and the axes of doom: the father will bring his rebel sons to death, all for fair freedom's sake. Unhappy man! let after ages speak of that deed as they will, strong over all will be patriot passion and unmeasured thirst of praise. Look, there are the Drusi° and the Decii, and Torquatus° 5 with his unpitying axe, and Camillus the restorer of the standards. But those whom you see there, dressed alike in gleaming armour spirits at harmony now and so long as they are confined in darkness alas! how vast a war will they wage, each with each, if they shall attain 10 the light of day, what arraying of hosts, what carnage. will there be! Father-in-law and son-in-law, the one coming down from Alpine ramparts and the stronghold of Monœcus: the other drawn up against him with the forces of the east. Do not, do not, my children, make 15 wars like these familiar to your spirits: turn not your country's valour against your country's vitals: and you, restrain yourself the first: you, whose lineage is from heaven, drop the steel from your grasp, heir of Anchises' blood. See here, a conqueror who shall drive to the lofty 20 Capitol the car of triumph over Corinth, glorious from Achæan slaughter: here one who shall lay Argos in dust, and Agamemnon's own Mycenæ, ay, and the heir of Æacus, with Achilles' martial blood in his veins: a Roman's vengeance for his Trojan grandsires, and for Pallas' in- 25 sulted fame. What tongue would leave you unpraised, great Cato, or Cossus, you? or the race of the Gracchi, or those twin thunderbolts of war, the Scipios, Libya's ruin, or Fabricius, princely in his poverty, or you, Serranus, sowing your own ploughed fields? When, ye Fabii,° 30 will panting praise overtake you? You are in truth our greatest, the single saviour of our state by delay. Others, I doubt not, will mould the breathing brass to more fleshlike softness, and spread over marble the look of life. Others will plead better at the bar, will trace with the 35 rod the courses of heaven, and foretell the risings of the stars. Yours, Roman, be the lesson to govern the nations as their lord: this is your destined culture, to impose the

settled rule of peace, to spare the humbled, and to crush the proud."

Father Anchises paused; and, as they wondered, went on to say: "See how Marcellus advances in the glory of 5 the general's spoils, towering with conqueror's majesty over all the warriors near! When the state of Rome reels under the invader's shock, he shall stay it; his horse's hoofs shall trample the Carthaginian and the revolted Gaul; and he shall dedicate the third suit of armour to Io Quirinus the sire." Hereupon Eneas, for he saw walking at Marcellus' side a youth of goodly presence and in gleaming armour, but with little joy on his brow and downcast eyes: "Who, my father, is he that thus attends the warrior's march? his son, or one of the glorious line 15 of his posterity? What a hum runs through the attendant train! how lofty his own mien! but the shadow of gloomy night hovers saddening round his head." Father Anchises began, tears gushing forth the while: "Alas, my son! ask not of the heavy grief that those of your blood must zo bear. Of him the fates shall give but a glimpse to earth, nor suffer him to continue longer. Yes, powers of the sky! Rome's race would have been in your eyes too strong, had a boon like this been its own forever. What groanings of the brave shall be wafted from Mars' broad 25 field to Mars' mighty town! What a funeral, father Tiber, shall thine eyes behold, as thou flowest past that new-built sepulchre! No child of the stock of Пlion shall raise his Latian ancestors to such heights of hope: never while time lasts shall the land of Romulus take such pride 30 in any that she has reared. Woe for the piety, for the ancient faith, for the arm unconquered in battle! Never would foeman have met that armed presence unscathed, marched he on foot into the field or tore with bloody spur the flank of his foaming steed. Child of a nation's sorrow! 35 were there hope of thy breaking the tyranny of fate, thou shalt be Marcellus. Bring me handfuls of lilies, that I may strew the grave with their dazzling hues, and crown, if only with these gifts, my young descendant's shade, and

perform the vain service of sorrow." Thus they wander here and there through the whole expanse in the broad fields of shadow and take note of all. Soon as Anchises had taken his son from end to end, and fired his mind with the prospect of that glorious history, he then tells 5 the warrior of the battles that he must fight at once, and informs him of the Laurentian tribes and Latinus' town, and how to shun or stand the shock of every peril.

