your little Iulus - your father, and me who was once styled your wife?'

"Thus she was crying, while her moaning filled the house, when a portent appears, sudden and marvellous to relate. Even while the hands and eyes of his grieving 5 parents were upon him, lo, a flickering tongue of flame on the top of Iulus' head was seen to shoot out light, playing round his soft curly locks with innocuous contact and pasturing about his temples. We are all hurry and alarm, shaking out his blazing hair and quenching the 10 sacred fire with water from the spring- but Anchises my father raised his eyes in ecstasy to heaven, directing hand and voice to the stars: Almighty Jove, if any prayer can bow thy will, look down on us 'tis all I crave

and if our piety have earned requital, grant us thy 15 succour, father, and ratify the omen we now see.' Scarce had the old man spoken, when there came a sudden peal of thunder on the left, and a star fell from heaven and swept through the gloom with a torchlike train and a blaze of light. Over the top of the house we see it pass, 20 and mark its course along the sky till it buries itself lustrously in Ida's wood then comes a long furrowed line of light, and a sulphurous smoke fills the space all about. Then at length overcome, my father raises himself towards the sky, addresses the gods, and does reverence to the 25 sacred meteor: 'No more, no more delay from me. I follow your guidance, and am already in the way by which you would lead me. Gods of my country! preserve my house, preserve my grandchild. Yours in this augury - your shield is stretched over Troy. Yes, my son, I give way, and shrink not from accompanying your flight.' He said and by this the blaze is heard louder and louder through the streets, and the flames roll their hot volumes nearer. 'Come then, dear father, take your seat on my back, my shoulders shall support you, nor shall I feel the 35 task a burden. Fall things as they may, we twain will share the peril, share the deliverance. Let my little Iulus walk by my side, while my wife follows our steps at a

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distance. You, our servants, attend to what I now say. As you leave the city there is a mound, where stands an ancient temple of Ceres all alone, and by it an old cypress, observed these many years by the reverence of our sires. 5 This shall be our point of meeting in one place from many quarters. You, my father, take in your hand these sacred things, our country's household gods. For me, just emerged from this mighty war, with the stains of carnage fresh upon me, it were sacrilege to touch them, till I Io have cleansed me in the running stream.'

"So saying, I spread out my shoulders, bow my neck, cover them with a robe, a lion's tawny hide, and take up the precious burden. My little Iulus has fastened his hand in mine, and is following his father with ill-matched 15 steps, my wife comes on behind. On we go, keeping in the shade and I, who erewhile quailed not for a moment at the darts that rained upon me or at the masses of Greeks that barred my path, now am scared by every breath of air, startled by every sound, fluttered as I am, and fearing alike 20 for him who holds my hand and him I carry. And now I was nearing the gates, and the whole journey seemed accomplished, when suddenly the noise of thick trampling feet came to my ear, and my father looks onward through the darkness. 'Son, son,' he cries, 'fly: they are upon I distinguish the flashing of their shields and the gleam of their steel.' In this alarm some unfriendly power perplexed and took away my judgment. For, while I was tracking places where no track was, and swerving from the wonted line of road, woe is me! destiny 30 tore from me my wife Creusa. Whether she stopped, or strayed from the road, or sat down fatigued, I never knew nor was she ever restored to my eyes in life. Nay, I did not look back to discover my loss, or turn my thoughts that way till we had come to the mound and 35 temple of ancient Ceres; then at last, when all were mustered, she alone was missing, and failed those who should have travelled with her, her son and husband both. Whom of gods or men did my upbraiding voice spare?

25 us.

what sight in all the ruin of the city made my heart bleed more? Ascanius and Anchises my father and the Teucrian household gods I give to my comrades' care, and lodge them in the winding glade. I repair again to the city and don my shining armour. My mind is set to try every 5 hazard again, and retrace my path through the whole of Troy, and expose my life to peril once more. First I repair again to the city walls, and the gate's dark entry by which I had passed out. I track and follow my footsteps back through the night, and traverse the ground 10 with my eye. Everywhere my sense is scared by the horror, scared by the very stillness. Next I betake me home, in the hope, the faint hope that she may have turned her steps thither. The Danaans had broken in and were lodged in every chamber. All is over the greedy flame 15 is wafted by the wind to the roof, the fire towers triumphant - the glow streams madly heavenwards. I pass on, and look again at Priam's palace and the citadel. There already in the empty cloisters, yes, in Juno's sanctuary, chosen guards, Phoenix and Ulysses the terrible, were 20 watching the spoil. Here are gathered the treasures of Troy torn from blazing shrines, tables of gods, bowls of solid gold, and captive vestments in one great heap. Boys and mothers stand trembling all about in long array.

"Nay, I was emboldened even to fling random cries 25 through the darkness. I filled the streets with shouts, and in my agony called again and again on my Creusa with unavailing iteration. As I was thus making my search and raving unceasingly the whole city through, the hapless shade, the spectre of my own Creusa appeared in my 30 presence- a likeness larger than the life. I was aghast, my hair stood erect, my tongue clove to my mouth, while she began to address me thus, and relieve my trouble with words like these: 'Whence this strange pleasure in indulging frantic grief, my darling husband? It is not without Heaven's will that these things are happening: that you should carry your Creusa with you on your journey is forbidden by fate, forbidden by the mighty ruler

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of heaven above. You have long years of exile, a vast expanse of ocean to traverse- and then you will arrive at the land of Hesperia, where Tiber, Lydia's river, rolls his gentle volumes through rich and cultured plains. 5 There you have a smiling future, a kingdom and a royal bride waiting your coming. Dry your tears for Creusa, your heart's choice though she be. I am not to see the face of Myrmidons or Dolopes in their haughty homes, or to enter the service of some Grecian matron — I, a 10 Dardan princess, daughter by marriage of Venus the immortal. No, I am kept in this country by heaven's mighty mother. And now farewell, and continue to love your son and mine.' Thus having spoken, spite of my tears, spite of the thousand things I longed to say, she left 15 me and vanished into unsubstantial air. Thrice, as I stood, I essayed to fling my arms round her neck - thrice the phantom escaped the hands that caught at it in vain impalpable as the wind, fleeting as the wings of sleep.

"So passed my night, and such was my return to my 20 comrades. Arrived there, I find with wonder their band swelled by a vast multitude of new companions, matrons and warriors both, an army mustered for exile, a crowd of the wretched. From every side they were met, prepared in heart as in fortune to follow me over the sea to 25 any land where I might take them to settle. And now the morning star was rising over Ida's loftiest ridge with the day in its train Danaan sentinels were blocking up the entry of the gates, and no hope of succour appeared. I retired at last, took up my father, and made for the 30 mountains.

BOOK III

O

"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, 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.

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"In the distance lies the land of the war-god, inhabited, in vast extent the Thracians are its tillers subject erewhile to Lycurgus' savage sway, bound by old hospitality to Troy, their household gods friends of ours, while 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 Eneadæ, after my own name.

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"I was sacrificing to my parent, Dione's 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