Aeneidos III

After it pleased the powers above to overturn the state of Asia and Priam's

undeserving race, and proud Ilium fell,

and all Neptune's Troy lies smoking on the ground,

to seek out scattered places of exile and lands empty of men

we are driven by the auguries of the gods; and a fleet, under

Antandros itself and the mountains of Phrygian Ida, we labor to build,

not knowing where the fates are carrying us, where we may be allowed to stop,

and we gather our men. Summer had barely begun,

and father Anchises was ordering us to give our sails to the fates;

when weeping I leave behind the shores of my country, its harbors,

and the plains where Troy once stood: an exile, I am borne out to the deep

with my comrades, my son, my household gods, and the great gods.

Far off a land of Mars is worked, its plains running wide,

Thracians plow it, once under the rule of harsh Lycurgus,

an old guest-friend of Troy, its household gods in league with ours,

while Fortune lasted. Here I am carried, and on a curving shore

I lay out my first walls, having entered on them under unkind fates,

and out of my own name I shape the name Aeneadae.

I was bringing offerings to my mother, the child of Dione, and to the gods

who favor a work begun; and to the high king of the sky-dwellers

I was cutting down a glossy bull on the shore.

There happened to be a mound nearby, and on the crown of it cornel

thickets and a myrtle bristling with close-set shafts.

I came up, and as I tried to wrench the green growth out of the ground,

meaning to roof the altars over with leafy boughs,

I see a thing dreadful and strange even to say.

For the first sapling that comes up from the soil, its roots torn,

drips at the break with black blood

and fouls the earth with gore. An icy shuddering shakes

my limbs, and my blood clots cold with terror.

Again I go on to wrench out the tough shoot of a second,

to probe deep after the causes hiding there:

and from the bark of the second too a black blood follows.

Turning much over in my mind I prayed to the country nymphs

and to father Gradivus, who guards the Getic fields,

to bless the sight with the proper rite and lighten the omen.

But after I go at a third set of shafts with a greater effort,

wrestling on my knees against the sand that resists me,

(am I to speak, or say nothing?) a groan that brings tears is heard

from deep in the mound, and a voice comes back to my ears:

“Why do you tear at a wretched man, Aeneas? Spare me now, I am buried;

spare dutiful hands the crime. Troy did not bear me

a stranger to you, nor does this gore run out of a stock of wood.

Ah, get away from a cruel country, get away from a greedy shore:

for I am Polydorus; here an iron crop of weapons pinned me down

and covered me, and grew over me in sharp javelins.”

Then indeed, my mind pressed by a dread that cut both ways,

I froze; my hair stood up, and my voice stuck in my throat.

This Polydorus, once, with a great weight of gold,

unlucky Priam had sent in secret to be brought up

by the king of Thrace, when he had lost faith in the arms

of Dardania and saw his city ringed by siege.

That man, when the Teucrians' power was broken and Fortune drew back,

took up Agamemnon's cause and the arms that were winning,

and burst every bond of right: he cuts Polydorus down and seizes the gold

by force. To what do you not drive the hearts of men,

accursed hunger for gold? When the shaking had left my bones,

to the chosen chiefs of the people, and to my father first,

I report the gods' portents, and I ask what their judgment is.

All are of one mind: to get clear of a criminal land,

to leave a guest-welcome defiled, and to give the fleet the south winds.

So we hold Polydorus' funeral over again, and a great

weight of earth is heaped on the mound; altars stand for the Shades,

made mournful with dark blue fillets and black cypress,

and the women of Ilium about them, hair loosed after the custom;

we bring bowls foaming with warm milk

and dishes of hallowed blood, and we lay the soul to rest

in the grave, and call to him a last time with a great cry.

Then, when the sea can first be trusted, and the winds

give quiet water, and a soft rustling South Wind calls us to the deep,

my comrades haul the ships down and fill the shores:

we are carried out of harbor, and the lands and the cities draw back.

A holy land, most welcome, lies out in mid-sea,

dear to the mother of the Nereids and to Aegean Neptune,

which the dutiful bearer of the bow, as it drifted around coasts

and shores, bound fast to lofty Myconos and to Gyaros,

and granted it to be lived on unmoved, and to hold the winds in contempt.

Here I am carried; most peaceful, it takes us in worn out

in a safe harbor: we land, and pay reverence to Apollo's city.

King Anius, king of the people and priest of Phoebus at once,

his temples bound with fillets and with the sacred bay,

runs to meet us; he knew Anchises for an old friend.

We join right hands in guest-friendship, and go in under his roof.

