Book 3

3. After faith had been broken with the Tyrians and the walls of chaste Saguntum overthrown, the father of the gods being unjust, at once the victor visits the peoples set at the fixed boundary of the world, and Gades, his kindred home. Nor did he cease to stir the minds of the seers and their foreseeing hearts about his empire: swiftly Bostar is bidden to set sail over the sea and learn beforehand the fates of things. An ancient worship is kept in the shrine from a long age, where, sitting on high, a rival of the Cirrhaean caves, among the panting Garamantes, horned Hammon unfolds the coming ages in his prophetic grove. From here he sought to know an omen for his enterprise and the chances to come before their day, and to learn the turns of the war.

Then, having venerated the altars of the club-bearing deity, he loads them with captured gifts, which lately from the citadel the victor had snatched, half-burnt, from smoking Saguntum. It is reported, and the belief is not idle, that from the founding of the shrine the set-up beams endure, and that through the age they have known only the hands of the builders. Hence they are glad to believe that the god has settled there and keeps age away from the temples. Then those to whom it is right and an honour to know the inmost parts of the shrine forbid women's steps, and take care to keep from the threshold the bristly swine. Nor is the dress before the altars different for any man: their bodies are veiled in linen, and the head gleams with the thread of Pelusium. It is the custom for the ungirt to offer incense, and, by the law of their fathers, to mark the sacrificial robe with a broad stripe: bare foot, shorn hair, and a chaste couch. Unextinguished flames keep watch on the hearths of the altars, but no image or familiar likeness of the gods has filled the place with majesty and sacred awe.

On the doors is the labour of Alcides: the Lernaean Hydra lies with its serpents cut off, and, crushed in his grip, the jaws of the Cleonaean lion are engraved with wide-open maw. But the Stygian doorkeeper, terrifying the shades with his savage baying, then for the first time dragged from his eternal cave, resents his bonds, and Megaera fears the chains. Beside them are the Thracian horses, and the Erymanthian plague, and the high branches of the bronze-footed stag, and his horns overtopping them. Nor lighter to be conquered is the nursling of the Libyan land upon his mother, and the deformed race, the laid-low double-membered Centaurs, and the Acarnanian river, now lessened by a horn. Among these Oeta gleams with consecrated fires, and the flames carry the mighty soul up to the stars.

When he had filled his eyes with the varied image of valour, then he beholds wonders: a sea that swept in suddenly upon the land with the mass of the rising deep, and no shores around, and the fields flooded with the poured-in waters. For where Nereus rolls forth from his blue caves and whirls the waters of Neptune from the deepest bottom, the burst-forth sea overflows, and, loosing its blind springs, Ocean comes on with its rushing waves. Then the shoals, as if stirred deeply by the savage trident, struggle to set the swollen sea upon the land. Soon the flood returns, and slips back as the tide is drawn off, and the ships, robbed of the deep, are left deserted on the fields, and the sailors, sprawled over their thwarts, await the waters. The Moon stirs these realms of wandering Cymothoe and the labours of the sea, the Moon, her chariot sent through the blue, and carries and carries back the strait, and Tethys follows, turned again and again.

These things were swiftly viewed by the leader; for many cares weary him. The first of his cares troubles him: to withdraw from the war the partner of his bed and the small son at her breast. His wife had imbued the young man with the maiden torches and his first wedding, and held him in mindful love. But the boy, begotten in the face of besieged Saguntum, had not yet completed twelve circuits of the Moon. When it was resolved to set these aside and separate them from arms, the leader speaks: 'O hope of high Carthage, my son, and not the lesser fear of the sons of Aeneas, be greater, I pray, in your fathers' glory, and found yourself a name by deeds by which, a warrior, you may surpass your grandsire; and already, sick with fear, Rome counts your years, to be wept for by mothers. Unless my prophetic heart deceives my senses, a great labour grows here for the lands: I recognize the face of my father, and your eyes threatening grim beneath your brow, and your heavy wailing, and the elements of my own wrath. If some god should chance to cut short such great deeds that he break off, with my death, the beginnings of things, strive, my wife, to preserve this pledge of war. And when he is given to speak, lead him through our cradle-shrines: let him touch the altars of Elissa with his boyish palms and swear to his father's ashes the wars of Laurentum. Then, when his stronger age comes of age with new flower, let him dart out to war and, the treaty trodden underfoot, victorious, on the Capitoline citadel claim my tomb for me. But you, whom the glory of so great a birth, happy, awaits, venerable in faith, depart from the perils of uncertain war and leave the hard labours. Crags shut in by snows and rocks set under the sky await us, and the labour Alcides sweated at, his stepmother marvelling, and, a labour fiercer than wars, the Alps. But if Fortune turn aside her promised favour and be sinister to my undertakings, I would wish you to stand in a long old age and to have prolonged your span; yours is the juster life, for whom the unhurrying sisters may draw the thread beyond me.'

