Yet hath the child
affection
for his lost mother?
Virgil - Aeneid
.
Alas!
after such an
husband, what fate receives thy fall? or what worthier fortune revisits
thee? Dost thou, Hector's Andromache, keep bonds of marriage with
Pyrrhus? " She cast down her countenance, and spoke with lowered voice:
'"O single in happy eminence that maiden daughter of Priam, sentenced to
die under high Troy town at an enemy's grave, who never bore the shame
of the lot, nor came a captive to her victorious master's bed! We,
sailing over alien seas from our burning land, have endured the
haughty youthful pride of Achilles' seed, and borne children in
slavery: he thereafter, wooing Leda's Hermione and a Lacedaemonian
[329-363]marriage, passed me over to Helenus' keeping, a bondwoman to a
bondman. But him Orestes, aflame with passionate desire for his stolen
bride, and driven by the furies of crime, catches unguarded and murders
at his ancestral altars. At Neoptolemus' death a share of his realm fell
to Helenus' hands, who named the plains Chaonian, and called all the
land Chaonia after Chaon of Troy, and built withal a Pergama and this
Ilian citadel on the hills. But to thee how did winds, how fates give
passage? or whose divinity landed thee all unwitting on our coasts? what
of the boy Ascanius? lives he yet, and draws breath, thy darling, whom
Troy's . . .
Yet hath the child affection for his lost mother? is he
roused to the valour of old and the spirit of manhood by his father
Aeneas, by his uncle Hector? "
'Such words she poured forth weeping, and prolonged the vain wail; when
the hero Helenus son of Priam approaches from the town with a great
company, knows us for his kin, and leads us joyfully to his gates,
shedding a many tears at every word. I advance and recognise a little
Troy, and a copy of the great Pergama, and a dry brook with the name of
Xanthus, and clasp a Scaean gateway. Therewithal my Teucrians make
holiday in the friendly town. The king entertained them in his spacious
colonnades; in the central hall they poured goblets of wine in libation,
and held the cups while the feast was served on gold.
'And now a day and another day hath sped; the breezes woo our sails, and
the canvas blows out to the swelling south. With these words I accost
the prophet, and thus make request:
'"Son of Troy, interpreter of the gods, whose sense is open to Phoebus'
influences, his tripods and laurels, to stars and tongues of birds and
auguries of prosperous flight, tell me now,--for the voice of revelation
was all favourable to my course, and all divine influence counselled me
to [364-396]seek Italy and explore remote lands; only Celaeno the Harpy
prophesies of strange portents, a horror to tell, and cries out of wrath
and bale and foul hunger,--what perils are the first to shun? or in what
guidance may I overcome these sore labours? "
'Hereat Helenus, first suing for divine favour with fit sacrifice of
steers, and unbinding from his head the chaplets of consecration, leads
me in his hand to thy courts, O Phoebus, thrilled with the fulness of
the deity, and then utters these prophetic words from his augural lips:
'"Goddess-born: since there is clear assurance that under high omens
thou dost voyage through the deep; so the king of the gods allots
destiny and unfolds change; this is the circle of ordinance; a few
things out of many I will unfold to thee in speech, that so thou mayest
more safely traverse the seas of thy sojourn, and find rest in the
Ausonian haven; for Helenus is forbidden by the destinies to know, and
by Juno daughter of Saturn to utter more: first of all, the Italy thou
deemest now nigh, and close at hand, unwitting! the harbours thou
wouldst enter, far are they sundered by a long and trackless track
through length of lands. First must the Trinacrian wave clog thine oar,
and thy ships traverse the salt Ausonian plain, by the infernal pools
and Aeaean Circe's isle, ere thou mayest build thy city in safety on a
peaceful land. I will tell thee the token, and do thou keep it close in
thine heart. When in thy perplexity, beside the wave of a sequestered
river, a great sow shall be discovered lying under the oaks on the
brink, with her newborn litter of thirty, couched white on the ground,
her white brood about her teats; that shall be the place of the city,
that the appointed rest from thy toils. Neither shrink thou at the gnawn
tables that await thee; the fates will find a way, and Apollo aid thy
call. These lands moreover, on this nearest border of the Italian shore
[397-432]that our own sea's tide washes, flee thou: evil Greeks dwell
in all their towns.
