian, from the name of their leader. Thither were we voyaging, when, rising with a sudden swell, Orion,[o]     10 lord of the storm, carried us into hidden shoals, and far away by the stress of reckless gales over the water, the surge mastering us, and over pathless rocks scattered us here and there: a small remnant, we drifted hither on to your shores. What race of men have we here? What     15 country is so barbarous as to sanction a native usage like this? Even the hospitality of the sand is forbidden us—they draw the sword, and will not let us set foot on the land's edge. If you defy the race of men, and the weapons that mortals wield, yet look to have to do with gods, who     20 watch over the right and the wrong. Æneas was our king, than whom never man breathed more just, more eminent in piety, or in war and martial prowess. If the Fates are keeping our hero alive—if he is feeding on this upper air, and not yet lying down in death's cruel shade—all     25 our fears are over, nor need you be sorry to have made the first advance in the contest of kindly courtesy. The realm of Sicily, too, has cities for us, and store of arms, and a hero-king of Trojan blood, Acestes.[o] Give us leave but to lay up on shore our storm-beaten fleet, to fashion     30 timber in your forests, and strip boughs for our oars, that, if we are allowed to sail for Italy, our comrades and king restored to us, we may make our joyful way to Italy and to Latium; or, if our safety is swallowed up, and thou, best father of the Teucrians, art the prey of the Libyan     35 deep, and a nation's hope lives no longer in Iulus, then, at least, we may make for Sicania's straits, and the houses standing to welcome us, whence we came hither, and may