So he. But in answer Imilce, the blood of Cirrhaean Castalius, who, named from her mother's name (Castulo keeps the surname of the Phoebean seer), likewise traced her parents from a consecrated stock. At the time when Bacchus was subduing the Iberian peoples, shaking Calpe with his thyrsus and his armed Maenad, Milichus, begotten of a wanton Satyr and the nymph Myrice, had reigned far and wide on the native shores, lifting a horned brow in his father's likeness. From him Imilce traced her country and her illustrious race, the name a little corrupted by the barbarian tongue. She then thus begins, her tears flowing little by little: 'Do you refuse me, forgetful that ours hangs on your safety, as a companion of your undertakings? Are these the bonds known to me, and the first-fruits of our marriage — that I, your wife, should fail to climb the icy mountains with you? Trust the vigour of a woman. No labour overcomes a chaste love. But if I am regarded only by my sex, and it is fixed that I be left, I yield indeed, nor do I delay the fates; may the god grant it, I pray: go, happy, go with favouring powers and vows, and amid the battle-lines and the blazing arms remember to keep care of the wife you have left, and of your son. For neither the Ausonians so much, nor weapons, nor fires do I fear, as I fear you: keen, you rush upon the very swords and thrust your head against the spears, nor does any valour sate you with a fortunate issue, for you alone glory knows no end, and you believe it an ignoble death for warlike men to die in peace. A tremor binds my limbs, nor do I shudder at any man who will come against you alone. But you, begetter of wars, have pity, and turn aside the outrage, and keep your head inviolable for the Teucrians.'

And now they had gone out and stood on the first shore, and the ship, run forward, the sailors hanging from the mast, was fitting little by little its sails to the driving wind, when Hannibal, hastening to soothe her fears and to lighten her mind, sick with stunned cares, thus began: 'Spare your omens and your tears, most faithful wife. In peace and in war a fixed term of life stands for all, and the first day brought with it the last; to pass from mouth to mouth in a name everlasting a fiery spirit grants to few, whom the father destines for the heavenly shores of the gods. Or shall I endure the Roman yoke and the citadels of Carthage enslaved? The ghosts goad me, and my father, chiding me through the shades of night, the altars stand and the dread rites before my eyes, and the changeable brevity of the hour forbids to put off the day. Should I sit still, that Carthage alone should know me, and that all the race of men should not know who I am, and that for fear of death I should leave high honours behind? For how far does the silence of life differ from death? Yet do not shudder at my reckless frenzies for praise. For us too there is an honour in light, and glory rejoices in old age, when it is celebrated by titles through a long age. You too the great rewards of an undertaken war await. Only let the gods grant themselves, all Thybris will serve you, and the brides of Ilium, and the Dardan rich in gold.' And while they pray these things with their weepings mingled together, the helmsman, trusting the sea, from the high stern rouses the lingerer. She is snatched away, torn from her husband. Their fixed faces cling, and they keep watch on the shores, until, as the winged keel snatched away the liquid path, the sea consumed their sight and the land receded.

But the Carthaginian prepares to turn away love with the cares of war, and seeks again the walls with hastened step. And while he surveys them and goes over all with frequent gaze, at last the hard strength yielded to anxious toil, and it is granted to compose his warlike mind in sleep.

Then the almighty father, meaning to exercise the Dardan race with perils and to raise the fame of savage wars to the stars and to bring back the labours of old, hastens the man's counsels, and terrifies his sluggish rest and breaks his sleep with fear sent upon him. And now through the moist shade of night the Cyllenian was carrying his parent's commands in winged flight. No delay. As the young man soothes his limbs in untroubled slumber, he approaches and assails him with bitter warnings: 'Shameful for a leader to consume the whole night in sleep, O ruler of Libya. Wars stand firm with a wakeful master. Soon you will see the seas troubled with poured-out ships and the Latin youth flit over all the deep, while you, sluggish in your undertaking, delay in the Iberian land. Is this enough of honour, forsooth, and a valour to be remembered, that Greek Saguntum fell with so great an effort? Come, then, if there is in your mind anything to match brave daring, bear your nimble steps with me and follow me who call (I forbid to look back: that father of the gods warns this): I will set you, a victor, before the walls of lofty Rome.'