There are two gates of Sleep: the one, as story tells, of horn, supplying a ready exit for true spirits: the other 10 gleaming with the polish of dazzling ivory, but through it the powers below send false dreams to the world above. Thither Anchises, talking thus, conducts his son and the Sibyl, and dismisses them by the gate of ivory. Æneas traces his way to the fleet and returns to his comrades; 15 then sails along the shore for Caieta's haven. The anchor is cast from the prow: the keels are ranged on the beach.

о

BOOK VII

AND thou, too, in thy death, Caieta,° nurse of Æneas, hast left to our coast the heritage of an ever-living fame; still in this later day thy glory hovers over thy resting-place, and a name on Hesperia's mighty seaboard is thy monument, 5 if that be renown. So when good Æneas had paid the last dues and raised a funeral mound, and had waited for the calming of the deep, he spreads sail and leaves the harbour. Nightward the breezes blow, nor does the fair Moon scorn to show the way: her rippling light makes the sea shine 10 again. The next land they skirt is the coast of Circe's realm, where in queenly state the daughter of the Sun thrills her forest fastness with never-ending song, and in her haughty mansion burns fragrant cedar to give light by night, as she draws her shrill comb over the delicate warp. 15 From the shore they heard the growling noise of lions in wrath, disdaining their bonds and roaring in midnight hour, bristly boars and caged bears venting their rage, and shapes of huge wolves fiercely howling: things which Circe, fell goddess, had transformed by her magic drugs 20 from the mien of man to a beast's visage and a beast's hide. So, lest the pious race of Troy should suffer such monstrous change, were they to seek harbour there or approach the perilous shore, Neptune filled their sails with favouring breezes, sped their flight along, and wafted them past the 25 seething waters.

The sea was just reddening in the dawn, and Aurora was shining down from heaven's height in saffron robe and rosy car, when all at once the winds were laid, and every breath sank in sudden sleep, and the oars pull slowly against the 30 smooth unmoving wave. In the same moment Æneas, looking out from the sea, beholds a mighty forest. Among

the trees Tiber, that beauteous river, with his gulfy rapids and the burden of his yellow sand, breaks into the main. Around and above, birds of all plumes, the constant tenants of bank and stream, were lulling the air with their notes and flying among the woods. He bids his comrades turn aside and set their prows landward, and enters with joy the river's shadowed bed.

5

Now be with me Erato,° and I will unfold who were the kings, what the stage of circumstance, what the condition of ancient Latium, when the stranger host first landed on 10 Ausonian shores, and will recall how the first blood was drawn. Thou, goddess, thou prompt thy poet's memory. Mine is a tale of grisly war, of battle array, and princes in their fury rushing on carnage of Tyrrhenian° ranks, and all Hesperia mustered in arms. Grander is the pile of 15 events that rises on my view, grander the task I essay. It was the time when king Latinus, now stricken in age, was ruling country and city in the calm of years of peace. He, as story tells us, was the son of Faunus and a Laurentine nymph, Marica. Faunus' father was Picus, who owes his 20 birth to thee, great Saturn: thou art the first founder of the line. No son, no male progeny, so Heaven willed, had Latinus now; just as it was budding into youth, the branch was cut off. The sole maintainer of the race, the sole guardian of that princely house, was a daughter, already 25 ripe for wedlock, already arrived at full-blown womanhood. Many were her wooers from mighty Latium, nay, from all Ausonia. One wooer there was in beauty passing others, Turnus, strong in the glory of sires and grandsires: his alliance the queen with intense yearning was seeking to com- 30 pass; but heavenly portents bar the way with manifold alarm. There was a laurel in the middle of the palace, in the very heart of royal privacy, sacred in its every leaf, cherished by the awful observance of many years; men said that father Latinus himself found it there when he first laid the 35 foundation of the tower, dedicated it to Phoebus, and thence gave his new people the name of Laurentines. On the top of this tree lodged a dense swarm of bees, marvellous