“After that it had seemed well to the powers above to overthrow Asia’s fortunes and Priam’s guiltless nation; after that Ilion fell headlong from its pride, and Troy, which Neptune reared, became one levelled smoking ruin, we are driven by auguries from heaven to look elsewhere 5 for the exile’s home in lands yet unpeopled. We build us a fleet under the shadow of Antandros,[140] and the range of our own Phrygian Ida, all uncertain whither fate may carry us, where it may be our lot to settle, and muster men for sailing. Scarcely had summer set in, when my 10 father, Anchises, was bidding us spread our sails to destiny. Then I give my last tearful look to my country’s shores and her harbours, and those plains where Troy once stood but stands no longer. A banished man, I am wafted into the deep with my comrades and my son, my household 15 gods and their mighty brethren. “In the distance lies the land of the war-god, inhabited, in vast extent—the Thracians are its tillers—subject erewhile to Lycurgus’[141] savage sway, bound by old hospitality to Troy, their household gods friends of ours, while 20 our star yet shone. Hither I am wafted, and on the bending line of coast trace the outline of a city, a commencement made in an evil hour, and call the new nation Æneadæ,[142] after my own name. “I was sacrificing to my parent, Dione’s[143] daughter, and 25 the rest of the gods, that they might bless the work I had begun, and was slaying to the heavenly monarch of the powers above a bull of shining whiteness on the shore. It happened that there was a mound near, on whose top were plants of cornel, and a myrtle bristling thick with 30 spearlike wands. I drew near, and essayed to pull up from the ground the green forest growth, that I might have leafy boughs wherewith to shadow the altar, when I see a portent dreadful and marvellous to tell. For the first tree that I pull up from the soil, severing its roots, 5 from that tree trickle drops of black blood, staining the earth with gore. For me, a freezing shudder palsies my frame, and my chilled blood curdles with affright. Again I go on to pluck the reluctant fibres of a second tree, and thus probe the hidden cause to the bottom; as surely 10 from the bark of that second tree the black blood follows. Much musing in my mind, I began to call on the nymphs of the wood, and Gradivus,[144] our father, patron of the land of Thrace, that they might duly turn the appearance to good, and make the heavy omen light. But when I come 15 to tear up a third spear-shaft with a still greater effort, straining with my knees against the sand which pressed on them—ought I to tell the tale or hold my peace?—a lamentable groan is heard from the bottom of the mound, and