And now he seemed to lay his right hand upon him and, with quickened step, to draw the glad man into the realms of Saturn, when a sudden crash around, and hisses brandished through the air from behind with savage tongues, terrify him, and from the man, fearing with a great terror, the precepts of the god slipped away, and, troubled, he turns his eyes. Behold, snatching forests and oaks from the ridges, twisted in its vast embrace, and the crags dragged through the pathless ways, a black serpent was hissing with a death-bearing whirl. As great as the Snake that ranges the unequal Bears with its bends and binds round the twin constellation with its gliding, so great it opens its jaws with a monstrous gape and, raising its head, makes it level with the cloud-bearing mountains. The violence of the riven sky redoubles the crash and whirls a rain-bringing storm mingled with hail. Trembling at this portent (for neither that slumber nor the force of deep night was upon him, and the god, with his wand that puts darkness to flight, had mingled light with sleep), he asks what the steep plague may be, and whither it bears the limbs that press upon the lands, and what peoples it claims with its gape. To him the one born in the cold caves of kindly Cyllene: 'You see the wars you wished for. The greatest wars, the slaughter of forests, the storm troubled with the moved sky, the killing of men and the great ruins of the Idaean race and tearful fates follow you. As great as the serpent that, the mountains laid waste, hurls the forests driven across the plains, with its squalid hide, and far and wide wets the lands with foaming venom, so great, running down from the mastered Alps, in black war you will enwrap Italy, and with so great a crash you will lay low towns torn up, their walls shattered.' With these goads the god and the slumber left the sick man. A cold sweat goes over his limbs, and with glad fear he unrolls the promises of his dream and goes back over the night. And now to the king of the gods and to Mars, under a favouring omen, honour was renewed, and before all, with a snowy bull, the Cyllenian warner appeased at deserving altars. At once he proclaims the standards to be torn up, and suddenly a clamour dissonant with mingled tongues shakes the camp.

Set forth, Calliope, to fame what peoples the dread enterprise stirred up and bore into the realms of Latinus, and what cities it armed among the untamed Iberians, and what squadrons it massed on the Paraetonian shore, when Libya dared to demand for herself the reins of empire and to change the yoke of the lands. No storm, never, goes more savage, driven by fierce gales, nor did war so dire, with a thousand keels burst forth, roar more keenly and terrify the trembling world.

First the youth bore the standards from Tyrian Carthage, light of limb and cheated of the proud grace of a tall body, but apt at deceiving and never slow to weave hidden wiles. Their shield was then rude, and with a short sword they fought; but bare were their footprints, and to gird their loins they were unaccustomed, and in the covering of a red garment their art in battle was to hide the blood they had shed. Among these their ruler, gleaming in purple, higher than all, the brother of Hannibal shines, and with welcome tumult Mago shakes the chariot and breathes his brother in arms.

