Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/91



"After that it had seemed well to the powers above to overthrow Asia's fortunes and Priam's guiltless nation; after that Ilion fell headlong from its pride, and Troy, which Neptune reared, became one levelled smoking ruin, we are driven by auguries from heaven to look elsewhere     5 for the exile's home in lands yet unpeopled. We build us a fleet under the shadow of Antandros,[o] and the range of our own Phrygian Ida, all uncertain whither fate may carry us, where it may be our lot to settle, and muster men for sailing. Scarcely had summer set in, when my      10 father, Anchises, was bidding us spread our sails to destiny. Then I give my last tearful look to my country's shores and her harbours, and those plains where Troy once stood but stands no longer. A banished man, I am wafted into the deep with my comrades and my son, my household      15 gods and their mighty brethren.

"In the distance lies the land of the war-god, inhabited, in vast extent—the Thracians are its tillers—subject erewhile to Lycurgus'[o] savage sway, bound by old hospitality to Troy, their household gods friends of ours, while     20 our star yet shone. Hither I am wafted, and on the bending line of coast trace the outline of a city, a commencement made in an evil hour, and call the new nation Æneadæ,[o] after my own name.

"I was sacrificing to my parent, Dione's[o] daughter, and     25 the rest of the gods, that they might bless the work I had begun, and was slaying to the heavenly monarch of the powers above a bull of shining whiteness on the shore. It happened that there was a mound near, on whose top were plants of cornel, and a myrtle bristling thick with      30