The Æneid of Virgil translated into English proseVirgil
General
The Æneid of Virgil translated into English prose
Virgil
Aeneas (Legendary character); Epic poetry, Latin -- Translations into English; Legends -- Rome
Thence he turns, to encounter the appointed way.
And now they were already in the furthest region, the
separate place tenanted by the great heroes of war.
Here there meets him Tydeus, here Parthenopæus, illustrious
in arms, and the spectre of pale Adrastus. Here 30
are chiefs of Dardan line, wailed long and loudly in the
upper air as they lay low in fight: as he saw them all in
long array, he groaned heavily. Glaucus and Medon, and
Thersilochus, the three sons of Antenor, and Polyphœtes,
Ceres’ priest, and Idæus, with his hand still on the car, 35
still on the armour. They surround him, right and left,
the ghostly crowd; one look is not sufficient: they would
fain linger on and on, and step side by side with him,
and learn the cause of his coming. But the nobles of the
Danaans, and the flower of Agamemnon’s bands, when
they saw the hero and his armour gleaming through the
shade, were smitten with strange alarm: some turn their
backs in flight, as erst they fled to the ships: others raise 5
a feeble war-shout. The cry they essay mocks their
straining throats.
Here it is that he sees Priam’s son, mangled all over,
Deiphobus, his face cruelly marred—face and both
hands—his temples despoiled of his ears, and his nose 10
lopped by unseemly carnage. Scarce, in truth, he recognized
him, trembling as he was, and trying to hide the
terrible vengeance wreaked on him: unaccosted, he addresses
him in the tones he knew of old: “Deiphobus,
mighty warrior, scion of Teucer’s illustrious stock, who 15
has had the ambition to avenge himself so cruelly? who
has had his will of you thus? For me, Rumour told me
on that fatal night that you had sunk down, tired with
the work of slaughtering the Greeks, on a heap of undistinguished
carnage. Then with my own hand, I set up 20
an empty tomb on the Rhœtean shore, and thrice with a
loud voice invoked your spirit. There are your name and
your arms to keep the spot in memory: your self, dear
friend, I could not see, so as to give you repose in the
fatherland I was leaving.” To whom the son of Priam: 25
“Dear friend, you have failed in nought: all that Deiphobus
could claim has been paid by you to him and to his
shade. No; it was my own destiny and the deadly
wickedness of the Spartan woman that plunged me thus
deep in ill: these tokens are of her leaving. How we 30
spent that fatal night in treacherous joyance you know
well: too good cause is there to bear it in mind. When
the fateful horse at one bound surmounted the height of
Pergamus, and brought a mailclad infantry in its laden
womb, she feigned a solemn dance, and led round the 35
city Phrygian dames in Bacchic ecstasy; herself in their
midst raising a mighty torch aloft, and calling to the
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