Next, Utica was poured out among the Sidonian companies, ancient in its decay, founded before the citadel of old Byrsa. Then Aspis, which girded its shores with a Sicilian wall, its towers curved into the likeness of a shield. But the leader Sychaeus had turned faces upon himself, the offspring of Hasdrubal, whose heart his mother's race filled with a vain swelling, and his uncle Hannibal he never ceased to sound on his proud lips. There was present the soldier born of wave-washed Berenice, nor, though armed with the rounded pike for battle, did parched Barce fail, with its thirsting veins. And Cyrene, of the stock of the Pelopian grandson, goaded into arms the Battiadae, crooked in faith. These Ilertes leads, praised once by ancient Hamilcar, green in counsel, but late for war. Then Sabratha sent the Tyrian crowd, and Sarranian Leptis, and Oea, with Trinacrian settlers mingled with Africans, and Lixus sent Tingis from its rapid sea. Then Vaga, and Hippo, dear to the ancient kings, and Ruspina, which afar warded off the uneven waves, and Zama, and Thapsus, now richer with Rutulian blood. So many peoples he leads, huge in body and in arms, keeping the Herculean fame in deeds and in name, Antaeus, and lifts his lofty head above the lines. The Ethiopians came, a race not unknown to the Nile, who cut the magnet: theirs is the sole honour, to draw with a neighbouring stone the untouched steel from the metal. With these, witnessing by their bodies the pitiless sun, came the scorched Nubians. No brazen helmet nor cuirass stiffens with iron for them, no bow is bent: their custom is to defend their temples with manifold linen and to fortify the side with linen, and to aim darts wicked with juices, and to disgrace the iron with poison. Then for the first time in the Phoenician fashion to pitch in camp the Cinyphian Macae learned. Their faces are squalid with beard, and they cover their shoulders with the hide of a bristly goat; their hand is armed with the curved cateia. Against them are the parti-coloured shield and the sword curved by craft of the Adyrmachidae, and coverings on the left leg. But the people are harsh in their meals and grudging in their fare: for their gloomy feasts are roasted on the hot sand. Moreover the Massylians bore gleaming standards, the home, the last of the lands, that comes from the groves of the Hesperides. Over them was set, his twisted hair hanging from his crown, fierce Bocchus, who on the shore had seen the consecrated woods and, among the leaves, the gold growing green again. You too go from your deserted huts into the camp, Gaetulia, wont to mingle with the herds of wild beasts and to speak to the untamed, and to soothe the wrath of lions. No house: they dwell in wagons; to migrate over the fields is their custom, and to carry their wandering household gods about. Hence a thousand winged squadrons (the steed swifter than the East winds and taught the switch) rushed into the camp: as, when the nimble Spartan hunter fills the dense thickets with roving baying, or the keen-nosed Umbrian drives the beasts by scent from the path, the swift stags, terrified far and wide, hurl their lines headlong in fear. These Acherras drives, with no glad face nor serene brow, the brother of Asbyte lately slain. The Marmaridae, a healing crowd, clamoured in their troops, at whose chants the serpent forgot its venom, at whose touch the horned vipers lay tame. Then, poor in steel, the raw youth of the Baniurae, content to have hardened their spear-shafts with a sparing flame, mingled, eager, savage murmurs with their fierce tongues. And the Autololes too, a race fiery on their light feet, to whom the steed in its course, to whom the swift river would yield, so great is their flight: they vie with wings, and when in their flying they have snatched the plain away, you would seek the prints of their feet in vain. Conspicuous in the camp were those whom the tree noble in its juice and the lotus, too hospitable, feeds with its sweet berry, and the Garamantes, who in their immense sands shudder at the raging dipsads that seethe with black venom. Report teaches that, when Perseus snatched the head of the slain Gorgon, the dire blood flowed into Libya: hence the land overflowed with Medusan water-snakes. Over these thousands was the leader Choaspes, proved in war, born in Neritian Meninx, whose javelin always armed his lightning right hand, a renowned missile. Hither gathers the sea-faring Nasamon, bold to assail shipwrecks in the flood and to tear plunder from the sea, hither those who dwell by the deep pools of the Tritonian marsh, where the warrior maiden, as report says, born from the water, poured the first oil over Libya at the olive she had found.

And the whole West too is present, and the far-off peoples. The Cantabrian before all, unconquered by winter and heat and hunger, and bearing off the palm from every labour. A wondrous love is in that people: when sluggish age grows white, to anticipate, long since, their unwarlike years with a stone, and not to endure life without war. For all the cause of their light is set in arms, and they condemn living to peace. There came too, bedewed with the tears of Aurora — when into the world opposite she fled, an exile from her native shores — the armour-bearer of Eastern Memnon, ill-starred Astyr. For these there is a small steed, not born for Mars, but the same either gathers its footprints with unshaken back or, gentle, swiftly draws the soft chariot with pliant neck. Cydnus drives them, keen to measure the ridges of Pyrene in hunting, or to extend the battle with the Moorish javelin. The Celts too came, joining their name to the Iberians. For these it is glory to have fallen in battle, and to burn the body such a sin: they believe that to heaven and the gods above one is restored if the unfed vulture plucks the lying limbs. Of fibres and of feathers and of the divining flames rich Callaecia sent its wise youth, now howling barbarous songs in their native tongues, now, the earth struck by the alternate beat of the foot, rejoicing to clash their resounding shields to the measure. This is rest and sport for the men, this their sacred delight. The rest a woman's toil accomplishes: to add to the furrow the seed and to turn the earth with the pressed plough is base for the men. Whatever is to be done without hard war, the wife of the Callaecian husband performs, unresting. These Viriathus drives, drawn from the remote lairs of Lusitania, Viriathus in his early age, a name made soon famous by Roman losses. Nor did the Cerretani, once a Tirynthian camp, or the Vascon unused to bear the arms of the helmet, delay, nor Ilerda, which afterward saw the Dardan frenzies, nor you, Concanian, who, showing your Massagetan parent in your fierceness, sate yourself with the poured-out vein of a horn-hoofed steed. And now Phoenician Ebusus moves, Arbacus moves to arms, a fighter to press on with the aclys or the slender dart, now one whose founder was Tlepolemus and whose origin Lindus, the Balearic bearing wars with the sling and winged lead, and those whom now, with the name of the Greeks profaned, the houses of Oeneus and Aetolian Tyde sent as Gravii. Carthage gives men, founded by old Teucer, the Phocaean Emporiae give them, Tarraco gives its youth, vine-bearing, and to yield only to the Latin Lyaeus. Among these shone, in the bright light of its breastplate, the Sedetan cohort, which Sucro with its stiff waters and Saetabis, its nurse, sent from its lofty citadel, Saetabis, proud to have scorned the webs of the Arabs and to set its thread against the linen of Pelusium. Mandonius and Caeso, conspicuous tamer of horses, command the peoples, and the camp stands by their shared toil. But Balarus proves the squadrons of the Vettones in the open plain, here indeed, when the spring is calm and the breezes grow warm, the herd of mares, keeping their silent unions, stands fast and conceives a hidden Venus from the breeze that begets. But that breed has not many days, and old age hastens, and the seventh summer is the longest reckoned for those stables. But Uxama, raising its Sarmatian walls, does not skirmish on such light horses: hence comes to war a steed not frail in age, and harsh with raw vigour to bear the bridle or to obey its commanding masters. Rhyndacus is their leader, the spear their javelin; with the faces of beasts and gaping jaws they make their helmets dreadful. In hunting their life is passed, or, after the manner of their fathers, they live by violence and plunder.