I was making my prayer at the god's temple, built of old stone:

“Give us a home of our own, god of Thymbra; give walls to the weary,

and a line, and a city that will stand; keep safe a second Pergamum

of Troy, the leavings of the Danaans and of merciless Achilles.

Whom do we follow? Where do you bid us go? Where set our seat?

Give a sign, father, and come gliding into our hearts.”

I had barely said it: all at once everything seemed to shake,

the god's doorway and his bay tree, and the whole mountain

around us to move, and the cauldron to bellow as the shrine came open.

We sink down and take the ground, and a voice reaches our ears:

“Hardy sons of Dardanus, the land that first bore you

from your fathers' stock, that same land will welcome you back

to a glad breast. Search out your ancient mother.

Here the house of Aeneas will be lord over every coast,

and his children's children, and those who shall be born from them.”

So Phoebus; and a huge gladness broke out, mixed

with an uproar, and every man asks what those walls are,

where Phoebus is calling the wanderers and bidding them go back.

Then my father, turning over the records of men long dead,

“Hear me, chiefs,” he says, “and learn what you may hope for.

Crete, the island of great Jove, lies in the middle of the sea;

Mount Ida is there, and the cradle of our race.

They live in a hundred great cities, the richest of kingdoms;

from there our chief forefather, if I remember the story rightly,

Teucer, first sailed to the shores of Rhoeteum

and chose the site for his kingdom. Ilium and the towers

of Pergamum did not yet stand; they lived down in the valleys.

From there the Mother who keeps Cybelus, and the Corybants' bronze,

and the grove of Ida; from there the trusted silence of her rites,

and the lions that went yoked under our lady's car.

Come then, and let us follow where the gods' orders lead;

let us appease the winds and make for the realm of Cnossus.

It is no long run off; only let Jupiter stand by us,

and the third dawn will set our fleet on the shores of Crete.”

So he spoke, and killed at the altars the honors that were owed:

a bull to Neptune, a bull to you, beautiful Apollo,

a black beast to Storm, a white one to the West Winds that bring luck.

Rumor flies that a prince has been driven out and has given up his father's

kingdom, Idomeneus; that the shores of Crete lie deserted,

the houses empty of any enemy, the abandoned seats standing ready.

We leave the harbors of Ortygia and fly out over the open water,

past Naxos, its ridges wild with Bacchus, and green Donysa,

Olearos, and Paros white as snow, and the Cyclades strewn

across the sea, and we thread straits thick-sown with land.

A sailors' shouting goes up in a scramble of rivalry;

my comrades urge each other on: “For Crete, and our forefathers!”

A wind rising astern follows us as we go,

and at last we glide in to the ancient coast of the Curetes.

So, in my eagerness, I labor at the walls of the city I had wanted,

and I call it Pergamea, and urge a people glad of the name

to love their hearths and lift a citadel of roofs.

By now the ships were nearly all hauled up on the dry shore;

the young men were taken up with new marriages and new fields;

I was giving them law and houses: when suddenly, wasting the body,

the whole tract of sky gone foul, there came a pitiable

blight upon the trees and the sown crops, and a season that carried death.

Men were letting go of the sweet breath of life, or dragging their sick

bodies about; then Sirius went on burning the fields to barrenness;

the grass dried out, and a diseased crop refused us food.

Back to the oracle of Ortygia, and to Phoebus, remeasuring

the sea, my father urges me to go, and to beg for pardon:

what end he brings to our worn-out fortunes; where he tells us

to look for help in our labors; where to turn our course.

It was night, and over the earth sleep held all living things:

the sacred images of the gods, the Phrygian household gods,

which I had carried out with me from Troy and from the middle

of the city's fires, seemed to stand before my eyes as I lay

asleep, plain in a flood of light, on the side where the full

moon was pouring itself through the fitted windows;

and then they spoke, and took my cares away with these words:

“What Apollo would tell you if you were carried to Ortygia,

he sings here; and see, he sends us to your own door unasked.

We followed you and your arms when Dardania burned,

we measured the swelling sea beneath you in your ships,

and we, the same, will raise your descendants to come up to the stars

and give empire to your city. Build great walls for the great,

and do not lay down the long labor of your flight.

Your home must be changed. It was not these shores the Delian

pressed on you, nor did Apollo order you to settle on Crete.

There is a place the Greeks call Hesperia by name,

an ancient land, strong in arms and in the richness of its soil;

Oenotrian men worked it; now the report is that their descendants

have called the nation Italy, after the name of a leader.

That is our own home. From there Dardanus rose,

and father Iasius, the founder our line comes from.