Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/71

 "'You, eternal fires, with your inviolable majesty, be my witnesses; you, altars and impious swords, from which I fled; and you, hallowed fillets, which I wore for the sacrifice! I am free to break all the sacred ties that bound me to the Greeks. I am free to treat them as my foes, and     5 disclose all their secrets to the light of day, all the claims of the land of my birth notwithstanding. Only do thou abide by thy plighted word, and preserve faith with thy preserver, land of Troy, if he tells thee true, and makes thee large returns.      10

"'The strength of the Danaan hopes, and the soul of their confidence in the war they plunged into, has ever been the aid of Pallas. From the time when Tydeus' impious son and Ulysses, that coiner of villany, dared to drag away from her hallowed temple the fateful Palladium,[o]     15 slaughtering the guards who watched the citadel's height, thenceforth there was an ebb and a backsliding in the Danaan hopes, their forces shattered, the goddess estranged. Nor were the portents dubious that betokened Tritonia's change of mood. Scarce was the image lodged      20 in the camp, when flashing fire glowed in her uplifted eyes, and salt sweat trickled over her frame, and thrice of herself she leaped from the ground, marvellous to relate, shield and quivering lance and all. Forthwith Calchas sounds the note for flight over the perilous deep, for that Pergamus      25 can never be razed by Argive steel, unless they go to Argos for fresh omens, and bring back the divine aid which their crooked keels bore with them aforetime over the sea. And now this their voyage home to Mycenæ is to get new forces and gods to sail with them; they will re-*cross     30 the deep, and come upon you unforeseen. Such is Calchas' scanning of the omens. As for this image, he warned them to set it up in exchange for the Palladium, and, in expiation of injured deity, to atone for their fatal crime. Calchas, however, bade them raise it to the vast     35 height you see, knitting plank to plank, till it was brought near to heaven, that it might not be admitted at the gates or dragged within the walls, and thus restore to the people