Thus far sped the sacred
contests
to their holy lord.
Virgil - Aeneid
The rest of them are
mounted on old Acestes' Sicilian horses. . . . The Dardanians greet
their shy entrance with applause, and rejoice at the view, and recognise
the features of their parents of old. When they have ridden merrily
round all the concourse of their gazing friends, Epytides shouts from
afar the signal they await, and sounds his whip. They gallop apart in
equal numbers, and open their files three and three in deploying bands,
and again at the call wheel about and bear down with levelled arms. Next
they start on other charges and other retreats in corresponsive spaces,
and interlink circle with circle, and wage the armed phantom of battle.
And now they bare their backs in flight, now turn their lances to the
charge, now plight peace and ride on side by side. As once of old, they
say, the labyrinth in high Crete had a tangled path between blind walls,
and a thousand ways of doubling treachery, where tokens to follow failed
in the [591-625]maze unmastered and irrecoverable: even in such a track
do the children of Troy entangle their footsteps and weave the game of
flight and battle; like dolphins who, swimming through the wet seas, cut
Carpathian or Libyan. . . .
This fashion of riding, these games Ascanius first revived, when he girt
Alba the Long about with walls, and taught their celebration to the Old
Latins in the way of his own boyhood, with the youth of Troy about him.
The Albans taught it their children; on from them mighty Rome received
it and kept the ancestral observance; and now it is called Troy, and the
boys the Trojan troop.
Thus far sped the sacred contests to their holy lord. Just at this
Fortune broke faith and grew estranged. While they pay the due rites to
the tomb with diverse games, Juno, daughter of Saturn, sends Iris down
the sky to the Ilian fleet, and breathes a gale to speed her on,
revolving many a thought, and not yet satiate of the ancient pain. She,
speeding her way along the thousand-coloured bow, runs swiftly, seen of
none, down her maiden path. She discerns the vast concourse, and
traverses the shore, and sees the haven abandoned and the fleet left
alone. But far withdrawn by the solitary verge of the sea the Trojan
women wept their lost Anchises, and as they wept gazed all together on
the fathomless flood. 'Alas! after all those weary waterways, that so
wide a sea is yet to come! ' such is the single cry of all. They pray for
a city, sick of the burden of their sea-sorrow. So she darts among them,
not witless to harm, and lays by face and raiment of a goddess: she
becomes Beroe, the aged wife of Tmarian Doryclus, who had once had birth
and name and children, and in this guise goes among the Dardanian
matrons. 'Ah, wretched we,' she cries, 'whom hostile Achaean hands did
not drag to death beneath our native city! ah hapless race, for what
destruction does Fortune hold thee back? The [626-660]seventh summer
now declines since Troy's overthrow, while we pass measuring out by so
many stars the harbourless rocks over every water and land, pursuing all
the while over the vast sea an Italy that flies us, and tossing on the
waves. Here are our brother Eryx' borders, and Acestes' welcome: who
denies us to cast up walls and give our citizens a city? O country, O
household gods vainly rescued from the foe!
mounted on old Acestes' Sicilian horses. . . . The Dardanians greet
their shy entrance with applause, and rejoice at the view, and recognise
the features of their parents of old. When they have ridden merrily
round all the concourse of their gazing friends, Epytides shouts from
afar the signal they await, and sounds his whip. They gallop apart in
equal numbers, and open their files three and three in deploying bands,
and again at the call wheel about and bear down with levelled arms. Next
they start on other charges and other retreats in corresponsive spaces,
and interlink circle with circle, and wage the armed phantom of battle.
And now they bare their backs in flight, now turn their lances to the
charge, now plight peace and ride on side by side. As once of old, they
say, the labyrinth in high Crete had a tangled path between blind walls,
and a thousand ways of doubling treachery, where tokens to follow failed
in the [591-625]maze unmastered and irrecoverable: even in such a track
do the children of Troy entangle their footsteps and weave the game of
flight and battle; like dolphins who, swimming through the wet seas, cut
Carpathian or Libyan. . . .
This fashion of riding, these games Ascanius first revived, when he girt
Alba the Long about with walls, and taught their celebration to the Old
Latins in the way of his own boyhood, with the youth of Troy about him.
The Albans taught it their children; on from them mighty Rome received
it and kept the ancestral observance; and now it is called Troy, and the
boys the Trojan troop.
Thus far sped the sacred contests to their holy lord. Just at this
Fortune broke faith and grew estranged. While they pay the due rites to
the tomb with diverse games, Juno, daughter of Saturn, sends Iris down
the sky to the Ilian fleet, and breathes a gale to speed her on,
revolving many a thought, and not yet satiate of the ancient pain. She,
speeding her way along the thousand-coloured bow, runs swiftly, seen of
none, down her maiden path. She discerns the vast concourse, and
traverses the shore, and sees the haven abandoned and the fleet left
alone. But far withdrawn by the solitary verge of the sea the Trojan
women wept their lost Anchises, and as they wept gazed all together on
the fathomless flood. 'Alas! after all those weary waterways, that so
wide a sea is yet to come! ' such is the single cry of all. They pray for
a city, sick of the burden of their sea-sorrow. So she darts among them,
not witless to harm, and lays by face and raiment of a goddess: she
becomes Beroe, the aged wife of Tmarian Doryclus, who had once had birth
and name and children, and in this guise goes among the Dardanian
matrons. 'Ah, wretched we,' she cries, 'whom hostile Achaean hands did
not drag to death beneath our native city! ah hapless race, for what
destruction does Fortune hold thee back? The [626-660]seventh summer
now declines since Troy's overthrow, while we pass measuring out by so
many stars the harbourless rocks over every water and land, pursuing all
the while over the vast sea an Italy that flies us, and tossing on the
waves. Here are our brother Eryx' borders, and Acestes' welcome: who
denies us to cast up walls and give our citizens a city? O country, O
household gods vainly rescued from the foe!