Parnassian Castulo gleams with conspicuous standards, and Hispal, famed for its Ocean and its alternate tides, and Nebrissa, conscious of the Nysaean thyrsi of the god, which the light Satyrs cultivated, and the nightly Maenad, wreathed in the sacred fawnskin and the secret Lyaeus. Carteia arms the grandsons of Arganthonius. Their king was, of his forefathers, the richest in human life, a warrior who had measured ten times thirty years. Tartessos arms, conscious of stabling Phoebus, and Munda, to bring forth Emathian labours for the Italians. Nor did the glory of the gold-bearing land of Corduba fail. These men led Phorcys with his yellow crown and Arauricus, a heavy warrior on the corn-bearing shores, equal in age, whom on a fertile bank Baetes begot, his horns shaded with the bough of Pallas.

Such lines through the fields the Sidonian leader, blackening with dust, hurries, and surveying them under arms, as far as the eye could take them in, the gleaming standards he went rejoicing, and drew his shadow over the long land. Not otherwise, as often as Neptune glides over the waters in his car and seeks farthest Tethys, the couch of Phoebus, with his bridled horses, the whole chorus of the Nereids flows from their caves, and in their wonted contest of swimming they turn their white arms in the clear sea.

But the Carthaginian, the peace of the lands being troubled, was making for the leafy summits of the Pyrenaean mountain. Pyrene, from the high citadel of its cloudy summit, looks out far upon the Iberians divided from the Celts and holds an eternal division between great lands. The hills drew their name from the Bebrycian maiden, the crime of his host Alcides, who, when by the lot of his labours he sought the long fields of three-bodied Geryon, possessed by Bacchus in the savage hall of Bebryx, left Pyrene, her maidenhood lost, to be mourned for her beauty, and the god, if it is right to believe it, was the cause of the wretched girl's death — the god. For when from her womb she brought forth a serpent and shuddered at her father's wrath, at once, troubled, she left her sweet home. Then in lonely caves she bewailed the night of Alcides and told of the man's promises to the shady woods, until, as she mourned the ungrateful love of her ravisher and stretched out her hands and called for the arms of her host, the wild beasts tore her apart. The Tirynthian, her mangled limbs, as he returns a victor, drenched with tears, and, beside himself, grew pale at the found face of the beloved maiden. But the summits of the mountain, struck by the Herculean voice, trembled on their ridges: with a mournful cry he called on Pyrene, and all the crags and the lairs of beasts resound Pyrene. Then he lays her limbs upon a mound, weeping for the last time, nor did the honour perish with age, and the mountains hold the wept-for name through the ages.