husband, what fate receives thy fall? or what worthier fortune revisits
thee? Dost thou, Hector's Andromache, keep bonds of marriage with
Pyrrhus? " She cast down her countenance, and spoke with lowered voice:
'"O single in happy eminence that maiden daughter of Priam, sentenced to
die under high Troy town at an enemy's grave, who never bore the shame
of the lot, nor came a captive to her victorious master's bed! We,
sailing over alien seas from our burning land, have endured the
haughty youthful pride of Achilles' seed, and borne children in
slavery: he thereafter, wooing Leda's Hermione and a Lacedaemonian
[329-363]marriage, passed me over to Helenus' keeping, a bondwoman to a
bondman. But him Orestes, aflame with passionate desire for his stolen
bride, and driven by the furies of crime, catches unguarded and murders
at his ancestral altars. At Neoptolemus' death a share of his realm fell
to Helenus' hands, who named the plains Chaonian, and called all the
land Chaonia after Chaon of Troy, and built withal a Pergama and this
Ilian citadel on the hills. But to thee how did winds, how fates give
passage? or whose divinity landed thee all unwitting on our coasts? what
of the boy Ascanius? lives he yet, and draws breath, thy darling, whom
Troy's . . .
Yet hath the child affection for his lost mother? is he
roused to the valour of old and the spirit of manhood by his father
Aeneas, by his uncle Hector? "
'Such words she poured forth weeping, and prolonged the vain wail; when
the hero Helenus son of Priam approaches from the town with a great
company, knows us for his kin, and leads us joyfully to his gates,
shedding a many tears at every word. I advance and recognise a little
Troy, and a copy of the great Pergama, and a dry brook with the name of
Xanthus, and clasp a Scaean gateway. Therewithal my Teucrians make
holiday in the friendly town. The king entertained them in his spacious
colonnades; in the central hall they poured goblets of wine in libation,
and held the cups while the feast was served on gold.
'And now a day and another day hath sped; the breezes woo our sails, and
the canvas blows out to the swelling south. With these words I accost
the prophet, and thus make request:
'"Son of Troy, interpreter of the gods, whose sense is open to Phoebus'
influences, his tripods and laurels, to stars and tongues of birds and
auguries of prosperous flight, tell me now,--for the voice of revelation
was all favourable to my course, and all divine influence counselled me
to [364-396]seek Italy and explore remote lands; only Celaeno the Harpy
prophesies of strange portents, a horror to tell, and cries out of wrath
and bale and foul hunger,--what perils are the first to shun? or in what
guidance may I overcome these sore labours? "
'Hereat Helenus, first suing for divine favour with fit sacrifice of
steers, and unbinding from his head the chaplets of consecration, leads
me in his hand to thy courts, O Phoebus, thrilled with the fulness of
the deity, and then utters these prophetic words from his augural lips:
'"Goddess-born: since there is clear assurance that under high omens
thou dost voyage through the deep; so the king of the gods allots
destiny and unfolds change; this is the circle of ordinance; a few
things out of many I will unfold to thee in speech, that so thou mayest
more safely traverse the seas of thy sojourn, and find rest in the
Ausonian haven; for Helenus is forbidden by the destinies to know, and
by Juno daughter of Saturn to utter more: first of all, the Italy thou
deemest now nigh, and close at hand, unwitting! the harbours thou
wouldst enter, far are they sundered by a long and trackless track
through length of lands. First must the Trinacrian wave clog thine oar,
and thy ships traverse the salt Ausonian plain, by the infernal pools
and Aeaean Circe's isle, ere thou mayest build thy city in safety on a
peaceful land. I will tell thee the token, and do thou keep it close in
thine heart. When in thy perplexity, beside the wave of a sequestered
river, a great sow shall be discovered lying under the oaks on the
brink, with her newborn litter of thirty, couched white on the ground,
her white brood about her teats; that shall be the place of the city,
that the appointed rest from thy toils. Neither shrink thou at the gnawn
tables that await thee; the fates will find a way, and Apollo aid thy
call. These lands moreover, on this nearest border of the Italian shore
[397-432]that our own sea's tide washes, flee thou: evil Greeks dwell
in all their towns.
