Aeneas

I travel on in quest of Italy, my true home-land, and I from Jove himself may trace my birth divine.

Straightway Aeneas, shuddering with amaze, groaned loud, upraised both holy hands to Heaven, and thus did plead:

Aeneas groaned aloud, with bursting heart, to see the spoils, the car, the very corpse of his lost friend,—while Priam for the dead stretched forth in piteous prayer his helpless hands.

Aeneas, whom Aphrodite bore to Anchises, when she, goddess though she was, had lain with him upon the mountain slopes of Ida.

There, within the mighty sanctuary, Leto and Artemis healed him and made him glorious to behold, while Apollo of the silver bow fashioned a wraith in the likeness of Aeneas, and armed as he was.

Brave Menelaos pitied them in their fall, and made his way to the front, clad in gleaming bronze and brandishing his spear, for Ares egged him on to do so with intent that he should be killed by Aeneas;

as was the case when Ascanius wounded the stag, which gave rise to the war between Turnus and Aeneas.

A reasonable rule, which the divine poet has observed, when he introduced Aeneas making an offer the Latinus, who had become his father-in-law, should retain all military and civil power.

” Strabo says it was the practice of the ancient Greeks, and Aeneas proposed it to Turnus, as the most equitable way of settling their pretensions.

In these books it is inquired what was Homer's country, in these who was the true mother of Aeneas, in these whether Anacreon lived more lustfully or more drunkenly, in these whether Sappho was a public woman, and other things which, if you knew them, you would have to unlearn.

Behold, in that most religious city of the pious sons of Aeneas there is a certain Jupiter whom at his games they wash with human blood.

that Venus was wounded by a human arrow, because she wished to rescue her son Aeneas, all but slain by that same Diomedes;

And from the capture of Troy to the return of Aeneas and the founding of Lavinium, ten years;

and Aeneas reigned over all Italy and founded the greatest city of all.

For Aeneas, sent by Hector with a fleet and much force, possessed Italy, the most prosperous country of Europe;

For here there is no Aeneas snatched away by Aphrodite nor Ares wounded by a man nor any other such incredible thing, but true matters and like things that happened.

(To AENEAS) Go thou and calm the allies.

AENEAS.

AENEAS.

And Cytherea with the beautiful crown was joined in sweet love with the hero Anchises and bore Aeneas on the peaks of Ida with its many wooded glens.

-->“Anchises, most glorious of mortal men, take courage and be not too fearful in your heart.

And if any mortal man ask you who got your dear son beneath her girdle, remember to tell him as I bid you:

So also golden-throned Eos rapt away Tithonus who was of your race and like the deathless gods.

Now rouse your companions, Aeneas, first to shout the praises of Hera Parthenia, and then to know whether we have truly escaped the ancient reproach of men’s speech, “Boeotian pig.

and as you know Homer says in praise of Aeneas’ horses, that they knew how to pursue and to flee in fright full swiftly this way and that way;

its citizens refused to fight, and spent their whole time in cabals and factious disputes with one another, until tidings came that the enemy had laid close siege to Lavinium, where the sacred symbols of the ancestral gods of the Romans were stored up, and from which their nation took its origin, since that was the first city which Aeneas founded.

And a very prevalent story had it that the famous Palladium of Troy was hidden away there, having been brought to Italy by Aeneas.

If now the story told of Aeneas be true, that whilst Diomedes was passing by he offered a sacrifice with his head covered, it is rational and consequent that, while we cover our heads before our enemies, when we meet our friends and good men we should be uncovered.

The descendants of Aeneas reigned as kings in Alba, and the succession devolved at length upon two brothers, Numitor and Amulius.

and that she was married to Aeneas, or, in another version, to Ascanius the son of Aeneas.

— O ye sons of Zeus, whose joy is in swift horsemanship, O ye Tyndaridae, princes of Sparta, Titus, a descendant of Aeneas, has brought you a most excellent gift, he who for the sons of the Greeks wrought freedom.

it is the gift of the great leader of the children of Aeneas.

After that he drives off the cattle of Aeneas, and he sacks Lyrnessus and Pedasus and many of the surrounding cities, and he kills Troilus.

and Aphrodite bids Aeneas sail with him;

The Roman empire, indeed, looks back to an exile as its founder—a fugitive whom, when his country was taken, dragging along a scanty remnant, necessity and the fear of the victor brought, as he sought distant regions, into Italy.

1 Who will call Aeneas dutiful, if he had wished his country to be taken, that he might snatch his father from captivity?

Pious Aeneas, on account of a single boy and a decrepit old man, while Priam and Astyanax were left forsaken?

In the midst of this scene Aeneas of Stymphalus, a captain, catching sight of a man, who was wearing a fine robe, running to cast himself down, seized hold of him in order to stop him;

but the man dragged Aeneas along after him, and both went flying down the cliffs and were killed.

At about this time Aeneas the Stymphalian, who had become general of the Arcadians, thinking that conditions in Sicyon were not to be endured, went up to the Acropolis with his own army, called together the aristocrats among the Sicyonians who were in the city, and sent after those who had been exiled therefrom without a decree of the people.

Aeneas saved the gods of his father’s and his mother’s family, and withal his father himself;

And he had for pupils in venery and in other noble pursuits—Cephalus, Asclepius, Meilanion, Nestor, Amphiaraus, Peleus, Telamon, Meleager, Theseus, Hippolytus, Palamedes, Odysseus, Menestheus, Diomedes, Castor, Polydeuces, Machaon, Podaleirius, Antilochus, Aeneas, Achilles, of whom each in his time was honoured by gods.