And now through the hills and the groves dense with fir the Carthaginian had crossed the borders of the Bebrycian hall. Then, fierce, the way sought by arms through the inhospitable country of the Volcae, he lays waste, and approaches the threatening banks of the swollen Rhone with hurried soldiery. With its Alpine ramparts and its snowy rock the Rhone thrusts its head out toward the Celts and draws forth its mighty stream, cleaving the fields with its foaming flood, and rushes swiftly toward a bridge in its broad channel. The Arar, mingled with it, like one standing still and with silent water, adds to its wealth, and the Rhone, embracing it with its panting eddies, plunges the lingerer in the sea and, snatched through the fields, forbids it to bear its native name to the neighbouring shores. They assail the hostile river eagerly with bridges: now with high head and shoulders they protect their arms, now the flood is broken in rivalry by their strong forearms. The steed is led, tied to a river-alder of wood, nor does the Libyan beast hold back, though slowed by fear. For by beams, the shoals and the thrown-on earth being found, they cover the joined beams and lead them little by little into the deep, the fastenings loosed from the bank's rampart. But the Rhone, terrified by the bellowing inrush of the herd, was afraid of the dark masses, and, its pools poured back, hurled its threatening murmurs from its sandy bottom.

And now the host advances within the Tricastine borders, now it passes the easy fields, now the Vocontian country. Here Druentia, turbid with trunks and stones, laid waste the leader's glad way. For, risen from the Alps, it is borne rolling with a roar, in its barking waves, ash-trees torn away and the fragments of the eaten-away mountain, and changes its treacherous shoals as its course is shifted, faithful to no foot-soldier, fair to no broad-beamed ship. And then, swollen lately by the poured-out rain, snatching up many bodies of men under arms, whirling them in its foaming summit, it plunged them, hideous with mangled limbs, to the bottom.

But now the Alps, seen nearer, took from the trembling men the will to remember the labours past beyond. All things, covered with frost and white with eternal hail, hold the ice that is as old as themselves: the steep face of the heaven-high mountain stiffens, and, facing the rising Phoebus, it knows not how to soften its hardened frosts with flames. As far as the Tartarean gulf of the pale realm opens from the upper earth to the lowest shades and to the pools of the black marsh, so far through the air the land is raised, and intercepts the sky with its shadow. No spring anywhere, and no honours of summer. Alone on the dread ridges deformed winter dwells and keeps its perpetual seats; it from every side drives the black clouds hither, and the storms mingled with hail. Now all the blasts and the winds have set their raging realms in the Alpine home. The gaze is dimmed upon the high rocks, and the mountains pass off into the clouds. Athos mingled with Taurus, and Rhodope joined to Mimas, and Ossa with Pelion, and Othrys with Haemus, would yield to them. The Tirynthian first approached the untried citadels. The gods above watched him cleave the clouds and break the steep of the mountain, and, with great force, tame the rocks unviolated by a step from their origin in the long ages.

But the soldier slows his footsteps with doubtful gait, as if they bore impious arms into sacred bounds throughout the world, Nature forbidding, and warred against the gods. Against this the leader — not he, troubled by the Alps nor by any terror of the place, but he cherishes the men's languid, sad hearts with exhortation and calls back their vigour: 'Is it no shame, after the glory of war and the battle-lines, in obedience to the gods, and weary in their favour, to turn your backs on the snowy mountains and, slack, to submit your arms to the crags? Now, O now, comrades, believe that you climb the walls of domineering Rome and the highest summit of Jove. This labour will give you Ausonia, and this will give Thybris into chains.' No delay. The host, moved by the rich promises, he raises onto the hill, and bids them leave the famous footprints of great Hercules and set their foot on the raw places and let the squadrons go out by a path of their own. He bursts the inaccessible approaches, and first surmounts the heights and from the topmost crag calls the cohorts. Then, where the slippery path on the hill hardened with frozen cold balks them on the whitening slope, he burns the ice, struggling with the steel: the loosened snow swallows the men with its gape, and from the high summit, headlong, the collapse, slipping down, buries the squadrons in its wet ruin. At times Corus, dreadful, drives the snows massed in an opposing whirl into the very faces with his dusky wings, or again, whistling, snatches the arms torn off by the monstrous gale from the bared men, and, rolling them through a circle, whirls the things on high into the clouds with its twisted blast. And the more they climb the ridge and, straining to escape, raise their step, the labour grows. Steep above opens out before the weary, and a second mass is born, whence it pleases them not to look back on the labours mastered and sweated through: such fear the levels repeated to their eyes inspire, and one face of the whitening frost, wherever it is given to send the gaze, is heaped before them. So, in mid-sea, the sailor, when he has left the sweet lands, and the idle canvas finds no winds upon the untroubled mast, looks out on the immense waters and, conquered by the deep seas, weary, renews his eyes upon the sky.

