Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/93

 by violence possesses himself of the gold. Cursed lust of gold, to what dost thou not force the heart of man? After the cold shuddering had ceased to tingle in my marrow, I lay this portent from heaven before the select senate of our nation, and my father as their chief, and ask them     5 what they think. All are of the same mind, to depart from the land of crime, to leave the home of violated friendship, and indulge our fleet with the gales that wooed it. So we give Polydorus a solemn funeral: earth is heaped high upon his mound; there stand the altars reared to his     10 manes,[o] in all the woe of dark fillets and sad-coloured cypress: and round them are daughters of Ilion, their hair unbound in mourner fashion: we offer bowls of new milk warm and frothing, and dishes of consecrated blood: so we lay the spirit to rest in its grave, and with a loud     15 voice give the farewell call.[o]

"Then, when the deep first looks friendly, and the winds offer a smooth sea, and the south's gentle whisper invites us to the main, our crews haul down their ships and crowd the shore. We sail out of the harbour, land and     20 town leaving us fast. There is a sacred country with water all round it, chief favourite of the mother of the Nereids and the god of the Ægean. Once it drifted among the coasts and seaboards round about, till the heavenly archer in filial gratitude moored it to the rock of Myconos      25 and to Gyaros, and gave it to be a fixed dwelling-place henceforth, and to laugh at the winds. Hither I sail: here it is that in a sheltered harbour our weary crews find gentlest welcome. We land, and worship the city of Apollo. King Anius, king of men at once and priest of      30 Phœbus, his temples wreathed with fillets and hallowed bay, comes running up; in Anchises he owns an old friend, we knit hand to hand in hospitality and enter his roof.

"Behold me now worshipping the temple of the god, built of ancient stone. 'Give us, god of Thymbra,[o] a home     35 that we can call our own: give us weary men a walled habitation, a posterity, a city that will last: keep from ruin Troy's second Pergamus, all that was left by the