With favoring wind and god, the naval garland Wreathing his temples. Antony assembles Egypt and all the East; Antony, victor Over the lands of dawn and the Red Sea, Marshals the foes of Rome, himself a Roman, With--horror!--an Egyptian wife. The surge Boils under keel, the oar-blades churn the waters, The triple-pointed beaks drive through the billows, You would think that mountains swam and battled mountains, That islands were uprooted in their anger. Fireballs and shafts of steel are slanting showers, The fields of Neptune redden with the slaughter. The queen drives on her warriors, unseeing The double snakes of death; rattle and cymbals Compete with bugle and trumpet. Monstrous gods, Of every form and fashion, one, Anubis, Shaped like a dog, wield their outrageous weapons In wrath at Venus, Neptune, and Minerva. Mars, all in steel, storms through the fray; the Furies Swoop from the sky; Discord exults; Bellona, With bloody scourge, comes lashing; and Apollo From Actium bends his bow. Egypt and India, Sabaeans and Arabians, flee in terror. And the contagion takes the queen, who loosens The sheets to slackness, courts the wind, in terror, Pale at the menace of death. And the Nile comes To meet her, a protecting god, his mantle Spread wide, to bring a beaten woman home. And Caesar enters Rome triumphant, bringing Immortal offerings, three times a hundred New altars through the city. Streets are loud With gladness, games, rejoicing; all the temples Are filled with matrons praying at the altars, Are heaped with solemn sacrifice. And Caesar, Seated before Apollo’s shining threshold, Reviews the gifts, and hangs them on the portals. In long array the conquered file, their garments, Their speech, as various as their arms, the Nomads, The naked Africans, Leleges, Carians, Gelonians with quivers, the Morini, Of mortals most remote, Euphrates moving With humbler waves, the two-mouthed Rhine, Araxes, Chafing beneath his bridge. All this Aeneas Sees on his mother’s gift, the shield of Vulcan, And, without understanding, is proud and happy As he lifts to his shoulder all that fortune, The fame and glory of his children’s children. BOOK IX IN THE ABSENCE OF AENEAS