And now, above the disasters and the harshness of the places, in their filth and the squalor of their stiff hair, ever foul, half-wild men thrust their dreadful faces from the crags, and, poured forth from the hollow caves of the eaten-away pumice, the Alpine band attacks, and with their wonted vigour through the thickets and the familiar snows and the pathless ways, nimble, they harass the shut-in foe with their mountain-roving courses. The shape of the places now changes. Here, with much blood, the snows reddened, stained; here the ice, knowing not to be conquered, little by little yields, warmed by gore, and while the steed presses its footprints with hard hoof, its hoof stuck, gripped fast in the pierced frosts. Nor was the plague of the falls simple: cut-off limbs the frost leaves behind, and the harsh stiffness amputates the broken joints. Twelve suns, and through their wounds as many savage nights traversed, they sink upon the wished-for summit and hang their steep camp on the sheer rocks.

But Venus, her mind shaken with doubtful fear, addresses her father and, mournful, bursts into complaint: 'What measure of punishment or end of perishing, I pray, will there be for the sons of Aeneas, and when will you grant them, the lands and the strait measured out, to settle? Why does the Carthaginian prepare to drive my descendants from the city granted by you? He has set Libya upon the Alps and threatens an end to their empire. Already Rome fears the fate of Saguntum. Whither shall we bear the last ashes of Troy and the sacred ruin and the home of Assaracus and the secret things of Vesta? Grant a seat, father, and to lie safe. Is it too little to have sought our wandering exiles through the whole world? Or shall Pergamum be sought again, Rome captured?' Thus Venus, and in answer the father then declares: 'Drive away your fears, nor let the attempts of the Tyrian race have troubled you, Cytherea: your blood holds, and long will hold, the Tarpeian citadels. By this mass of war I prepare to test the men and to weigh them in battle. A race that endures iron and rejoices to master toils little by little grows unaccustomed to the ancient honour of its fathers, and that people, never sparing of blood for praise and ever thirsting for fame, by sitting still spends obscure times, rolling on a mute and inglorious age, that people sprung from our blood, and by the sweet venom of sloth its virtue, little by little overcome, grows old. It is a work of great labour, to be prepared with much toil, to demand among so many peoples a realm for itself alone. And now a time will come to you when Rome, greatest of things, will be nobler for her woes. Hence labour will bring back names not unworthy of our heaven, hence to you Paulus, hence Fabius, and Marcellus, dear to me for the spoils. These will bring forth so great a realm for Latium through wounds that their descendants, in luxury and with much-changed minds, yet cannot overthrow it. And now there is already born one who shall recall the Carthaginian to his country and, repulsed from Latium, strip him of his arms before the walls of his own Carthage. Hence, Cytherea, your line will reign through a long age. Then from Cures a heavenly valour will lift itself to the stars, and the warlike race nursed by the berry-bearing Sabine will increase the name of the sacred Julii. Hence the father will grant the conquest of unknown Thule and will first lead the lines into the Caledonian groves, will check the Rhine within its banks, will rule the Africans tirelessly, and, an old man, will master in war palm-bearing Idume. Nor will he hold the lakes of Styx and the realms widowed of light, but the seat of the gods above and our honours. Then a youth, excelling in the great strength of his mind, will take up the burden of his country, and, lofty, will be borne lifting his head to match his empire. He the savage wars of the Palestine race will blot out in his early age. But you, Germanicus, will surpass the deeds of your kin, already as a boy dreaded by the golden-haired Batavian. Nor will the fires of the Tarpeian summit have terrified you: amid the sacrilegious flames you will be kept for the lands. For a long partnership of our heaven awaits you. To him one day the Gangetic youth will lower their slackened bows, and Bactra will show its empty quivers. He too will drive his chariot from the Northern pole through the city and will lead Eastern triumphs, Bacchus yielding. He, a victor, will check the Hister, indignant at letting the Dardan standards cross, within its Sarmatian seats. Nay, he will surpass the descendants of Romulus in eloquence, those for whom there will be a glory won by speech. To him his own the Muses will bring their rites, and, better in his lyre — at which the Hebrus stayed and Rhodope came — he will speak things to be wondered at by Phoebus. He too, where you see our ancient palace stands, will set the golden Capitol on the Tarpeian rock and will join the summits of the temples to our heaven. Then, O child of gods, and about to give gods, rule with your father's sway the lands made blessed. A slow hospitality of heaven will receive your old age, and Quirinus will yield his throne, and your parent and your brother will set you in the midst: beside you the temples of your starry son will shine.'

While Jupiter unfolds the sequence of the age to come, the Agenorean leader, borne down by the unfair mounds, slipping with doubtful effort over the downward pathless ways, steadied his step and trod the wet rocks. No battle-line or foe holds him, but the sheer slopes with their threatening crag, and the rocks that meet him with their boulders, throw him into confusion. They stand shut in and mourn the delays and the hardships of the ways. Nor is it granted to refresh their numb limbs with rest: they join night to the work and hasten to bear the oaks on their forced shoulders, and the ash-trees snatched from the hills. And now, when they had stripped the densest wood from the mountains, they heaped up beams, and the crag, kindled in a ring with swift flames, is burned out: soon, broken down with iron, the rotten mass gives a groan as its weight is loosed, and opens to the weary the realm of ancient Latinus. By these chances at last, the unknown Alps crossed, the leader set his tents on the Taurinian fields.

Meanwhile, bearing the voices of Jove and his oracles, Bostar, glad, the sands of the Garamantes measured out, was present, and, as if he had seen the Thunderer, spurred their hearts: 'Greatest son of Belus, who with your right hand ward off servitude from your fathers' walls, we have penetrated the Libyan altars. The Syrtis, that drenches the stars, bore us up to the gods above, the land, more violent than the seas, almost swallowed us. To the edge of heaven from the middle of the world stretch the squalid plains. Nature has denied a mound in those immense spaces, save such as the whirlwind, twisting the hollow clouds, has built, massed of the dashed-on sand, or such as, when the African, having laid waste the lands, its prison broken, and Corus, scattering the sea over the air, fierce, have invaded the plain that takes their battles and in turn, the dust heaped on, have piled into mountains. These valleys we sailed over, watching the stars. For day confuses the way, and the foot-traveller, wandering in the deep plain and ever seeing the fields in the midst, the most faithful Cynosure guides for the Sidonian sailors. But when, weary, we came to the groves and the wooded realms of horned Jove and his gleaming temples, Arisbas, our host, leads us, received, into his dwelling. There stands, near the shrine, a water, new and memorable, which at the dawning day, which at the failing day grows warm, and which stiffens when the midday sun kindles Olympus, and the same again grows hot in the nocturnal shades. Then, the old man shows us the places full of the god, the rich clods without the ploughshare, and thus speaks with a glad mind: "These shadows of the groves and the summits joined to the sky and the groves trodden by Jove, adore, Bostar, with prayer. For to whom are the gifts of Jove not spread through the world, that twin doves sat in the lap of Thebes? Of these, the one that touched with its wings the Chaonian shores fills the Dodonian oak with prophetic murmur. But the one that, borne through the air over the Carpathian sea, swam across into Libya, of one colour with its snowy wings, this Cytherean bird founded this seat with a temple; here, where now you see the altar and the shady groves, the leader of the flock chosen — wonderful to tell — standing in the midst between the horns of the wool-bearing head, the bird sang responses to the Marmaric peoples. Soon a sudden wood and a grove of aged oak sprang up, and such oaks as now press upon the stars came from the first day: hence, from ancient awe, the tree holds a deity and is worshipped at the warm altars." And while we marvel at these things, with sudden creaking the doors, struck, opened dreadfully, and a greater light suddenly strikes the eyes. Before the altars stands the priest, gleaming in a snowy robe, and the peoples vie to run together. Then, when I poured from my breast the words entrusted to me, behold, the god suddenly enters the seer. Deep murmurs roll through the sounding grove, the beams dashed together, and now a voice greater than is known bursts out into the air: "You make for Latium and prepare to harry with war the offspring of Assaracus, you Libyans. I see the harsh enterprise and grim Gradivus now mounting his car, and the horn-hoofed steeds, raging, breathing a black flame upon the Hesperian flank, and the reins flowing with much blood. You, who demand the issues of battle and the ends of fate and, fierce, give your sails to a glorious labour, invade the Iapygian plain of the Aetolian leader. You will increase your Sidonian forefathers, and to none will you leave it to penetrate deeper into the vitals of the Ausonian race, until the Dardan realms, conquered, tremble before you. Nor will the Saturnian youth ever lay aside their care while Hannibal plucks the upper airs upon the earth."' Such oracles Bostar bore to the glad men, and had filled them with a love of the nearer fight.